wayweird

How about that Sheriff Greg Barlett of Morgan County, Alabama? There’s a real entrepreneur for you. He pocketed $212,000 over the course of three years by feeding inmates in his jail skimpy portions, and it was all legal.

Seems he was able to profit from a Depression-era state law that allows sheriffs to keep any money they can make by feeding inmates for less than what they receive in state funding. Bartlett said he reported the profit as income on his tax returns. So you see it was all good - and above board.

He merely got nailed for starving the prisoners, not making a profit. The inmates were really lucky that Bartlett wasn’t going by laws from the Reconstruction Era. Back in those days private parties could lease prisoners from the state or county. Reminds me of Scarlett O’Hara’s lumber mill from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

Sure, Scarlett O’Hara is a fictional character, but her story is based on actual events. While writing the novel, Margaret Mitchell drew upon her encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War.

Anyway, Scarlett was not happy with the productivity of her lumber mill, so she hired a hard charging Irishman, Johnnie Gallegher, to replace the old manager. She also lowered her overhead by firing her workforce of ten freed blacks and replaced them with five leased convicts.

In the movie her new foreman confidently declares, “And if you just give Johnnie Gallegher a free hand you’ll get what you want out of them.”

He lived up to his promise. In his first week he accomplished more with those five convicts than the manager before had done with twice as many men. It turns out that a “free hand” meant selling most of their rations to line his pockets, but as far as Scarlett was concerned, increased production was all that mattered. After all, those “men had no business getting to be convicts. If they broke laws, and got caught, then they deserved what they got.”

At least Sheriff Bartlett’s inmates got pancakes with maple syrup, peanut butter sandwiches, and collard greens with turnips. All Johnnie Gallegher’s convicts got was a steady diet of black-eyed peas (without bacon or ham) and corn pone. They had to work in shackles and got regular beatings as well.

What a difference a century and a half makes. Nevertheless Barlett and Gallegher are kindred entrepreneurial spirits.

Meet Johnnie Gallagher at the 6:48 minute mark in the video clip below:

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