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Chain gang

A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land.[1] The system was notably used in the convict era of Australia and in the Southern United States. By 1955 it had largely been phased out in the U.S., with Georgia among the last states to abandon the practice.[2] Clallam County, Washington, U.S. still refers to its inmate litter crew as the "Chain Gang." [3] North Carolina continued to use chain gangs into the 1970s.[4][5] Chain gangs were reintroduced by a few states during the "get tough on crime" 1990s: In 1995, Alabama was the first state to revive them. The experiment ended after about one year in all states except Arizona,[6] where in Maricopa County inmates can still volunteer for a chain gang to earn credit toward a high school diploma or avoid disciplinary lockdowns for rule infractions.[7]

For other uses, see Chain gang (disambiguation).

punishment

societal restitution for the cost of housing, feeding, and guarding the inmates. The money earned by work performed goes to offset prison expenses by providing a large workforce at no cost for government projects, and at minimal cost for private businesses

convict leasing

a way of perpetuating African-American servitude after the ended slavery outside of the context of punishment for a crime.[9]

Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

reducing inmates' idleness

to serve as a deterrent to crime

[10]

to satisfy the needs of politicians to appear "tough on crime"

to accomplish undesirable and difficult tasks

Various claims as to the purpose of chain gangs have been offered. These include:

Bucket brigade

Penal labour

Work song

I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang

Burns, Robert E. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! University of Georgia Press; Brown Thrasher Ed edition (October 1997; original copyright, late 1920s).

Childs, Dennis. Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Colvin, Mark. : Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth-Century America. Palgrave Macmillan (2000). ISBN 0-312-22128-2.

Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs

Curtin, Mary Ellen. Black Prisoners and Their World : Alabama, 1865–1900. University of Virginia Press (2000).

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books (1979).  0-394-72767-3.

ISBN

Lichtenstein, Alex. Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South. Verso (1995).  1-85984-086-8.

ISBN

Mancini, Matthew J. One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928. University of South Carolina Press (1996).  1-57003-083-9.

ISBN

Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. (1997). ISBN 0-684-83095-7.

Oshinsky, David M.

Movie of chain gang in Charleston, South Carolina; circa 1904

The Labour of Doing Time