SMASHING THE LEASE SYSTEM IN ARKANSAS
When Governor Donaghey of Arkansas just before Christmas turned loose 360 convicts as one step in his effort to break up the system of hiring out prisoners to private contractors, nearly every editor in the country found space for the story. But when, last month, T. J. Robinson, the new governor, signed a bill which finally abolished the lease system and established in its place a state farm where prisoners are henceforth to be worked, the news was not so picturesque and only a few papers outside of the state of Arkansas thought it important enough to even publish the fact.
The new law brings to an end one of the most spectacular campaigns ever waged against the lease system.[[1]] “The penitentiary was not designed for a revengeful hell,” ex-Governor Donaghey said the day he pardoned 360 of the state’s convicts. This extreme measure was taken as the last means, before his retirement, of rousing the people of Arkansas to immediate action. By hiring out to contractors persons whom it is the state’s duty to protect and reform, declared the former executive, the state was in a way giving its sanction to cruelty and exploitation.
[1]. See The Survey for Dec. 28, 1912, page 383; also Jan. 4, 1913, page 410.
The new law replaces the former Board of Penitentiary Commissioners, which consisted of a number of state officials who had heavy duties in other directions, with a new Board of Penitentiary and Reform School Commissioners. This board has only three members and the law stipulates that two of these shall be experienced farmers. They are to give their entire time to their new duties.
The law declares that this commission “shall not hire out or lease or permit any person to hire out or lease any of the convicts of this state to any person or persons whomsoever.” Instead, it shall “use and work” all convicts on a state farm, which it is authorized to purchase. A farm of 8,000 acres is now being used for the purpose, and it is said that all of the prison population can be profitably employed there the year round.
Several reasons led to the selection of farm work for prisoners. One was that there is less competition with free labor in farm work than in other lines of production. Another was that it gives the men a great deal of healthful outdoor exercise. A third was that it will enable many of the men after release to take up work from which there is less chance that their prison records will exclude them than would be the case in many of the trades ordinarily followed in prison factories.