Archives for June 1908

A Burglar in the Making: The State of Georgia Leases Convicts to Private Persons and Corporations

Charles Edward Russell, A Burglar in the Making: The State of Georgia Leases Convicts to Private Persons and Corporations. Everybody’s Magazine, June 1908. Editor’s Note: “This terrible story of life in a Georgia convicts’ camp was related to Mr. Russell by a one-time criminal, now a man reformed and regenerated. For apparent reasons, the man’s identity must be carefully guarded here; but all the essentials of the narrative are exactly as recited. Many of them Mr. Russell has been able to verify from his own observations; the others can be accepted upon faith. They reveal clearly the shameful system by which the State of Georgia surrenders for profits the solemn duty of correcting her wrong-doers, and thereby insures day after day the perpetuation of evils that result in the murder of souls and the making of hardened and desperate criminals. There is a broader application of the momentous lesson of these facts than to the State of Georgia. In a way that you have never suspected, but is here made plain, the convicts’ camp in Georgia is but a symbol or type of conditions existing in every part of the United States.”

[Read more…]