As explained by historian William Cohen, “the main purpose of the codes was to control the freedmen, and the question of how to handle convicted black law breakers was very much at the center of the control issue.”13 Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws—which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks—and eight of those states enacted convict laws allowing for the hiring-out of people in county prisons to plantation owners and private companies. People trapped in this system were forced to work for little or no pay.
