Yes, that was mainly in the postbellum after the civil war. Labor was derived from prisoners under the ideology that labor made you a better person, that idea however quickly eroded in the south. The south is known for using the convict lease system, which would "lend" out criminals in chain gangs to work for contractors doing various things like mining or working on railroads. It was really an extension of slavery, but one that was more a product of the times than a continued desire to keep blacks working. Once Fordism came to and end, penitentiaries became the norm both in the north and the south. The idea then became reforming the prisoner, though that ended in the 60s-70s, due to two phenomena: prison riots and serial killers. The new rationale has been of incapacitation, with no real desire to reform. This is obvious when you look at mass incarceration, though things are looking up with new ideas forming around human dignity that resemble those of Europe.