Prison farm

A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining as well as many others. All of this forced labor has been given the right from the thirteenth amendment in the United States, however other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap with the idea that they are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony. The agricultural goods produced by prison farms are generally used primarily to feed the prisoners themselves and other wards of the state (residents of orphanages, asylums, etc.), and secondarily, to be sold for whatever profit the state may be able to obtain. In addition to being forced to labor directly for the government on a prison farm or in a penal colony, inmates may be forced to do farm work for private enterprises by being farmed out through the practice of convict leasing to work on private agricultural lands or related industries (fishing, lumbering, etc.). The party purchasing their labor from the government generally does so at a steep discount from the cost of free labor. Louisiana State Penitentiary is the largest prison farm covering , and is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River. Canada has six large prison farms that are currently closed with the possibility of being reopened. For more information, see Convict Leasing Convict leasing was a system of penal labor that was primarily practiced in the Southern United States, and widely involved the use of African-American men which was prominently used after the American Civil War. In this system southern states leased prisoners to large plantations and private mines or railways. This system led to the states earning a profit, while the prisoners earned no pay and faced dangerous working conditions.