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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2025
This article tracks the buildup of the South Carolina criminal legal system between 1867 and 1899 through three eras of its state penitentiary: from the politics of reform to convict leasing to the prison plantation. To track the delayed emergence and unusual trajectory of South Carolina’s criminal legal system, I argue that two approaches became entangled after the Civil War: On the one hand, a modern, nationalized politics of reform, and on the other, a decidedly Southern vision of crime and punishment haunted by the afterlife of slavery. It was the tension between—and variegated blending of—these two approaches that yielded a hybrid carceral project and set the trajectory for the state’s criminal legal system as it entered the twentieth century.
1 David Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery:” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1997); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, NY: The New Press, 2010).
2 Heather Schoenfeld, “The Delayed Emergence of Penal Modernism in Florida,” Punishment & Society 16, no. 3 (2014): 258–84; Henry Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017); Susanne Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South,” Studies in American Political Development 37 (2023): 181–98.
3 I intentionally use the term “prisoner” throughout this article. In my encounters with currently and formerly incarcerated students, many have said they prefer the term “prisoner,” which connotes an active condition of unjust domination and resistance in contrast to the more clinical and passive language of incarcerated person. While I use the term “enslaved people” in my other work since we have no way today of knowing what term they would use today, I have adopted the term “prisoner” since, at least from my own limited experience, many of those most directly affected by the system use that language. Hence, my departure from the current drift of scholarly convention.
4 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 127, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
5 Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
6 Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 14, 2024, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#slideshows/slideshow6/2.
7 Stuart Scheingold, The Politics of Law and Order: Street Crime and Public Policy (New York, NY: Longman, 1984); Katherine Beckett, Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997); Vesla Weaver, “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 21 (Fall 2007): 230–65.
8 Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America.
9 Vesla Weaver, “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 21 (Fall 2007): 230–65.
10 Heather Schoenfeld, Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration, The Chicago Series in Law and Society (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 19.
11 Loic Wacquant, “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration,” New Left Review 13 (2002): 41–60; Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007); Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
12 César Cuauhtèmoc Garía Hernández, Migrating to Prison (New York, NY: The New Press, 2019); Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Amy Lerman and Vesla Weaver, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Jonathan Simon, Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006).
13 Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014).
14 Kirstine Taylor, “Sunbelt Capitalism, Civil Rights, and the Development of Carceral Policy in North Carolina, 1954–1970,” Studies in American Political Development 32 (October 2018): 292–322.
15 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, 62.
16 Dan Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Book, 2016); Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2016); Hannah Walker, Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020).
17 Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
18 Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1965); Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767–1878 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1984); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988); Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery:” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice; W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1998); Wilbert Jenkins, Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998); Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Talitha LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America; Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
19 Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
20 Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept, eds., The Jail Is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration (New York, NY: Verso, 2024).
21 Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, 21.
22 Lisa Miller, The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008).
23 Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, 12.
24 Schoenfeld, Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration, 9.
25 Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, 87–127.
26 Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin, Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You’re Out in California, Studies in Crime and Public Policy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001).
27 Vanessa Barker, The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders, Studies in Crime and Public Policy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11.
28 Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992); Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (2000): 251–67; Robert Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
29 Paul Frymer, “Law and American Political Development,” Law & Social Inquiry 33, no. 3 (2008): 784.
30 Skowronek, Building a New American State; Karen Orren, Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Orren and Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development.
31 Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, 6.
32 Orren and Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development, 7.
33 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Spawn of Slavery: The Convict-Lease System in the South,” in Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective, ed. Michelle Inderbitzin, Kristin Bates, and Randy Gainey (New York, NY: SAGE Publications, 2020).
34 Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery:” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.
35 Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (New York, NY: Picador, 2010), 152.
36 Ibid, 7–8.
37 Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South.”
38 Andrew Fede, Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and the Atlantic World (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017), 173.
39 William Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1966); Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966); Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1970); John Lofton, Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1983); Richard Waterhouse, A New World Gentry: The Making of a Merchant and Planter Class in South Carolina, 1670–1770 (New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989); Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1995); Thomas Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996); Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Edward Rugemer, Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Sean Kim Butorac, From Slavery to Prisons: Race, Resistance, and the Laws of Slavery, 2022.
40 Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina.
41 On Southern authoritarianism, see: Robert Mickey, Paths Out of Dixie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
42 Schoenfeld, “The Delayed Emergence of Penal Modernism in Florida,” 260.
43 Ibid, 260–64.
44 Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, 8.
45 Schoenfeld, Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration, 15.
46 Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South,” 185.
47 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 30.
48 Butorac, From Slavery to Prisons: Race, Resistance, and the Laws of Slavery, 124.
49 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 23.
50 Ibid, 31–32.
51 The Statutes at Large of South Carolina: Containing the Acts from December, 1861, to December, 1866, vol. XIII (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1875), 246.
52 Ibid, 247.
53 Ibid.
54 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, Being the Regular Session of 1866 (Columbia, SC: F.G. DeFontaine, State Printer, 1866), 16.
55 Ibid, 17.
56 Ibid, 18.
57 Ibid, 17.
58 Ibid, 33.
59 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 28.
60 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, Being the Regular Session of 1866, 26.
61 On the experience of free Black people in urban centers see: Jenkins, Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston.
62 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 80, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
63 Ibid, 122–23.
64 Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South,” 194.
65 Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, 74–75.
66 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995).
67 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 118.
68 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 130, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
69 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 118.
70 Ibid, 36.
71 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” November 12, 1870, 257, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
72 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 128, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
73 Ibid, 117.
74 Ibid, 125.
75 Ibid, 117.
76 Ashley Rubin, The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829–1913 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
77 South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 124, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
78 Ibid, 87.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid, 124.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid, 125.
84 Ibid, 129.
85 “South Carolina Penitentiary,” January 14, 1868, 126, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1867/68, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
86 Ibid, 105.
87 Ibid, 106.
88 Ibid, 102.
89 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1869, 265, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1868/69, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
90 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” January 15, 1871, 266, ST 0774 (AD 652), Reel 3, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1868/69, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
91 Ibid, 267.
92 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” November 12, 1870, 244, ST 0773 (AD 651), Reel 2, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1869/70, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
93 Ibid, 254.
94 Ibid, 260.
95 Ibid.
96 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” February 14, 1871, 132–33, ST 0774 (AD 652), Reel 3, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1870/71, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
97 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” November 9, 1872, 153, ST 0775 (AD 653), Reel 4, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1871/72, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
98 Ibid, 115.
99 “Supplemental Report of the State Penitentiary,” November 9, 1872, 527, ST 0775 (AD 653), Reel 4, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1871/72, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
100 Ibid, 526.
101 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” December 21, 1874, 158, ST 0776 (AD 655), Reel 5, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1873/74, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
102 Journal of the Senate of the State of South Carolina for the Regular Session of 1873–74 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1874), 117.
103 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Special Session of 1873 and Regular Session of 1873–74 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1874), 601.
104 For example, Georgia had leased its entire prison population to the Georgia and Alabama Railroad as early as 1868. See: Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South,” 193.
105 Michael Fitzgerald, Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2007), 197.
106 “The Result in South Carolina,” The Atlantic, January 1878, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1878/01/the-result-in-south-carolina/308773/.
107 Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, xvi.
108 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1877, 85–86, ST 0777 (AD 656), Reel 6, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1876/77, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
109 Ibid, 89.
110 Ibid, 91.
111 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1877, 90, ST 0777 (AD 656), Reel 6, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1876/77, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
112 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” February 31, 1878, 475, ST 0778 (AD 658), Reel 7, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1877/78, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
113 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1876–77 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1877), 262–63.
114 Ibid, 318.
115 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” February 31, 1878, 475, ST 0778 (AD 658), Reel 7, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1877/78, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
116 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 291–295, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
117 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” February 31, 1878, 482, ST 0778 (AD 658), Reel 7, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1877/78, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
118 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 308, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
119 Ibid, 503.
120 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina for the Regular Session of 1878 (Calvo & Patton, State Printers, 1878), 19.
121 Kamerling, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America, 132.
122 Under these new laws, burglary was punishable by lifetime imprisonment and livestock theft punishable up to 10 years. In increasing the punishment for livestock theft, South Carolina joined other Southern states in passing “pig laws,” which established property crimes that were used to disproportionately target Black citizens. Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1877–78 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1878), 631–32.
123 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1877–78, 631. Although death penalty data is not available, we can make some inferences from incarceration rates. Over the next 10 years, even as the population grew, the number of prisoners sentenced for arson decreased by more than half, suggesting some convicted of arson were instead executed.
124 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1878–79 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1879), 727.
125 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1877–78.
126 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1878–79, 721.
127 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1877–78, 393.
128 Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, 381.
129 In contrast to their Black counterparts, white women never accounted for more than 1 percent of the prison population.
130 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 296, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
131 Ibid, 353.
132 “Report of the Superintendent of the Penitentiary, Together with Other Papers, In Regard to the Condition and Treatment of Convicts Employed on the Greenwood and Augusta Railroad,” 885–947, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
133 Ibid, 891
134 Ibid, 926–27.
135 Ibid, 890.
136 Ibid, 905.
137 Ibid, 891.
138 Ibid, 889.
139 Ibid, 925.
140 Ibid, 890.
141 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1886, 288, ST 0787 (AD 679), Reel 15, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1885/86, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
142 This dynamic tracks with the observation of scholars like Schwarz, who argue that convict leasing enabled states like Georgia to cultivate and exercise its punitive power without using its limited resources to invest in capacity and institution building. See: Schwarz, “‘The Spawn of Slavery’? Race, State Capacity, and the Development of Carceral Institutions in the Postbellum South.”
143 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 296–97, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
144 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1884, 643, ST 0784 (AD 676), Reel 13, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1883/84, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
145 This lack of discipline was further facilitated by the leasing system’s laws, which held that contractors were only liable to repay the state if they failed to “use due diligence” in preventing prisoners from escaping. This made it virtually impossible to enact penalties that might have incentivized contractors to improve surveillance. See: “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1880, 10, ST 0780 (AD 660), Reel 9, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1879/80, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
146 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1883, 642, ST 0783 (AD 675), Reel 12, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1882/83, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
147 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1882, 475, ST 0782 (AD 672), Reel 11, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1881/82, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
148 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 296, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
149 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1881, 76, ST 0780 (AD 658), Reel 9, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1880/81, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
150 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1882, 478, ST 0782 (AD 672), Reel 11, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1881/82, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
151 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1886, 286–87, ST 0786 (AD 679), Reel 15, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1885/86, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
152 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1887, 58, ST 0787 (AD 680), Reel 16, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1886/87, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
153 There is ample evidence, supplied across multiple penitentiary administrations, to support this inference and little reason to believe that officials concealed such widespread acts of violence to preserve their own positions or the reputation of the institution. Officials kept meticulous escape records, consistently noting when violence occurred against officials and even when they died from causes unrelated to the penitentiary itself.
154 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1877, 90–91, ST 0777 (AD 656), Reel 6, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1876/77, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
155 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1880, 10, ST 0780 (AD 660), Reel 9, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1879/80, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
156 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1877, 92, ST 0777 (AD 656), Reel 6, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1876/77, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
157 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1881–82 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1882), 952–53.
158 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 9–10, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
159 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1883, 635, ST 0783 (AD 675), Reel 12, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1882/83, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
160 Ibid.
161 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1888, 59, ST 0788 (AD 683), Reel 17, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1887/88, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
162 Leases were often for less than a year and some prisoners were leased multiple times in a year, causing the number of leases to exceed the total penitentiary population.
163 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1883, 64, ST 0783 (AD 675), Reel 12, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1882/83, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
164 Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, 596.
165 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1883–84 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1884), 815.
166 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1884–85 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1885), 538.
167 Ibid, 604.
168 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1883, 644, ST 0783 (AD 675), Reel 12, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1882/83, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
169 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1885–86 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1886), 74–75.
170 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1886, 278–79, ST 0786 (AD 679), Reel 15, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1885/86, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
171 Ibid, 281.
172 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1887, 436, ST 0787 (AD 680), Reel 16, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1886/87, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
173 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1887, 436, ST 0787 (AD 680), Reel 16, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1886/87, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
174 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1888–89 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1889), 320.
175 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 189–596 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1896), 199.
176 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1888–89, 320.
177 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1889, 45, ST 0789 (AD 684), Reel 18, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1888/89, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
178 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1893, 96, ST 0793 (AD 688), Reel 22, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1892/93, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
179 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1879, 297, ST 0779 (AD 659), Reel 8, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1878/79, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
180 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1895, 727, ST 0795 (AD 695), Reel 24, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1894/95, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
181 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1892, 404, ST 0792 (AD 687), Reel 21, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1891/92, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
182 Ibid, 401.
183 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1892, 401, ST 0792 (AD 687), Reel 21, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1891/92, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
184 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1895, 728, ST 0795 (AD 695), Reel 24, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1894/95, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
185 Ibid, 727.
186 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1888, 54, ST 0788 (AD 683), Reel 17, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1887/88, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
187 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1877–78, 453.
188 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1885–86, 125.
189 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1891–92 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1892), 22.
190 Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, Passed at the Regular Session of 1897–98 (Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, State Printers, 1898), 820.
191 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1897, 797, ST 0797 (AD 697), Reel 26, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1896/97, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
192 Ibid, 742.
193 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1891, 142, ST 0791 (AD 686), Reel 20, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1890/91, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
194 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1893, 94, ST 0793 (AD 688), Reel 22, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1892/93, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
195 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1899, 731, ST 0799 (AD 698), Reel 28, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1898/99, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
196 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1887, 436, ST 0787 (AD 680), Reel 16, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1886/87, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
197 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1898, 283, ST 0798 (AD 697), Reel 27, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1897/98, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
198 Ibid, 269.
199 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1889, 47, ST 0789 (AD 684), Reel 18, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1888/89, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
200 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1898, 283, ST 0798 (AD 697), Reel 27, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1897/98, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
201 Ibid, 269.
202 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1898, 269, ST 0798 (AD 697), Reel 27, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1897/98, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
203 “Report of the State Penitentiary,” October 31, 1899, 751, ST 0799 (AD 698), Reel 28, South Carolina reports and resolutions, 1868–1900, Regular Session 1898/99, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Archives and Publications Division, Columbia, SC.
204 Ibid, 789.
205 Seanna Adcox, “South Carolina’s Largest Dairy Will Be at Prison,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, November 10, 2010, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-south-carolinas-largest-dairy-will-be-at-prison-2010nov12-story.html.
206 “Prison Farm Expanding Into Largest Dairy Farm in South Carolina” (The South Carolina Radio Network, November 15, 2010), https://www.wrhi.com/2010/11/prison-farm-expanding-into-largest-dairy-in-sc-9590.
207 Brian Sparks, “South Carolina Women’s Prison Brings Vertical Farm to Inmates,” Greenhouse Grower, October 27, 2023, https://www.greenhousegrower.com/production/south-carolina-womens-prison-brings-vertical-farm-to-inmates/.
208 Incarceration Transparency, “South Carolina,” accessed April 8, 2024, https://www.incarcerationtransparency.org/southcarolina/#∼:text=Approximately%2016%2C000%20of%20those%20people,are%20held%20in%20local%20jails.&text=While%20the%20state%20is%2064,and%20jails%20are%2053%25%20Black.