WordNet
n. camp for trustworthy prisoners employed in government projects [syn: work camp, prison camp]
Wikipedia
A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are put to economical use in a farm (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap. 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.
Depending on the prevailing doctrine on judicial punishment and penal harm, psychological and/or physical cruelty may be a conscious intent of prison farm labor, and not just an inevitable but unintended collateral effect.
Prison Farm is a 1938 American crime film directed by Louis King and written by Eddie Welch, Robert Yost and Stuart Anthony. The film stars Shirley Ross, Lloyd Nolan, John Howard, J. Carrol Naish, Porter Hall, Esther Dale and May Boley. The film was released on June 17, 1938, by Paramount Pictures.
Usage examples of "prison farm".
The judge was unamused and Carl got four years at Cummins State Prison Farm down by Pine Bluff.
After that, the little bitch would go to her prison farm, and then&hellip.
They all lived in a charming cottage, and there were lovely grounds around the prison farm.
No one-to-five with time off for good behavior at a minimum-security prison farm here.
It was truly remarkable to see rain falling on adjacent farms, and none falling on the prison farm at all.
The result was that I was happiest sweating my guts out in that damned quarry which had provided the stone to build the prison or labouring on the prison farm.
Charmaine was looking at him as if she liked what she saw and for the first time in a long time he was glad of the hard work at the ranch, and on the prison farm, which had honed his body down to almost zero fat and one hundred percent muscle.
Some old pieces of song he'd learned on the prison farm or in the War afterward.
In all his rages, six months on the prison farm, he had never planned to kill her.
Maybe we can figure out how to have the both of them shipped off to the state prison farm, or even better, to a penal colony off the coast of South America.
After supper and a full workday on the prison farm, the boys were locked up for 14 hours.
Cecil and his battalion have bivouacked out at the old federal prison farm, just south of Interstate Twenty.