Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit tells the story of William Freeman, an African American resident of Auburn, NY, who was accused of stealing a horse and incarcerated at the penitentiary there, where he resisted the uncompensated (forced) labor at the prison and suffered the disciplinary cruelties of "the Auburn model". After his release from Auburn, the injured Freeman continued to press his case that his labor was stolen, but he finds little sympathy and ultimately lashes out in violence directed at the local community. The book's subject anticipates today's debate over the 13th amendment's incarceration clause, "convict leasing", racial double-standards in the criminal justice system, and the ways that incarceration can escalate (rather than deter) violent crime.