[Gozer]

http://rethinkamerica.net/2010/06/23...incarceration/

When slavery was banned in 1865, there was a big shortage of cheap labor for the Reconstruction, so in 1868 they came up with a plan where you could stop by the prison and lease inmates for $1 to $4 per month ($13 to $55 per month in 2009 dollars), compared to a slave which cost $30,000 to $40,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars and work them as hard as you liked; until they either died from exhaustion, committed suicide, or cut off their own hands/feet in order to be sent back to the prison as defective.

Customers loved it- they were even cheaper than slaves and required less upkeep, since as the saying went “one dies, get another.” This predictably caused an explosion in the prison population (tenfold in Georgia for example), and an increase in percentage of black inmates from 33% to 60% in the South. This practice went on until 1928 when Alabama finally let it end.

It's not a new phenomenon.