Cummins Unit: The Prison Farm That Changed American Law

The Cummins Unit sits on more than sixteen thousand acres of Arkansas Delta farmland in Lincoln County, southeast of Pine Bluff. It was established in nineteen oh two as an alternative to the convict-lease system, under which the state had rented prisoners to mines, railroads, and farms for as little as thirty-five cents per man per day. Convict leasing was made illegal in nineteen thirteen. The prison farm model that replaced it was not much better.

For most of the twentieth century, Cummins ran on what was called the trusty system. Instead of paid guards, the prison relied on a hierarchy of inmates, armed trustees, to supervise and discipline other prisoners. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens would later note that within this system, a trusty guard could murder another inmate with practical impunity. Men were beaten until their skin was bloody. They were stabbed at night in the dormitories, extorted for food and medical attention, and subjected to electrical shock devices. In January of nineteen sixty-eight, the skeletons of three prisoners were found buried on the farm.

The federal courts eventually intervened. In nineteen sixty-nine, a class-action lawsuit known as Holt versus Sarver, filed on behalf of Cummins inmates, argued that the totality of conditions at the prison violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In early nineteen seventy, Federal Judge J. Smith Henley agreed and declared the entire Arkansas prison system unconstitutional. It was the first time any federal court had issued such a ruling against a complete state prison system.

In April of nineteen sixty-nine, between the lawsuit's filing and the ruling, Johnny Cash came to Cummins. He performed a concert there with June Carter Cash, Carl Perkins, and the Statler Brothers, as part of his long campaign to draw attention to prison conditions. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, who had made prison reform central to his administration since nineteen sixty-six, used the concert and its publicity to accelerate changes at the farm.

The trusty system was not fully abolished until nineteen seventy-five. Cummins remains operational today, still the largest and oldest of Arkansas's prison farms. It still grows crops. It still holds the state's execution chamber.