The Text

The legislature shall, by law, provide for the occupation and employment of prisoners sentenced to the several state prisons, penitentiaries, jails and reformatories in the state; and on and after the first day of January, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, no person in any such prison, penitentiary, jail or reformatory shall be required or allowed to work while under sentence thereto at any trade, industry or occupation wherein or whereby his work, or the product or profit of his work, shall be farmed out, contracted, given or sold to any person, firm, association, or corporation. This section shall not be construed to prevent the legislature from providing that convicts may work for, and that the products of their labor may be disposed of to, the state or any civil division thereof, or for or to any public institution owned or managed and controlled by the state, or any civil division thereof.