Trusty system (prison)

Although the population of the prison was around 1,900 inmates (two thirds of whom were black and in racially-segregated units), the law allowed only a maximum of 150 staff members to be hired to minimize operating costs.

Their job was to act as prison guards and control other inmates on a day-to-day basis in the residential camps or out on the field work crews.

[5] According to attorney Roy Haber, who handled the series of litigation cases brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the trusty system, inmates were whipped with leather straps for failing to pick their daily quota of cotton.

"[12] Its structure and abuses were detailed in Hope v. Pelzer in which a former inmate sued the prison superintendent for personal injury suffered under the trusty system.

[1] Other states using the trusty system, such as Arkansas,[13] Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas were also forced to abolish it under the Gates v. Collier rulings.

[12] However, some states, such as Texas,[14] still continued their use of trusty systems (known as "building tenders") until the 1980s, when Federal Judge William Wayne Justice, in Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp.