How Carceral Slavery Began

KPFA - Against the Grain

When and where did the practice of forcing incarcerated people to work without wages begin? Robin Bernstein reveals that prison-based slavery in the U.S. originated not in the South but in Auburn, New York. The Auburn System, under which incarcerated workers were prohibited from talking and were put in solitary confinement each night, spread across the country and beyond.

Robin Bernstein, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit University of Chicago Press, 2024

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