The Georgia Convict Lease System
THE New York World has been unearthing the iniquities of the convict lease system in Georgia, under which those convicted of crimes are leased out by the State authorities to contractors, the State always furnishing with the men a "whipping boss." The tale of the World's reporter, Mr. J. C. Klein, reveals a dark picture. In speaking of this cruelty the World says:— "It belongs to the system, which is barbarously wrong and utterly violative of every principle of penitential punishment for purposes of reformation. Apart from its irresponsible cruelty, the existence of the system gives the State a speculative interest in the conviction of as many able-bodied laborers as possible, and induces long sentences, because the contractor does not want a short-term man. It leaves reformation utterly out of the account. It degrades prisoners instead of building up their characters. It makes no provision for protecting the less hardened from the influence of the worst. It is not reformatory in any sense even by accident, but merely an inhuman traffic in human flesh. It is slavery, stripped of the kindliness that softened the relations of master and servant—slavery, upon purely speculative terms, a thing regarded with abhorrence in the South in the days of a more humane servitude. It is a curse which the World would aid Georgia to cast off."