convict labor
Inmates performing tasks
Convict labor is work performed by prisoners, either within prison facilities or leased out to private businesses and government projects.
Historically, the practice was widespread in the American South after the Civil War, where it effectively perpetuated forced labor conditions for Black Americans through the convict lease system.
Today convict labor continues in various forms, from manufacturing goods to fighting wildfires, often for wages far below minimum wage.
The infrastructure was built using convict labor.
- chain gangsFettered convicts performing labor
- road gangLaborers maintaining public routes
- penal servitudeImprisonment with forced work
- gulagsSoviet penal colonies
- Botany BayNew South Wales inlet
prison-industrial complex · striped uniforms · penal colony · rock pile · convicts · exploitation · Angola · inmates · indentured servitude · Tasmania · prisoners · workhouses · license plates · prison reform · plantation · prison farm · penitentiary · bondage
- colonial enterprisesBritish East India Company, Dutch East India Company, East India Company, Hudson's Bay Company, chartered companies
- labor systemschattel slavery, debt bondage, indentured servitude, manorialism, peonage
- Penal Coloniespenal colony, penal settlement, transportees, Botany Bay, Norfolk Island
- penal historyprison, prisons, gaols, jails, penitentiaries
- Gulaggulag, prison camps, prison camp, work camp, work camps
- prison laborchain gang, prison industries, prison factories, prison farms, prison industry
convict laborvoluntary work
Unpaid charitable labor
at-will employment · self-employment · freelance work · entrepreneurship · gig work