Author ORCID Identifier:
Date of Graduation
7-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
History
Advisor/Mentor
Whayne, Jeannie
Committee Member
Pierce, Michael
Second Committee Member
Williams, Patrick
Keywords
African American Studies; Arkansas; Carceral Studies; Crime and Punishment; Penitentiaries; Prisons
Abstract
From its inception, the Arkansas's penitentiary system relied on unpaid inmate labor for state and private profit. Inmates built roads, railroads, and infrastructure that fueled Arkansas's New South economy; they even built the very prisons in which they were incarcerated. Yet high costs and corruption led the state to lease convicts to private lessees in 1873, who worked them in outside labor camps at no expense to the state. Driven by newly criminalized behaviors and harsher sentences, the state struggled to contend with a ballooning prison population while lessees grew incredibly wealthy on their labor. Soon the state purchased Cummins plantation in 1902 and—after leasing ended in 1913—Tucker farm in 1916, both built almost entirely by inmates. Over subsequent decades, the system diversified into farming, manufacturing, and contracted labor, becoming profitable while conditions for inmates remained largely unchanged since Reconstruction. At the same time, the system was also plagued by scandal—from exposés on brutal tortures at the hands of lessees to the brutality of the mining camps at Coal Hill to the infamous “Tucker Telephone”—which fueled public outrage. Arkansans were especially incensed over leasing’s competition with free labor. This resistance toppled political figures, including the state’s governor, and eventually ended convict leasing, though state-run prison farms brought little real reform. In the 1920s, Laura Conner, the first woman appointed to a new penitentiary board charged with overseeing the state’s prisons, investigated conditions and pushed for reform but resigned after facing political resistance from political elites. Meanwhile, Mary Dewees helped found the Arkansas State Farm for Women, instilling inmates with domestic and "feminine" skills based on contemporary reform ideology. National scrutiny persisted into the 1960s as Governor Winthrop Rockefeller appointed reformer and renowned penologist Tom Murton to supervise the state’s prisons and then fired him after Murton publicized his discovery of suspected inmate gravesites at Cummins. His successor, Robert Sarver, supported an inmate-led lawsuit that resulted in a landmark ruling: Arkansas's entire prison system was declared unconstitutional, violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments simply by its conditions of confinement. The first of its kind in the country, the Holt v. Sarver decision opened the door for drastic reforms across the 1970s and beyond.
Citation
Smith, R. A. (2026). Punishment for Profit: Labor, Activism, and Reform in the Arkansas Penitentiary System, 1843-1970. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/6365
