““Even when the 13th Amendment was passed to abolish slavery with an exception of servitude as a penalty for criminal conviction, the introduction of convict lease system meant that slavery would be continued in practice, but advantageously without having to render the American Southern States in the same position of outright responsibility as that which America owes to the victims of chattel slavery, provided the exploitation of leased convicts would be based on the terms of crime not humanity. Unequal to chattel slavery in some cases, the exploitation of leased convicts often went extreme because private corporations and individuals that rented them wouldn't have to suffer losses if they worked the convicts to death.””
