The old movies show convicts working at rock quarries, and I’ve seen chain gangs myself, years ago, clearing roadside weeds with hand scythes.
Do they do that any more? Was there some court decision that prevents it now?
Nowadays the call it “community service.”
Nowadays they call it “community service.”
absolutely, though chaingangs, which I think you were thinking of, went out of fashion for many years in the sixties. The definition of hard labor is a bit ambiguous, and in many states it can mean sewing mailbags. However, Alabama is leading the charge back into real ball busting chain gangs. A good link here
http://www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/labor-of-doing-time.html
As the above link shows, the practice has not died out completely. But it is not the norm. Just for pragmatic reasons, most states don’t have such programs. Basically they’re cost- and labor-intensive; that is, it takes a LOT of corrections officer manpower to oversee the labor, and as a result, economically it is a money loser. That’s a good enough reason for most state corrections systems to swear it off at present, as it’s already hideously expensive to incarcerate and tend to the ever-increasing prisoner population.
QtM, prison MD
Didn’t that sheriff in Arizona go back to chain gangs? You know the one (Maricopa county? something like that), he had them living in tents, wearing pink jumpers or some such.
Also, I thought the military prison Leavenworth still did hard labor. Anyone know? Don’t we have a former guest of Leavenworth here on the boards?
Maricopa County, Arizona Resident here.
Gestapo Joe’s Chain Gangs went away about as soon as the National news crews packed up.
His newest gimmick is Pink handcuffs, to go with the Pink underwear, and green balogna he serves inmates. This will keep other agencies from filching his handcuffs and save the state billions of dollars, annually. :rolleyes:
The Man’s a Media Whore, and a Joke in the Law Enforcement community.
It still is a phrase in sentencing in some areas.
North Carolina, by the way, sends work crews from minimum (and I believe medium) security prisons out to clean up roadside litter – driving along, one gets a sign “Prison Crew Ahead” followed shortly by a corrections officer carrying a rifle at the ready, a group of prisoners wearing orange vests carrying trash bags and picking up highway litter, and then another officer. A prisons bus (reminiscent of a schoolbus but painted a drab institutional gray) is on the shoulder either behind or in front of the work crew.