Convict Lease Deaths Go Unprosecuted Across the Deep South

Throughout the 1880s, deaths of leased convicts — overwhelmingly Black — are recorded in state ledgers but never result in prosecution of lessees or guards. The legal framework treating convict deaths as contract disputes rather than homicides insulates the system from accountability. State inspectors who document abuse are transferred or ignored. The impunity entrenches the system and attracts further investment from Alabama coal and Georgia turpentine industries.