Transcript

The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

From Stuff You Should Know · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 52 min · 9,728 words · 174 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW", an episode of Stuff You Should Know published December 3, 2025 (52 min, about 9,728 words). It mentions 136 people, works and ideas, including Convict leasing, 10th Amendment, Stuff You Should Know, Georgia, Thomas Moore.

What this episode is about

The focus is on the history and implications of prison labor, highlighting its brutal realities and the systemic issues surrounding it. Additional context includes a partnership with the Cooperative for Education to support educational programs in Guatemala, showcasing the positive impact of community contributions.

Key takeaways

  • Thomas Moore's 16th-century Utopia introduced prison labor as cheap, legal slavery—Sumerians just hung you.
  • Prison labor: rehabilitating criminals or just leveraging free manpower? Discuss; it's Enlightening-era innovation.
  • America's colonial past saw 'king's passengers'—involuntary laborers sent as sentence instead of imprisonment.
  • Donating $20 monthly helps Guatemalan students via Co-ed's RISE program. A virtual hangout with SYSK might follow!
  • Stuff You Should Know fans have donated $1.44 million, breaking poverty cycles—because education trumps the stocks!

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Stuff You Should Know, Thomas Moore, Thomas Moore, Cooperative for Education
  2. – 10:00: 12 Years a Slave, 12 Years a Slave, indentured servitude, private prisons
  3. – 15:00: 10th Amendment, private prisons, Auburn Prison, Auburn Prison
  4. – 20:00: Georgia, Alabama, Convict leasing, Albama
  5. – 25:00: Convict leasing, Unicor, Unicor, New Deal
  6. – 30:00: chain gangs, Georgia, Django, Beloved
  7. – 35:00: mass incarceration, chain gangs, Georgia, Louisiana
  8. – 40:00: California, private prisons, Ski Utah plates, Unicor
  9. – 45:00: Convict leasing, Georgia, Thomas Moore, Thomas Moore
  10. – 50:00: Kimberly, Alabama, airports, crowd crushes
  11. – 52:04: Stuff You Should Know, iHeart Radio, Kimberly, mustard

Notable quotes from "The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

  • Your donations. And so far in our history with co-ed, which dates back all the way to 2009, Stuff You Should Know listeners have given $1.4 $4 million in donations and helped…
    about Stuff You Should Know · at
  • There's a better way, people. There's an alternative to just killing people or cutting off their hands. What if we just put them to work? There's all sorts of benefits and…
    about Thomas Moore · at
  • It wasn't like immediately adopted after Thomas Moore wrote Utopia. He wrote it in the 16th century. even into the American Revolution and beyond there was not like a lot of.
    about Thomas Moore · at
  • And was not an easy thing to give up despite having lost the civil war and the 13th amendment being passed. And I know you've seen 13th the Ava Duivere documentary.
    about 10th Amendment · at
  • Your responsibility. But your responsibility didn't really mean anything. like 16 of those prisoners died in the first year. And as you'll see, a story that, is going to be repeated over and over. That was, one of the biggest problems with.
    about Georgia · at
  • States were Oh, that's a really good idea. By 1898, convict leasing made up 73% of Alabama's state revenue.
    about Convict leasing · at
  • Yeah. I was bagging on Georgia because that's our home state or my home state. But Louisiana has kind of from the beginning been one of certainly one of the worst offenders. in…
    about Louisiana · at
  • And prison-made products. But, in 1934, the federal prison industries was created. It's now known as Unicor. And that is, still a big program. It employs people that are incarcerated in our federal system, not state prisons, again, and.
    about Unicor · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Thomas Moore — Person · Referenced historical author/thinker · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as an early proponent of using labor as an alternative to corporal/capital punishment via his book 'Utopia', framing the episode’s historical origin story for prison labor.
  • Thomas Moore — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Thomas Moore — Person · Referenced historical author/thinker · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as an early proponent (via his book 'Utopia') of replacing corporal/capital punishment with forced labor as punishment—used to frame the historical origins of prison labor.
    Punishment. and you would be ridiculed by your neighbors. and then a guy named Thomas Moore wrote a book called Utopia. And he said, There's a better way, people. There's an…
  • Thomas Moore — Person · Referenced historical author/thinker · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as an early proponent of using labor as an alternative to corporal/capital punishment via his book "Utopia," framing the episode’s historical origin story for prison labor.
    It wasn't like immediately adopted after Thomas Moore wrote Utopia. He wrote it in the 16th century. even into the American Revolution and beyond there was not like a lot of.
  • Robert Burns — Person · Referenced author (memoirist) and former chain-gang prisoner · 1 mention · first at
    Cited for writing a widely influential exposé/memoir about Georgia chain gangs, which helped shift public opinion and awareness about brutal prison labor practices.
    There was a white northern veteran who was a convict obviously named Robert Burns. He published a book called I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang. exclamation point.…
  • Bayard Rustin — Person · Referenced activist / first-person example · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a civil rights activist who wrote about his chain gang experience in published articles, serving as historical evidence of abuse
    Good movie. well, in 1947, some more news leaked out when a black civil rights activist named Bayard Rustin, and I know we've talked about Bayard Rustin before.
  • Thomas Moore — Person · Referenced historical author · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as author of Utopia whose ideas about work and punishment influenced later penal-labor philosophies
    Then a guy named Thomas Moore wrote a book called Utopia. And he said, There's a better way, people. There's an alternative to just killing people or cutting off their hands.…
  • Ava DuVernay — Person · Referenced filmmaker/documentarian · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced as the director of the documentary '13th', used in the episode to explain how the 13th Amendment’s exception clause enabled coerced prison labor after slavery’s formal abolition.
    And was not an easy thing to give up despite having lost the civil war and the 13th amendment being passed. And I know you've seen 13th the Ava Duivere documentary.
  • Bill and Hillary Clinton — Person · Referenced political figure (policy context) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as one of the key political leaders associated with policies that accelerated mass incarceration, which in turn expanded the scale of prison labor.
    Yeah. Nixon's war on drugs, Reagan's tough on crime thing, Clinton trying to wrestle the tough on crime I guess moniker away from the GOP. And I guess it was part of the Democrats platform every year until 2008.
  • Jerry (staff member on leave) — Person · staff member referenced in intro; on leave · 1 mention
    Clarifies which person is on leave during the podcast; prevents ambiguity with fictional characters or other Jerrys
    I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us. Jerry's on leave right now. She's having a little RNR living it up in the South Seas, falling in love, spending a lot of time on the beach, writing people's names in the sand for money.
  • Little Chuck — Person · 14 mentions
  • Kimberly — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    So, who is this from? This is from Kimberly. Hey guys, thanks for keeping me company on long work trips, during chores, and throughout my day-to-day life. I feel like I'm listening to old friends, like a lot of.
  • Jack Ruby — Person · 3 mentions
  • Thomas More — Person · 3 mentions
  • Joey CR — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. Well, our mutual friend and friend of the show, Joey CR, is going to be very upset to hear that.
  • Thomas Ruger — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Shamefully in Georgia. Georgia kind of led the way. In 1868, there was a provisional governor named Thomas Ruger and he leased like this is when the kind of the big sort of…
  • William Fort — Person · 1 mention · first at
    From our state. And Georgia led the way early on with a 100 black prisoners being leased to William Fort of the Georgia and Alabama Railroad for 2500 bucks. so 25 that's $25 a prisoner right?
  • Toni Morrison — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Have you ever read a beloved Tony Morrison novel?
  • Nancy Reagan — Person · 1 mention · first at
    A 36-year period thanks to well, thanks to a lot, but namely thanks to Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton.
  • Carla Simmons — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Goes and food. I think Livia helped us with this. She did a great job. but she found one woman named Carla Simmons who is an incarcerated in a woman's prison and she wrote last…
  • Joe Arpaio — Person · 1 mention
  • Livia — Person · 1 mention
  • Yumi — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

  • Utopia — Book · Referenced historical text · 2 mentions · first at
    Thomas More's Utopia is cited as an early influential text advocating work as punishment/rehabilitation
    Punishment. and you would be ridiculed by your neighbors. and then a guy named Thomas Moore wrote a book called Utopia. And he said, There's a better way, people. There's an…
  • Global Slavery Index — Book · Referenced report · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced as the product/report used to classify forced labor prevalence; cited in discussion about forced labor rankings
    A there's a international anti-slavery nonprofit called WalkFree in Australia who produces what's called the Global Slavery Index. And the United States is one of 17 countries…
  • Moby Dick — Book · Referenced book · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced in passing as a book one host still plans to read — not related to central subject
    You know what? When I start Moby Dick, finally, I'll watch 12 Years a Slave and I'll just I'll just do both at the same time.
  • Beloved — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Have you ever read a beloved Tony Morrison novel?
  • I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! — Book · 1 mention · first at
    There was a white northern veteran who was a convict obviously named Robert Burns. He published a book called I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang. exclamation point.…
  • Bartleby, the Scrivener — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

  • Stuff You Should Know — Company · Podcast / Producer · 3 mentions · first at
    The podcast producing and presenting the episode; host organization that solicits donations and references sponsor relationships
  • Unicor — Company · Modern federal prison industries example · 3 mentions · first at
    Named as the federal prison industries program (now UNICOR) created in 1934 — used to illustrate ongoing institutionalized prison labor within the federal system
  • WalkFree — Company · Referenced NGO (international reference) · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced as the organization that produces the Global Slavery Index which classifies the U.S. as using state-imposed forced labor
    Call it, I guess. in 2021, there was a there's a international anti-slavery nonprofit called WalkFree in Australia who produces what's called the Global Slavery Index. And the…
  • iHeartRadio — Company · 3 mentions
  • iHeart Radio — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
  • Georgia and Alabama Railroad — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Early on with a 100 black prisoners being leased to William Fort of the Georgia and Alabama Railroad for 2500 bucks. so 25 that's $25 a prisoner right?
  • Imperial Sugar Company — Company · 1 mention · first at
    From the least convict labor that they got from the state. And there was a sugar company the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugarland, Tennessee, which I guess is an appropriate place for it to be.
  • New Orleans Pacific Railway — Company · 1 mention · first at
    From the beginning been one of certainly one of the worst offenders. in the 1870s and 80s they built the New Orleans Pacific Railway with prison labor. About 140 people died…
  • big box retailer — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Like a lot of people don't realize that the stuff they're buying from a big box retailer was made somewhere down the line by a convict who was essentially leased out to that company to make those products. It still goes on today.
  • Federal Prison Industries — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Law prohibiting interstate trade, and prison-made products. But, in 1934, the federal prison industries was created. It's now known as Unicor. And that is, still a big program. It employs people that are incarcerated in our federal system,.
  • hotel chain — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Fast food restaurant or may be like a work on the custodial staff at a well-known hotel chain.
  • Edgeworth Economics — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And produces another $2 billion in goods and services. And so the Edgeworth Economics group did a study, a costbenefit analysis last year, and found that hey, if they actually use that money to pay incarcerated workers.
  • GOP — Company · 1 mention
  • IMDb — Company · 1 mention
  • KFC — Company · 1 mention
  • Schloss Sheffield Steel and Iron Company — Company · 1 mention
  • stuffpodcast.com — Company · 1 mention
  • UCI — Company · 1 mention
  • Walk Free — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Convict leasing — Product · Core topic / historical practice · 6 mentions · first at
    Central historical practice discussed as the episode's primary example of exploitative prison labor after the Civil War and into the 20th century
  • 12 Years a Slave — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Their slaves, punish their slaves essentially. And if you've ever have you ever seen 12 Years a Slave yet?
  • furniture — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Federal government like a lot of times you know military fatigues or furniture stuff like that right yeah and if you are a government agency you have to go to Unicor first to…
  • Ski Utah plates — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Even the specialty like ski Utah plates and the Olympic plates and stuff like that. They're making them all still.
  • Django Unchained — Product · 2 mentions
  • military fatigues — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Unicor they're making things for the federal government like a lot of times you know military fatigues or furniture stuff like that right yeah and if you are a government…
  • Olympic plates — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Even the specialty like ski Utah plates and the Olympic plates and stuff like that. They're making them all still.
  • patio furniture — Product · 1 mention · first at
    The supply chain is that like companies don't know who's painting the patio furniture that they're selling.
  • pretzels — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. Maybe he just could not wait to get some pretzels.
  • mustard — Product · 1 mention · first at
    The mustard. Anyways, sorry. Rant over.
  • iHeartRadio app — Product · 1 mention
  • O Brother, Where Art Thou? — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • 10th Amendment — Concept · Legal pivot / core legal concept · 5 mentions · first at
    Explains the constitutional loophole enabling involuntary servitude as criminal punishment — foundational to the episode's argument about continuity between slavery and prison labor
  • Rise — Concept · Program name (donation target) · 2 mentions · first at
    The RISE youth development program (capitalized RISE) run by Cooperative for Education — target of the episode's fundraising appeal
    That's right. set up a recurring gift of $20 a month by December 19th and you can win that raffle and hang out with us in a Zoom call. It's a lot of fun. We do it every year and it's a great organization.
  • New Deal — Concept · Historical policy turning point · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced as the era during which the US moved away from private convict leasing and federal prison industries (Unicor) were established
    Supposedly in the 1930s, thanks to the New Deal, America became enlightened enough that we moved on past convict leasing. We didn't do that kind of stuff anymore. not at least a private.
  • private prisons — Concept · 13 mentions · first at
    Being the holiday season when this is released right than hard labor at prisons in that history.
  • chain gangs — Concept · 8 mentions · first at
    Of be like Yeah, I think you're probably right. chain gangs is something that you know you've seen in like movies and stuff like I was watching over other Where Thou again the other night.
  • Convict Leasing — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    States were Oh, that's a really good idea. By 1898, convict leasing made up 73% of Alabama's state revenue.
  • mass incarceration — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    All right. We'll be right back and talk about the modern era of mass incarceration.
  • indentured servitude — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Yeah. And we should say this early indentured servitude is what they called it. if it was aimed at white people exclusively in the colonies and then later on the early United States because if you if the government intervened.
  • penitentiary — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    American Revolution. I think it was the Quakers that came up with the idea of the penitentiary which was meant to give you quiet time to reflect on what terrible things you'd…
  • black codes — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    We did an episode on the black codes back in January of 2022.
  • gangs — Concept · 2 mentions
  • RISE youth development program — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Hey everybody, we are partnering up with the Cooperative for Education once again to help raise money for their RISE youth development program, which sends students to school…
  • Sumerians — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Was ancient like the Sumerianss doing stuff like this. And it turns out no. Sumerians forward all the way into the Enlightenment period in Europe just killed people. They hung…
  • Enlightenment — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Stuff like this. And it turns out no. Sumerians forward all the way into the Enlightenment period in Europe just killed people. They hung you or they cut your hand off or they…
  • British colonies — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Were lucky. And I think 60,000 people before the American Revolution while America was British colonies or were British colonies were sentenced to transportation and showed up there and said, Okay, what do you want me to do?
  • king's passengers — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    They were probably more told that, but they were known as the king's passengers. And they, the colonies, the people in the colonies, they weren't that wild about this. they were worried about, you.
  • Industrial Revolution — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Maryland to Virginia, probably working in, industry the industrial revolution type stuff or on the farms like tobacco farming obviously in Virginia.
  • tobacco farming — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Industry the industrial revolution type stuff or on the farms like tobacco farming obviously in Virginia.
  • Quakers — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Prisons that came later on after the American Revolution. I think it was the Quakers that came up with the idea of the penitentiary which was meant to give you quiet time to…
  • redemptive suffering — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah, for sure. but yeah, redemptive suffering is what they called it and that was a big part of being in prison and committing well not committing to hard labor like being.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1866 — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    That you know the black codes went away with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment which is ratified in 1868 made equal rights and protections you know the law everywhere basically. but you know.
  • Reconstruction — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So, yeah, that's a staggering stat, right? And then when reconstruction ended, the federal government just basically said, Hey, we really just want to be on good terms with the southern elite again, so we're just.
  • work release programs — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    A chicken farm that had and these are people that are sort of the work release programs we're going to talk about later where they leave the prison to go work for like a private industry and a lot of times it might be like.
  • labor unions — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Thanks to labor unions. the south has long been considered kind of anti-worker, so labor unions never really got a foothold here. So, it took a little longer for convict leasing to.
  • civil disobedience — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    He was on a chain gang in North Carolina, after being arrested for civil disobedience, and a series of articles, that he wrote came out in the New York Post.
  • war on drugs — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. Nixon's war on drugs, Reagan's tough on crime thing, Clinton trying to wrestle the tough on crime I guess moniker away from the GOP. And I guess it was part of the Democrats platform.
  • authoritarian crackdown — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So, they have essentially established an authoritarian crackdown on gangs. and in 2015, their u murder rate was 103 people per 100,000 population, which means every year more than 1% of their population was murdered. So they.
  • homicide rate — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Don't have the same excuse for that level of rise in incarceration. Our homicide rate in 1955 was 4.5. In 2024, it was like five. It's remained relatively flat, give or take a…
  • drug possession — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Unless you expand crimes especially non-violent crimes like drug possession and really throw the book at people which is what happened during that time.
  • Live Free or Die — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    That prisoners in New Hampshire make their license plate and on the license plate it says live free or die.
  • wildfires — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So you go where they tell you to go. I know in California, you might end up fighting wildfires. And this is one of the highest paying jobs, as we'll see.
  • lead paint removal — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. And not only firefighting, disaster recovery sometimes, lead paint removal. I think there's around 5% of the incarcerated workforce, which is about 40,000 people work for private industry still,.
  • Fair Labor Standards Act — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Workers protections out the yin-yang here in the US. We have OSHA. We have the Fair Labor Standards Act. All of these are meant to protect workers physically from injury and…
  • Global Slavery Index — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    A there's a international anti-slavery nonprofit called WalkFree in Australia who produces what's called the Global Slavery Index. And the United States is one of 17 countries…
  • How crowds work — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Most random questions thanks to the random facts. and Kimberly sent in a great recommendation. How crowds work.
  • crowd crushes — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    We have on our Black Friday episode and a couple others. We've talked about crowd crushes.
  • standing in line — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah, I think maybe just crowds would be a pretty good idea, Kimberly. We could work in standing in line where that came from.
  • 1920s — Concept · 1 mention
  • Forced Labour Convention (1930) — Concept · 1 mention
  • OSHA — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Georgia — Place · Case study location · 8 mentions · first at
    Used as a key example of where convict leasing and post–Civil War leasing practices were early and especially deadly
  • Louisiana — Place · Case study location · 3 mentions · first at
    Used as an example of one of the worst offenders historically and today in incarceration rates and harsh prison labor conditions
  • Auburn Prison — Place · Historical model example · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as a leading example of the Auburn system where private businesses leased prison buildings and inmates — key historical model for prison labor
    Auburn prison in New York was one of the sort of leading examples that set the way forward for what was to become the norm where private businesses would lease prison buildings along.
  • Albama — Place · Historical revenue example · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced (misspelled) as state that derived a huge portion of revenue from convict leasing in the late 19th century — used as an example of the scale of the practice
    They would also, like corporations got in on this as well, like you said, the railroad. there was a company in Alabama called the Schllo Sllo Sheffield Steel and Iron Company.…
  • Alabama — Place · Setting · 5 mentions · first at
    Highlighted for its historical use of convict leasing and current prison labor practices.
    They would also, like corporations got in on this as well, like you said, the railroad. there was a company in Alabama called the Schllo Sllo Sheffield Steel and Iron Company.…
  • El Salvador — Place · Comparative data point · 1 mention · first at
    Used to compare international incarceration rates; mentioned as having higher incarceration than most countries due to anti-gang crackdowns
    About 600 of every 100,000 people in the US are incarcerated. that is a higher rate than any other country in the world except Cuba, Rwanda, and El Salvador. And Louisiana once again leads.
  • New York, New York — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in the historical context of prison labor models.
    Auburn prison in New York was one of the sort of leading examples that set the way forward for what was to become the norm where private businesses would lease prison buildings along.
  • California — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced in discussions about modern prison labor, including firefighting by inmates.
    No. No. like again, you're you're engaged in forced unpaid labor, so you go where they tell you to go. I know in California, you might end up fighting wildfires. And this is one of the highest paying jobs, as we'll see.
  • Singh — Place · Historical site referenced · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a facility built/opened in 1828 where Auburn prisoners were used — referenced as an example of early prison-built infrastructure
    Whatever deal. And that pro, provided a real model moving forward. I think Auburn, they the prisoners of Auburn ended up building Singh.
  • Mississippi — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of Parchman Farm and its historical prison labor practices.
    That there was no such thing as prison labor. They just kind of directed them to state-owned stuff. A really good example of this is a Parchman Farm in Mississippi, part of…
  • Auburn Prison — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Auburn prison in New York was one of the sort of leading examples that set the way forward for what was to become the norm where private businesses would lease prison buildings along.
  • Sing Sing — Place · 2 mentions
  • Utah — Place · 2 mentions
  • South Seas — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Us. Jerry's on leave right now. She's having a little RNR living it up in the South Seas, falling in love, spending a lot of time on the beach, writing people's names in the sand for money.
  • Jones Beach — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Coney Island — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Jefferson County, Alabama — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Railroad. there was a company in Alabama called the Schllo Sllo Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. in Jefferson County, Alabama. That's where their mines were. they had a 10%…
  • Sugarland, Tennessee — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Got from the state. And there was a sugar company the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugarland, Tennessee, which I guess is an appropriate place for it to be.
  • Parchman Farm — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Prison labor. They just kind of directed them to state-owned stuff. A really good example of this is a Parchman Farm in Mississippi, part of Parchman State Penitentiary. it's a…
  • Parchman State Penitentiary — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Them to state-owned stuff. A really good example of this is a Parchman Farm in Mississippi, part of Parchman State Penitentiary. it's a 20,000 acre farm where in the early 19s…
  • Tucker Farm — Place · 1 mention · first at
    And this wasn't a chain gang, but this was Tucker Farm in Arkansas where they found that the staff stripped prisoners naked at the prison hospital and put electric, shocks to their testicles and penis.
  • Stone Mountain — Place · 1 mention · first at
    In Georgia and you were building a state road, if you ran into a chunk of stone mountain that was popping up out of the ground where you wanted your road to go, well, you would…
  • Maricopa County, Arizona — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Although, if you lived in Maricopa County, Arizona in the 90s, they tried pretty hard. What was that guy's name? The sheriff there.
  • fast food restaurant — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Work camp that I was talking about. So they may work at a fat food fast food restaurant or may be like a work on the custodial staff at a well-known hotel chain.
  • airports — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Move through crowds. How do we manage to avoid bumping into each other at airports, stadiums, and other crowded places? A great one.
  • stadiums — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Move through crowds. How do we manage to avoid bumping into each other at airports, stadiums, and other crowded places? A great one.
  • Concord — Place · 1 mention

Media & podcasts

  • 12 Years a Slave — Media · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    Referenced as a film depiction of slavery and punishment used to illustrate historical cruelty and punishments under plantation owners
    Yeah, I mean I get it. I totally understand your reticence, but it's the way that plantation owners punished slaves is depicted throughout in really brutal honest fashion. And…
  • 13th — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced for its exploration of the loophole in the 13th Amendment allowing prison labor.
    That's a great one too. That's one of those like lifechanging, perspective changing, eyeopening type documentaries.
  • Django — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a film depicting the dynamics similar to the trustee system in prisons.
    That's kind of how I took it to kind of be like Yeah, I think you're probably right. chain gangs is something that you know you've seen in like movies and stuff.

Sponsors

  • Unicor — Sponsor · Modern federal prison industries example · 3 mentions · first at
    Named as the federal prison industries program (now UNICOR) created in 1934 — used to illustrate ongoing institutionalized prison labor within the federal system
    In 1934, the federal prison industries was created. It's now known as Unicor. And that is, still a big program. It employs people that are incarcerated in our federal system, not state prisons, again, and obviously not private prisons. Are.
  • Cooperative for Education — Company · Sponsor / Charity partner · 2 mentions · first at
    Episode sponsor/partner mentioned in the episode as part of a fundraising appeal for their RISE youth program
    Hey everybody, we are partnering up with the Cooperative for Education once again to help raise money for their RISE youth development program, which sends students to school in Guatemala. And.
  • Cooperative for Education — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Hey everybody, we are partnering up with the Cooperative for Education once again to help raise money for their RISE youth development program, which sends students to school in Guatemala. And they break the cycle of poverty through.

Full transcript with timestamps

Hey everybody, we are partnering up with the Cooperative for Education once again to help raise money for their RISE youth development program, which sends students to school in Guatemala. And they break the cycle of poverty through education.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us. Jerry's on leave right now. She's having a little RNR living it up in the South Seas, falling in love, spending a lot of time on the beach, writing people's names in the sand for money.

Wow. I I assume that's what she's doing. Oh, okay. Uh she might also just be in New York. It's one of the two,

right? Well, she could ride on a beach there. Jones Beach, I guess. So, sure. Coney Island.

Um, I guess we should stop all the joking around, the horsing around, Chuck, because this is a very serious episode. So, let's just end that now.

Yeah. I mean, what better to chat about over uh what's probably going to end up being the holiday season when this is released right

than uh hard labor at prisons in that history. Yeah. Because I mean, if you think about prison labor, it's bad enough as it is, but when you really start to get in the nuts and bolts of it and all the loopholes that are abused and all of the ways that prisoners are actually treated um in in exchange for the labor, it's it's even worse than you would think, it turns out.

Yeah, that's the good news, right? Uh yeah, and we'll get into the bad news for sure. But the thing that I was a little surprised about from the outside is that I would have thought that this was ancient like the Sumerianss doing stuff like this. And it turns out no. Uh Sumerians forward all the way into the Enlightenment period in Europe um just killed people. They hung you or they cut your hand off or they put you in the stocks. Maybe the stocks were a [clears throat] non-lethal form of punishment. Um and you would be ridiculed by your neighbors. Um, and then a guy named Thomas Moore wrote a book called Utopia. And he said, "There's a better way, people. There's an alternative to just killing people or cutting off their hands. What if we just put them to work? There's all sorts of benefits and upsides to this." And they said, "Well, what are they, Thomas Moore?" He said, "Let me tell you. I'm

glad you asked." Yeah. He basic I mean, and we'll see this over and over again. the, you know, the point has sort of always been um one, it can really three-fold. One, it can deter people from committing crime if they see somebody uh manual laboring.

Yeah. Um for probably no money or very little money these days, right? Uh the second is uh it can, you know, help rehabilitate that person and make them, you know, make them think about what they've done basically.

Yeah. Uh, and then the most obvious one is we can get them to do stuff for us for for nothing.

Yeah. Like we can really use that labor, especially if you put a bunch of people together and make them work for free. You can get a lot of stuff done. Uh, and that is a fairly new form of punishment. Um, it wasn't like immediately adopted after Thomas Moore wrote Utopia. He wrote it in the 16th century. uh even uh into the American Revolution and beyond uh there was not like a lot of government enforced punishment using prison labor. They were still crazy for the stocks. Um but there were things regarding the colonies that that did have to do with punishment that did result in your labor. And that would be if you got into trouble, say in England, you would be sentenced to transportation, either Australia or the United States, maybe even Canada if you were lucky. And I think 60,000 people um before the American Revolution while America was British colonies or were British colonies were sentenced to

transportation and showed up there and said, "Okay, what do you want me to do? I'm here to work."

Yeah. Well, I doubt if they said that. They were probably more told that, but uh they were known as the king's passengers. And they, you know, the colonies, you know, the people in the colonies, they weren't that wild about this. Um, they were worried about, you know, sending convicted criminals here, obviously, but most of these criminals were, um, you know, maybe not petty crimes, but pretty minor crimes, maybe theft, maybe vagrancy.

Uh, you know, the depending on what the laws were in whatever weird English village you lived, you might have committed a crime against one of those,

but they weren't sending over generally to the colonies. that is um like the worst of the worst,

right? Um if you were a plantation owner or if you were an employer uh that maybe was near a prison,

you were pretty psyched because that was very cheap uh meaning usually free labor uh compared to what it cost to, you know, trade in the enslaved uh African market.

Yeah. And we should say this early um indentured servitude is what they called it. um if it was aimed at white people exclusively in the colonies and then later on the early United States because if you um if the government intervened in a plantation owner enslaved person's um dynamic then and they removed the the enslaved person and put them in jail. The the poor white plantation owner was the one suffering there. He lost a laborer. So, it was left entirely to the plantation owners to basically keep their um slaves, punish their slaves essentially. And if you've ever have you ever seen 12 Years a Slave yet?

I I still shamefully cannot bring myself to see that movie. Yeah, I mean I get it. I totally understand your reticence, but it's the the way that plantation owners

punished slaves is depicted throughout in really brutal honest fashion. And it's it really drives home like what it was like. But you were left up to the guy that owned you legally doing out punishment based on his whim essentially. Uh the state would not intervene. It was just strictly up to white people or it was just strictly directed at white people at first.

Yeah. And you know what? That's the kind of movie that you got to watch that when it comes out and when it's in the the zeitgeist because that's never the movie when you're like, "What do I want to watch tonight?" Like several years later, it's just not going to happen. So,

uh I I need to just, you know, it's like a history lesson, so I need to watch it. And I've heard it's it's good like in an upsetting way, but like a well-made film.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. Everybody does an amazing job in it. Look at it like a a classic novel that you just have to read before you die. because I think that'd be a good approach to it.

You know what? When I start Moby Dick, finally, I'll watch 12 Years a Slave and I'll just I'll just do both at the same time.

I remember we talked about reading Moby Dick and I a couple of people wrote in. They're like, "Josh, do not waste your time. It is not worth reading." And I'm just going to go with their interpretation.

Oh, wow. I like Bartleby the Scriber, but I'm not sure I could take hundreds and hundreds of pages of that writing.

Yeah. Well, you know, our our mutual friend and friend of the show, Joey CR, is going to be very upset to hear that.

I'm sorry, Joey. Uh, so as far as these laborers, uh, 90% of the ones that were of those 60,000 that were sent to the states, which is I'm surprised it was, you know, 90%, they ended up kind of in two places, Maryland to Virginia,

um, probably working in, you know, industry like, you know, the industrial revolution type stuff or on the farms like tobacco farming obviously in Virginia.

And it was terrible work. Uh it was really brutal. Um you know, you're talking um maybe seven to 14 years is your sentence. Uh after your sentence, maybe you go back to England, maybe you have a shot at a free life in in the the new colonies. But um you know, just like getting out of prison these days, it's not a it's not an easy transition to make,

right? The ones that went back to England were like, I really miss the tasteless cuisine of home,

right? So back then, maybe. Sure. It's come a long way. So, one of the it has for sure. One of the other um things that had to evolve for prison labor to become an actual thing in the United States was prisons themselves. Like at the same time when they were still crazy about the stocks and indentured servitude, like you had jails. You didn't have prisons. And a jail was just basically where they kept you while you were awaiting trial or sentencing or something like that. And then you left the jail. The idea of going to a place to be held as a punishment in and of itself that is prisons that came later on after the American Revolution. I think it was the Quakers that came up with the idea of the penitentiary which was meant to give you quiet time to reflect on what terrible things you'd done and hopefully find God and come out of it a better person. And of course that's not how it how it worked out. But very quickly

after penitentiies became a thing, prison labor became a thing in really short order actually, like decades maybe.

Yeah. And I never thought about the root word penitent for penitentiaries. Uh it was sort of one of those things where I was today years old, you know.

Yeah. But I mean like you Yeah. It's just so easy to look right past it. It's its own thing.

Yeah, for sure. Uh but yeah, redemptive suffering is what they called it and that was a big part of uh being in prison and committing well not committing to hard labor like being committed to hard labor.

Uh Auburn prison in New York was one of the sort of leading examples that set the way forward for what was to become the norm uh where private businesses would lease prison buildings uh along with the prisoners and say, "Hey, we're just going to you've got this big building over here. You got lots of free labor. I'm going to bring my machinery into here.

And all of a sudden, the prison is part prison and part, you know, industrial plant for whatever company worked out whatever deal. And that pro, you know, provided a real model moving forward. I think Auburn, uh, they the prisoners of Auburn ended up building Singh.

Yeah. Yeah. They used them for that as well. Um, and that I think Singh opened in 1828. So this is going on like if prisons became a thing around the time of the American Revolution like this this like I said my point is proven this transition happened quickly.

Yeah. So by the time the Civil War came around like this it's called the northern model or the Auburn prison model where you can rent a building, rent the inmates and then set up shop there. That's what prison labor looked like or else you were working for the prison like say building other prisons. That's what the north was doing in the south. um they were still quite hung up on the idea of child slavery and owning a person and making them work until they died essentially. Um that that was something that was really ingrained in the culture and was not an easy thing to give up despite having lost the civil war and the 13th amendment being passed. And I know you've seen 13th the Ava Duivere documentary.

I have seen that. That's a great one too. That's one of those like lifechanging, perspective changing, eyeopening type documentaries.

Yeah. And even if I hadn't seen it, I would I would lie to your face right now.

Okay. And all of our listeners because there's no way you're going to double shame me.

Well, how about this? If you But I did see it. If you Well, if you are lying right now and you go look for it, do not be confused by the the documentary 13th that came out in 2025. Yeah. Which is about the Yeah. It's about the high pressure student exams in India.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure that's upsetting too. I'm sure. But the 13th Amendment is kind of what we're talking about here. And that not only abolished slavery, it abolished involuntary servitude of all kinds except one tiny provision, one little loophole

that said that if you're a convicted prisoner, you can be punished with slave labor. That's okay. And not only was it okay, it's enshrined in the Constitution that slave labor is legal in prisons.

Yeah. And you know, it's one of those things where it's hard to go back and imagine what the original framers intended, but I think most people agree that they didn't intend to just have, you know, enslavement in another name basically,

right? Whereas that's basically what happened for a long long time. Uh, you know, through that through the loophole. And, you know, you mentioned loopholes at the beginning. There's been a lot of loopholes over the year and anytime there's a loophole, somebody's going to exploit it like for greedy purposes.

Yeah. Free labor. I saw that the the reason that they included it in that amendment was because it was just such a no-brainer that you would want the ability to um to care to perform hard labor rather than just being punished in other ways that it was just an accepted thing that yeah, the loophole wasn't meant to be there. But in the south almost immediately they put that to use. Um we did an episode on the black codes back in January of 2022.

Yeah. Another very eye openening topic and those only lasted like a year or two and it was basically they criminalized being a free black person in the South.

Yeah. And so they could pick you up and they could arrest you with something. If you couldn't prove on the spot that say you had a job, you'd be arrested for vagrancy. You'd be taken to jail

and then you could be leased out as a slave to a local plantation owner doing the work you were doing before you were freed by the 13th amendment legally because of that loophole in the 13th amendment.

Yeah. Maybe to the same plantation where you were previously held, right? Yeah. A lot of times. Um that's a great episode. People should go back and listen to that, too.

Agreed. uh that you know the black codes went away with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment which is ratified in 1868 made equal rights uh and protections you know you know the law everywhere basically. Um but you know there were still ways to to make things happen basic especially in the south uh and especially as it turns out shamefully in Georgia. uh Georgia kind of led the way. In 1868, there was a provisional governor named Thomas Ruger and he leased uh like this is when the kind of the the the big um sort of prisoner trade started where they were leasing prisoners to different states kind of back and forth like hey you got a um you've got a farm in your state that needs uh like a crop tended to.

Well, let me lease you some prisoners from our state. And Georgia led the way uh early on with a 100 black prisoners uh being leased to uh William Fort of the Georgia and Alabama Railroad for 2500 bucks. Uh so 25 that's $25 a prisoner right?

Mhm. Uh but here's the thing. It's like, hey, um you're paying us to lease these prisoners to you. So now not only are we getting money for that, but now they're your responsibility. But your responsibility didn't really mean anything. like 16 of those prisoners died in the first year. And as you'll see, a story that, you know, is going to be repeated over and over. That was, you know, one of the biggest problems with all of this is like basic medical care was not provided and decent food and uh certainly like, you know, if somebody was was sick, they would just let them die basically,

right? And that that still happens today. I mean, not quite to that dramatic a degree, but when people die in custody in prison, there's not a lot that the prison's held accountable for. Um, so that's that's essentially a long-standing thing in the United States. People like prisoners dying even though they're they haven't been sentenced to death. So, I think you said that Georgia was making some pretty good money off of this starting in the 1860s. I read um this started to like other states were like, "Oh, that's a really good idea." By 1898, uh, convict leasing made up 73% of Alabama's state revenue.

Wow. Yeah. Which is really saying something. So, yeah, that's a staggering stat,

right? And then when reconstruction ended, the federal government just basically said, "Hey, we really just want to be on good terms with the southern elite again, so we're just going to leave you on your own." And withdrew from the South. Um, black people were in really terrible positions, really vulnerable positions. And at that time, prison labor stepped up. Incarceration stepped up, but prison labor also did it as well. And it was nothing compared to what you would the work you would be put to in the north. It was essentially slavery all over again. But again, this time the fed the feds the union wasn't going to come down and push anybody around at the end of a bayonet because this was all agreed upon in the the 13th amendment.

Yeah. Like up north if you were working prison labor, you might work an eight or nine hour day. In the south it was routinely 12 to 16 hours or or just however long they felt like you needed to work to get whatever job done,

right? Um there's anecdotal evidence at least like during uh the cotton harvest, like before the cotton harvest that the plantation owners would call up the sheriff and say, "Hey, why don't you make some more arrests? Uh we need some guys." And you know, a lot of these pretextual arrests were happening where it was just like, you know, they would just cook something up and arrest you and you have basically no rights and no no representation. So, uh, it's just a way to to to stock the the industry or the farm or the field with workers,

right? So, that was like plantation owners, local plantationers, like you said, you could have been a former slave who was arrested for something as stupid as mischief and put back to work on that same plantation essentially as a slave. They would also, like corporations got in on this as well, like you said, the railroad. Um, there was a company in Alabama called the Schllo Sllo Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. in Jefferson County, Alabama. That's where their mines were. Um they had a 10% death rate from the least convict labor that they got from the state. And there was a a sugar company um the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugarland, Tennessee, which I guess is an appropriate place for it to be.

Where else? A lot of people died when Texas leased them every single state prisoner it had in 1878 to help in the sugar fields. Uh people were dying of things like malaria. Uh like you said, they weren't they weren't given any kind of medical care at all. They were fed just the minimum amount to keep them alive and and um have energy enough to work. And this is just par for the course in in the South.

Yeah. I mean, I was bagging on Georgia because that's our home state or my home home state. But uh Louisiana has kind of from the beginning been one of certainly one of the worst offenders. uh in the 1870s and 80s uh they built the um New Orleans Pacific Railway with uh prison labor. About 140 people died and when you look at some of the incarceration rates uh and especially incarceration rates for uh black males in the United States today, Louisiana leads the way and also with some of the worst, you know, working conditions for forced labor. Mhm. That's another thing too that you mentioned, like they built the the railroad or um say they uh mined something that was turned into a product that people use. They don't think about I'm sure they didn't think like, "Oh, this railroad is really nice. The the prisoners who built it really did a good job right?"

That actually still carries on today. Like a lot of people don't realize that the stuff they're buying from a big box retailer was made somewhere down the line by a convict who was essentially leased out to that company to make those products. It still goes on today.

Yeah. I mean, the the chicken on your plate in your house might have come from a chicken farm

that had uh and you know, these are people that are uh sort of the work release programs we're going to talk about later where they leave the prison to go work for like a private industry and a lot of times it might be like

uh a chicken farm or they may work at a DMV call center or something like that. So, yeah, the person you talk to on the phone might be, you know, incarcerated.

Yeah, which is quite surprising. But Chuck, don't call it convict leasing, even though essentially it's so much the same thing that basically just the people's clothes changed.

That's what's going on today still. Supposedly in the 1930s, thanks to the New Deal, America became enlightened enough that we moved on past convict leasing. We didn't do that kind of stuff anymore. um not at least a private industry prison labor working for the prison or working for the state that was still a-okay.

Yeah. Uh I mean that was you know sort of 50 years before that is when um wage workers started complaining like prisoners obviously were complaining. Families might be complaining but they're not going to get very far. But once wage workers got unions involved,

they're like, "Hey, these, you know, we want these jobs, uh, we want to, you know, make a little bit of money ourselves."

Uh, and that's when it finally started to change a little bit. And I think eventually that led to that New Deal era law prohibiting interstate trade, uh, and prison-made products. But,

uh, in 1934, uh, the federal prison industries was created. It's now known as Unicor. And that is, you know, still a big program. It employs people that are incarcerated in our federal system, uh, not state prisons, again, uh, and obviously not private prisons. Are federal are any federal prisons private or is that just state?

I I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I know. We never did one on the private prison industry, did we?

No. And we really should be. That's on the list. They do this, too. And they they like the idea of them leasing out convicts for a for-profit prison is just mindboggling.

Yeah, for sure. Um but yeah the and with Unicor they're making things for the federal government like a lot of times uh you know military fatigues or um furniture stuff like that

right yeah and if you are a government agency you have to go to Unicor first to see if they have what you want then you order for them then so even still today like um companies complain like these guys it's unfair competition you know they have like unpaid labor making these products so they can sell it for whatever uh and the feds are basically like we can't hear you.

Should we take a break? I think so. Yeah. I mean, since the feds can't hear us.

Yeah. Right. We might as well. We might as well. All right. We'll be right back with more on prison labor.

Okay. So, um when we left off, like convict leasing was dead in the north. Um thanks to uh labor unions. Um the south has long been considered kind of anti-worker, so labor unions never really got a foothold here. So, it took a little longer for convict leasing to go away. But again, that doesn't mean that that there was no such thing as prison labor. They just kind of directed them to state-owned stuff. A really good example of this is a Parchman Farm in Mississippi, part of Parchman State Penitentiary. Uh it's a 20,000 acre farm where in the early 19s with a 90% black prison population, um prisoners were put to work on this farm.

Uh and one of the the reasons it got um so famous very quickly, um not in addition to just the scope of what was going on was they used a trustee system. They spelled it trusty as in trust s y where some of the worst most violent convicted felons that were prisoners there were given rifles and said you guys make sure this other 80% of your fellow prisoners do the work the way we want them to.

Yeah, that's a really interesting system. It really is. It seems risky, you know. Yeah, I wanted to look more I'm going to look more into that just for my own edification, but uh because I'm I'm curious that that dynamic is uh I don't know. It seems like it would create a really dodgy dynamic.

It would. But it also reminded me of um uh what is the Quinton Tarantino antibbellum slavery movie?

Django. Oh, uh yeah, Django. Remember he posed as a black slaver? Uhhuh. That's kind of how I took it to to kind of be like

Yeah, I think you're probably right. Um, chain gangs is something that you know you've uh seen in like movies and stuff like I was watching uh over other Where Thou again the other night.

I forgot they have that in there and uh there was you know chain gang scenes in that

and that was another type of uh sort of very public penal labor uh because they were put in place to build roads in the south in the 1920s. um you know, hard laboring all day again in the south out in the hot sun on that black top 10 to 15 hours a day. Uh but they were chained together. That's why they were called chain gangs. They were chained to their ankle. They stayed chained when they walked to the job. They stayed chained as they slept in their bunks that were close to one another. And again, the uh conditions were abysmal. Um terrible food. Uh they were beaten. They were tortured. Uh I think there was this one investigation.

And this wasn't a chain gang, but this was Tucker Farm in Arkansas where they found that the staff stripped uh prisoners naked at the prison hospital and uh put electric, you know, shocks to their uh testicles and penis.

Um women and prisoners uh were also subjected to work in the fields. Um not as much as men. They were, you know, the main labor force, but you know, women were put to work as well.

Um have you ever read a beloved Tony Morrison novel? I feel like I have to say yes.

You should read that, too, if you have. No, I haven't read that. It's very good. But there's a it's it's mindbogglingly good, actually. But it's um there's a a a few scenes about a chain gang and just what it would have been like. Um one of the main characters spent time on a chain gang. Um and I mean this is the you said it was brutal work and they were building roads. Like a good example of what chain gangs did, if you were building a road, you were using like human labor to build roads. This was before they had machinery,

right? Like road building machinery. It just didn't exist. So you used human beings to do this stuff. If you ran into, say, in Georgia and you were building a state road, if you ran into a a a chunk of stone mountain that was popping up out of the ground where you wanted your road to go, well, you would just set a bunch of convicts to work on it with sledgehammers and eventually they're going to wear it down to nothing if you give them long enough and work them hard enough. That's what people did on chain gangs. It's just what life was like. And again, you were working outside, so you weren't protected in any way, shape, or form. You were fed meagerly. Like, you were working as hard as anyone's ever worked in their life with uh like the minimum amount of nutrition, the minimum amount of rest. And um if you put all that together, especially if you think about it, accumulating, it's a brutal

brutal form of of prison labor. Yeah. And I mean, and there it was a racist framework. I know we're talking a lot about uh the racism involved. There were uh white labor camps and stuff like that, of course, too. Uh you know, sometimes they look like Paul Newman even.

Yeah. Uh but there was it was very much a racist framework wherein the threat of violence, the threat of torture, uh they felt was like a necessary component to, you know, quote unquote keeping guys in line.

Yeah. One of the other things too is there was a a certain amount of um uh usefulness to to letting these chain gangs get these horrible reputations because the reach of these things reached out beyond the inside of prisons into the outside world. Because if you were black and you were uh looking for a job and you could be arrested for not having a job and put onto a chain gang and you knew it, you would accept all sorts of terrible working conditions and low pay because at least that was better than being put on a chain gang, which if you didn't accept this job and got caught without a job, you would end up on a chain gang anyway. That's that was another really kind of insidious effect that they had.

Yeah. But, you know, it's not like this kind of thing was being, you know, there were no exposees being written in newspapers about chain gangs. You might drive by one and that's how you knew they existed. But little by little, uh, what went on with these chain gangs started to kind of leak out, uh, especially all over the south. Um, there a couple of famous examples. In 1932, there was a white uh, northern veteran who was a convict obviously named Robert Burns. He published a book called I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang. Uh exclamation point. That's why I read it that way. Uh that kind of got the word out a little bit. There was a movie adaptation.

Have you seen it? I haven't seen it. Have you? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's really Yeah. For some reason, I don't know where Yumi found out about it, but she was one of her um well-liked movies. I don't want to say it's one of her favorite, but she showed it to me and it is

What year was that? The the movie? Yeah. I I thought you were asking when I saw it. 1932, I believe, or 1935, something like that.

I don't watch a lot of uh movies from that era, but Chuck, you should. This one, it has 8.2 on IMDb, and that's a pretty pretty high rating. It's really good. It's a good movie. Uh well, in 1947, uh some more news leaked out when a black civil rights activist named uh Bayard Rustin, and I know we've talked about Bayard Rustin before.

Uh he was uh on a chain gang in North Carolina, um after being arrested for civil disobedience, and a series of articles, uh that he wrote came out in the New York Post.

Did you read those? Huh? I read some of I read like, you know, snippets from it just to sort of get an idea.

Oh, I was just kidding. I I don't know. I I I I looked into some of it, but I didn't like sit around and read them.

Yeah, I got you. Yeah. No, I was just trying to get you again. I got you. Uh but um the 50s and 60s, like because of the New York Post and because of that movie that Yumi Loves came out, um 50s and 60s is kind of when chain gangs basically went away. Although, uh you know, if you lived in Maricopa County, Arizona in the 90s, you know, they tried pretty hard. What was that guy's name? The sheriff there.

Joe Araio. Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but he made big news a lot. Uh, and he was one of the guys trying to push for the the reinstatement of the chain gangs.

Did not did not happen though because again, America lost its taste for chain gangs in the first half of the 20th century and the idea of bringing them back was not something that you would want to do. Um, even beyond that, not bringing back the chain gangs, prison labor got to be more and more um, or I should say less and less brutal. How about that? Because I I the other way I could have put it is more and more less brutal. And that just doesn't make sense.

Well, we took a late break, so uh, it wasn't too long ago, but uh, I feel like we should go ahead and get our second one under our belt.

Okay. All right. We'll be right back and talk about the modern era of mass incarceration.

All right. Uh we've covered mass incarceration quite a bit. Uh certainly in our prisons episode uh but here's a stat for you. Uh over a 36-year period from 1970 to 2008 the population of the United States rose by about 50% and the population of uh incarcerated prisoners uh rose by 700%.

That's crazy. So, we entered the mass incarceration era uh big time over about a 36-year period thanks to um well, thanks to a lot, but namely thanks to Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

Yeah. Nixon's war on drugs, Reagan's tough on crime thing, Clinton trying to wrestle the tough on crime um I guess moniker away from the GOP. And I guess it was part of the Democrats um platform every year until 2008 in and when it was quietly removed and it not coincidentally 2008 is the year that the peak incarceration happened like you said.

Yeah. Now we're about uh that went from 1.6 in 2008 to about 1.3 million incarcerated individuals in the United States now.

Yeah. Because America's become softer and gentler. Uh about 600 of every 100,000 people in the US are incarcerated. Uh that is a higher rate than any other country in the world except Cuba, Rwanda, and El Salvador. And Louisiana once again leads the way at a uh 1,000 per 100,000. And the rate of uh for black Americans is 900 per 100,000.

Can I talk about El Salvador for a second? Because I looked into their incredibly high incarceration rates.

Sure. Do they do prison labor? I didn't check that out, but I got this other stuff about it. How about that?

Sure. So, they uh have essentially established an authoritarian crackdown on gangs. Um, and in 2015, their their u murder rate was 103 people per 100,000 population, which means every year more than 1% of their population was murdered. So they cracked down on on gangs and just started throwing everybody in jail. And between 2015 and 2022, their murder rate went from 103 per 100,000 to 7.8 per 100,000, which you're like, okay, that's actually I mean, authoritarian crackdowns on gangs and prisons is not very tasteful, but at least they got results. Here in the United States, we don't have the same excuse for that level of um rise in incarceration. Our homicide rate in 1955 was 4.5. In 2024, it was like five. It's remained relatively flat, give or take a few a few points like here or there over the years. So, there's no reason why our prison population should have increased 700%. It just there's no reason for it.

Yeah. Unless you expand crimes uh especially non-violent crimes like drug possession and really throw the book at people which is what happened during that time.

Right. Exactly. Uh as far as prison labor goes, most of the people in state and federal federal prison these days do some kind of prison labor. Uh I think out of the 1.3 millionish, it's about 800,000 as of a few years ago. Uh the ones who don't are probably either uh too old or have some sort of disability or health problem that won't allow them to. Um about 80% of those workers are working for the prison. So you know you when you work in the cafeteria or you work in the laundry or something like that. Uh that's about 80% of it.

And most of the rest are kind of what we were talking about earlier. Um governmentr run operations. Um, maybe you do laundry for uh a public hospital, maybe work in that DMV call center. Um, about 2% of total prison workers in the federal prison system uh work for Unicor still. Uh, and I was curious about the the whole license plate thing, you know, oh yeah,

sort of trope. But, uh, most of that doesn't happen at prisons anymore because it's just cheaper to

have, you know, robot machinery do that kind of thing. Um, but it it's still a thing in some states and uh I know Utah is one of them. It's called the UCI operation and they call themselves plate busters. Uh, and they make them all. Even the specialty like ski Utah ski Utah plates

and the Olympic plates and stuff like that. They're making them all still. I saw that um there's like a long-standing kind of jokey observation that prisoners in New Hampshire make their license plate and on the license plate it says live free or die.

Right. And that's actually true. And they still do today at the state prison in conquered. The prisoners in New Hampshire make those license plates.

Yeah, I imagine making those and making ski Utah plates or I don't know. Adds a little salt to the to the situation, you know.

For sure. I like that that saying. A little salt to the situation. Well, I didn't want to say wound. That's No one likes that word.

Um, no. It's not a very pleasant word. Uh, some of these prisoners do dangerous work, too, though. You know, it's not all just like sort of hourly easy stuff.

No. No. I mean, like again, you're you're engaged in forced unpaid labor, so you go where they tell you to go. I know in California, you might end up fighting wildfires. And this is one of the highest paying jobs, as we'll see. It's you get $2 to5 a day plus $1 an hour when you're actively fighting wildfires in California. That's something they can make you do if you're a prisoner.

Yeah. saving the uh saving the houses of the wealthy. Yeah. And but not always wealthy to be fair.

Yeah. No, but there are a lot of wealthy people in California to be sure. Yeah. And not only firefighting, disaster recovery sometimes, uh lead paint removal. Uh I think there's around 5% of the incarcerated workforce, which is about 40,000 people work for private industry still,

right? Uh and that a lot of times is like the work camp that I was talking about. So they may they may work at a fat food fast food restaurant or may be like a work on the custodial staff at a well-known hotel chain.

Yeah. And a lot of these bigger businesses have policies where they don't use least convict labor like this.

But they also sometimes can't do a thing about it. Like if their supplier part of the supply chain is that like like companies don't know who's painting the patio furniture that they're selling. Like they just don't know. and that the company painting the furniture might be using lease convict labor or they um their franchises can use lease convict labor and the corporate office can't do anything about it because they don't own those stores. So it still does happen even though large corporations in the US tend to have policies against that and in fact have policies that um that they put in place to hire felons like preferential hiring of felons. Um, still it washes out to where there's plenty of least convict labor today in private businesses.

Yeah. And you know, we've talked about money a little bit here and there, like, you know, no pay. Uh, and you know, sometimes there is pay, sometimes there isn't. There's no federal law that says that someone has to be paid for work if they're a prisoner,

right? Um, on the state level, it depends on the state, but, you know, a lot of them pay nothing at all. Um, I think the average pay for a prisoner in the US is 52 cents an hour and that was like 3 years ago. So, I doubt if it's gone up that much. Who knows? Maybe it's gone down.

Uh, almost always under a dollar an hour. Um, you may get like minimum wage if you work one of the really hazardous jobs in a pretty forwardthinking state. Um but then the prison can turn around and say, "Yeah, but we're going to take most of that paycheck to cover like room and board or maybe to um provide restitution to your victims if it was a financial thing."

Exactly. So, like even if you're off making federal minimum wage at KFC as, you know, as a prisoner, as part of your prison labor, you're you're ending up with pennies on the dollar per hour uh after they deduct all that stuff from you. So, that's why that average for all prison workers is 52 cents an hour because they deduct so many things. That's why it's essentially convict leasing. that person goes out, works, they get paid, and the prison says, "We're taking this x amount of of your pay um for our own use." That has to go into the private prison like financial, you know, success rate. Right.

Precisely. That private prisons are able to do that. They probably deduct way more. But the other problem with it too, uh, is that they're at the same time getting tax breaks for leasing out their convicts to use in the outside world. So, they're getting like fees and tax breaks. It's a quite a racket from what I can tell.

Yeah. While the basic needs a lot of times of these prisoners aren't even being met. Um, still some pretty bad uh conditions as far as medical treatment goes and food. Uh, I think Livia helped us with this. She did a great job. Uh but she found one woman named Carla Simmons who is an incarcerated uh in a woman's prison and she wrote last year and this is right here in Georgia that um prisoners aren't paid and she said the food is so bad that they people try to get work assignments where they can dig through the trash to eat the guards meals like the portions that they threw away.

Good God. In 2024. Yeah. One of the other things too is that um I mean people point to this and say like okay yes we agree that prison labor is in and of itself a good thing like Thomas um Thomas Moore was right like you can there is redemption in labor so we're not saying do away with it but it needs a lot of reforms these are the people who are like um well reform-minded about the whole thing there's basically no one saying we should do away with prison labor but they they say it should be uh the kind of labor that's going to help them get jobs on the outside to where they learn valuable skills. They should be paid fairly, federal minimum wage at least for the labor that they're doing. And they should also get protections that any worker gets in the United States.

This to me is mind-blowing. Uh we have workers protections out the yin-yang here in the US. We have OSHA. We have the Fair Labor Standards Act. All of these are meant to protect workers physically from injury and also protect them from being screwed over by their employers. And court after court after court has ruled that prison laborers do not count for these protections. They're not classified as employees because as I saw it put, the prison owns the prisoner's labor. The laborer doesn't own their own labor. So how can an employee be in that situation? They can't. Therefore, they don't get any of these protections.

Yeah. I mean, there was a lawsuit uh brought in Alabama in 2024 that was dismissed because they basically were like, "Oh, this isn't um forced labor. These are mandatory chores." Um so, it's just like depends on what you want to call it, I guess. Um in 2021, there was a there's a international anti-slavery nonprofit called WalkFree in Australia who produces what's called the Global Slavery Index. And the United States is uh one of 17 countries that um use state imposed forced labor uh along with China and Russia and some other places.

And the United States is one of the uh one of only six UN member states that hasn't ratified the force labor convention of 1930. Uh which we considered the Senate considered that in 1991 like hey maybe we should sign on to this thing. and they said, "No, it really really conflicts with uh with subcontracting these prisoners out to private companies." So, like, let's let's not foul that.

Yeah, we'll just we'll walk past that one. Yeah. Uh and like I think you mentioned Europe and the UN, there's uh in in Europe essentially the way that they treat um prison labor is what I was saying that in the US prison prison labor reform people are calling for. Um, and you mentioned Alabama in that lawsuit about um mandatory chores, not not prison labor.

The reason that lawsuit even came up is because Alabama, surprisingly, is one of seven states that in the last few years has passed in their state constitution um a ban on prison labor. You're you're not allowed to you can't force prisoners to work. They can, you can use prison labor, but you have to pay them and you can't coersse them with punishments,

right? Some of the punishments that prisoners face if they refuse to work, they might be transferred to a higher security prison, which is not what you want to happen to you. Their family visits may get cut. Um, there's all sorts of punishments that can be meed out legally except in these states under their constitution. But like you said, that lawsuit where they were like, "These aren't this isn't involuntary servitude. It's mandatory chores.

Yeah. There there's they don't have any teeth right now. Yeah. Tennessee was in there, too. Sort of surprising. In Nebraska.

Mhm. Uh here's, you know, finally some numbers for you. And uh I love it when they kind of put numbers like this, which is like, hey, if you actually spent this in the long run, it would be better for everybody,

right? I love those stats. And this is one of those. Um incarcerated workers uh saves prison uh saves prisons about$ 15 billion dollars a year. and produces another $2 billion in goods and services. And so the Edgeworth Economics um group did a a study, a costbenefit analysis last year, and found that hey, if they actually use that money to pay incarcerated workers like a an okay wage, like maybe even just minimum wage,

it would reduce the burden on families to send money, which they don't have a lot of money to begin with,

right? um maybe they could pay child support from prison uh and improve their earnings like once they get out. And so they they did the math and they found out um in the end every dollar spent on prisoners wages would add up to a societywide return of uh $2.40 to $3.16.

Man, that's pretty it's pretty good ROI just for paying prisoners. I know. Um, I can't think of any better way to end this one. Can you?

Uh, I got nothing else. I thought I thought I heard you dropped your mic even. No, no, it's still up.

Okay. Well, since Chuck said his mic's still good to go, I guess it's time for listener mail.

It's hard to drop the mic in a studio cuz you got to unscrew it. I know. I've got like a wind screen. Two things have to get unplugged and by that time everyone's left the room. You know,

they gave you a wind screen. I didn't get a wind screen. I got I bought my own. I brought this from home.

So, who is this from? This is from Kimberly. Uh, "Hey guys, thanks for keeping me company on long work trips, during chores, and throughout my day-to-day life. Uh, I feel like I'm listening to old friends, like a lot of people have said before, I appreciate how my worldview is challenged and enlightened when I listen to the show." Uh, my weekly trivia team also appreciates how I can answer some of the most random questions thanks to the random facts. Uh, and uh, Kimberly sent in a a great recommendation. How crowds work.

I'd love to know more about how humans move through crowds. How do we manage to avoid bumping into each other at airports, stadiums, and other crowded places? A great one.

How do we avoid crowd crutches? I feel like we touched on that. No, we have on our Black Friday episode and a couple others. We've talked about crowd crushes.

Yeah, I think uh maybe just crowds would be a pretty good idea, Kimberly. We could work in standing in line where that came from.

Is that a Is that Do people do that? I don't stand in lines. Oh, a lot of people do surprisingly and wait for their turn, I think is what they call it, their turn.

I'm a line jumper. You know, people love those guys. Yeah. Right. All the the key is to just not pay attention to anyone behind you. Pretend like they're not there. I had a guy at the airport recently and you know boarding an airplane in the United States is just one of the worst things that can happen especially after I've seen how they do it in Australia which is to say civil and friendly.

And this guy was standing behind us me and Emily and Ruby like in the line really to get like to get on not the crowd that

goes before they announce it. and he just like all of a sudden just walked right around us and jumped in front or tried to

and I like sort of just bodied up a little bit. Yeah. And you want to see an an insensed human is I don't know if it's all 10-year-olds but my daughter would someone tries to jump a line. She was she was furious. Did you see that guy tried to break in line? There's like almost no worse offense at that age.

Was Was he in earshot? Did he hear her say that? Well, I don't think so, but I repeated it loudly so Emily could hear it. I said, "Did you hear what Ruby just said? She's calling out this guy behind us."

Man, why would you do that? I don't know. It's just I don't know. I don't know, Josh. I mean, I get the the the drive to get on board as fast as possible to get some overhead space so they don't check your carry-on bag because that's all you have. And you don't want to stand around waiting for it because you got to get out of the airport as soon as possible, but you still don't walk around people that you're in line behind.

I know. And we were in that sort of, you know, uh, they do zones now. I think we were zone one or two, so it wasn't like we were at the back of the plane and it was going to be dog eat dog for that space.

Yeah. Maybe he just could not wait to get some pretzels. The mustard. Anyways, sorry. Rant over.

Uh, was that the end of uh Kimberly's email too? Yeah. Great idea, Kimberly. I think we will do one on crowds eventually, and we will try like heck to remember to credit you with the idea because it was 100% yours.

That's right. If you want to be like Kimberly and give us a great idea, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to stuffodcast.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Charles "Chuck" Bryant (Host), Jerry (surname not stated) (Guest), Kimberly (surname not stated) (Guest).

What is "The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

The focus is on the history and implications of prison labor, highlighting its brutal realities and the systemic issues surrounding it. Additional context includes a partnership with the Cooperative for Education to support educational programs in Guatemala, showcasing the positive impact of community contributions.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

136 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Convict leasing, 10th Amendment, Stuff You Should Know, Georgia, Thomas Moore, Thomas Moore. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Brutal History of Prison Labor | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 52 min; the transcript is about 9,728 words in 174 timestamped sections.

More from Stuff You Should Know

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 10, 2026.