Chain Gangs, the 8th Amendment, and Racial Justice in America

Introduction

Going by history, chain gangs in America were mostly used as tools for humiliating, controlling, and terrorizing African Americans. The chain gang reappeared in 1995 as a form of punishment in Alabama prisons, reviving one of the most shameful and powerful symbols of America's legacy of institutionalized ethnic subjugation and racial prejudice. The 8th Amendment prohibits all punishments that are inconsistent with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing civilization. Slavery was not abolished immediately upon implementation of the 13th Amendment.

Despite constitutional provisions for the total prohibition of slavery, the remnants of slavery could still be found in several economic, political, and social contexts. Under the guise of criminal justice, slavery was almost unashamedly reimplemented. Before the 13th Amendment took effect, repressive labor practices were introduced into Southern prisons by Southerners. These practices included chain gangs, penal plantations, and peonage laws — all aimed at circumventing the amendment's protections. Legal practitioners and activists recognized these lingering signs of slavery and worked to eliminate every form of it, even those termed punishment for offenses.

The adoption of chain gangs encourages a form of punishment that is cruel, unusually dehumanizing, and humiliating to those subjected to it. Chain gangs are a vivid example: they evoke countless horrifying racial injustices, ranging from forced labor to slave ships. Since chain gangs are barbaric in nature and application, they can no longer be accepted in a legal system as a legitimate means of administering justice. The standard of decency demanded by the 8th Amendment cannot be satisfied by the oppressive form of punishment that chain gangs represent.

The first state to ratify the 13th Amendment was Illinois, in early 1865, upon President Lincoln's insistence. The Amendment reads in relevant part: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." It served as the final milestone in the legal struggle for liberation (Gutierrez, 2013).

Throughout American history, those in power at every era have sought to control groups they perceived as threats or wished to dominate for economic or political gain. Different methods have been employed in pursuit of this control — including marginalizing groups economically, controlling their thoughts through propaganda, placing them under the authority of the law to isolate them partially or totally, and, in some extreme cases, exterminating them (Sheldon, n.d.).

In America, such forms of control have been directed at Native Americans, labor agitators, African slaves, and many others. It can be established that, from the beginning, using prisoners as sources of cheap labor has always been part of the capitalist system, where slaves were exploited as capitalists saw fit to increase profits — employing them, whether slaves, inmates, or immigrant laborers, to carry out inhumane tasks cheaply. Indeed, nations have for centuries taken undue advantage of prisoners for various purposes and used them as slaves (Sheldon, n.d.).

Despite popular demands from civil rights activists calling for the closure of the Tent City Jail in Maricopa County, Arizona, County Sheriff Joe Arpaio continued with plans to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of his detention compound. A protest by hundreds of demonstrators on July 17, comprising people from across the country who gathered at the sheriff's headquarters under the leadership of the civil rights organization Netroots Nation — carrying several anti-Arpaio symbols — forced a lockdown of the sheriff's downtown facilities. The protesters demanded the immediate closure of Tent City, which they described as an anti-human laboratory and an outdoor death trap. Statements made at a convention by United States officials gave the protesters additional courage to proceed with their demonstration (Meares, 1997, 2015).

The first three decades of the 20th century saw the proliferation of dozens of predominantly Black county chain gangs across North Carolina. The camps were established primarily to construct county roads, driven by the efforts of the North Carolina Good Roads Association (NCGRA), which sought to build a reliable road system to improve the state's economic prospects. As a self-proclaimed progressive non-governmental organization, the NCGRA promoted dependence on chain gang labor as a form of modernization that would generate profits for the state while ostensibly improving conditions for prisoners (Thompson, 2010).

While prisoners built the roads that positioned North Carolina at the forefront of economic growth in the South, rather than benefiting the inmates, the chain gangs remained sites of abuse and degradation. Chain gang prisoners frequently resisted the appalling conditions they were forced to endure, and relied largely on their relationship with the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare (SBC) — a state agency responsible for inspecting all penal institutions and recommending improvements (Thompson, 2010).

With the assistance of the SBC, prisoners agitated for inquiries into camp conditions and communicated their grievances to influential politicians and journalists who helped bring their struggles to public attention. Convicts shaped reform debates while facing the risk of severe punishments or possible execution for daring to resist the camps' brutality. In the 1930s, their demands for more humane treatment greatly influenced the state's efforts to address the violent conditions that had come to characterize county jails (Anderson & Dyson, 2000).

The Principles of Prison

In the view of Amnesty International, using chain gangs is an inhuman, cruel, and degrading way of treating inmates. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibits such treatment, and the U.S. Government ratified this prohibition on June 8, 1992. According to Article 10 of the ICCPR, all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. Article 33 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR) states that instruments of restraint, such as chains, handcuffs, straitjackets, and irons, shall never be used as a means of restraint as punishment (Amnesty International, 1996).

Furthermore, neither irons nor chains shall be employed as means of restraint. Under the SMR, Article 45(1) states that when inmates are being transported to or from an institution, they must be shielded from public view as much as possible, and adequate protections must be provided to guard them from public curiosity, insults, assaults, and any other form of humiliation (United Nations, 1955; Shelden, n.d.; Haley, 2013; UN General Assembly, 1996).

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) styled himself as America's toughest sheriff. He required inmates to enroll in chain gangs and perform various forms of community service. Under his regime, an inmate either enrolled or was confined with three other prisoners in an eight-by-twelve-foot cell for approximately 23 hours a day. All inmates in chain gangs were required to wear black-and-white striped uniforms so the community could identify them (Shelden, n.d.; Maricopa County, 2015).

He also forced inmates to wear pink underwear. Over 2,000 prisoners were required to live in tents outside the prison building — conditions that became punishing during summer, when average temperatures routinely exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The majority of more than 8,000 prisoners in his facility were pretrial detainees who had been unable to afford bail. Others were serving short-term sentences (Shelden, n.d.; Maricopa County, 2015).

One report described 15 women inmates padlocked by their ankles, five to each chain, marched out to a van that transported them to a work site — a county burial ground roughly half an hour from the city, in the heart of the desert. These women were burdened with the inhumane task of burying the bodies of impoverished people who had died on the streets or in medical facilities, with no family able to finance their burials (Maricopa County, 2015).

Another sheriff introduced chain gangs in Ohio. According to one report, chain gangs had also been brought back to Alabama as a form of roadside spectacle. This is reflected in the comment of one bystander who expressed enthusiasm at seeing prisoners in chains and suggested they should be made to pick cotton by the roadside (Shelden, n.d.). Activists frequently pointed to the intense summer heat, the mixed-gender chain gangs, and the pink underwear requirement as practices that are both dehumanizing and intolerable (Maricopa County, 2015).

Chain Gangs, Race, and the 8th Amendment

The adoption of chain gangs encourages a cruel, unusually dehumanizing, and humiliating form of punishment. They stand as evidence of countless horrifying racial injustices, ranging from forced labor to the horrors of slave ships. Since these barbaric systems have made use of chain gangs, they can no longer be accepted in a legal system as a means of administering justice. The standard of decency demanded by the 8th Amendment is violated by the oppressive form of punishment that chain gangs represent (Meares, 1997).

A prison can be defined as any correctional facility that detains individuals who have broken the law. It is necessary to uphold the basic human rights of every prisoner, even while detained. Though certain rights will necessarily be curtailed — such as freedom of movement — all other fundamental rights, including the provision of clothing, food, and medical care, must be upheld.

It is inhuman to confine any individual in a correctional facility and expose that person to unnecessary dangers. Rationing or withholding food is deeply unethical. Denying immediate access to quality healthcare is wrong and can result in avoidable death. The condition of prisons, particularly in developing countries, is often deplorable. Prisoners released from such facilities are frequently in poor physical health. Housing conditions are often unsanitary and inhumane. Confining human beings in filthy facilities without basic amenities such as functioning toilets is unethical. Although prisoners are expected to reflect on their conduct and change their behavior, the deeply unhealthy state of such prisons deprives them of the peace of mind necessary for genuine rehabilitation (Banks, 2004; Shaw, 1999).

Conclusion

Though the unique circumstances of imprisonment admittedly blur the line between involuntary servitude and slavery, the traditional distinction has remained clearly defined. Consistent with historical understandings of slavery in the punitive context, the chain gang is more oppressive and more substantive in its harm than mere involuntary servitude. These penal practices emerged after the Civil War, and the specific physical and psychological harms they imposed — coupled with their association with slavery — rendered them legally offensive. The difficult and inhumane conditions that inmates are forced to endure in the name of social service have no legal or constitutional sanction (Anderson & Dyson, 2000; Haley, 2013).

The choice to use chain gangs cannot be morally justified. The practice itself, as contemplated by states such as Alabama and Florida, may not appear overtly inhumane when judged solely by immediate physical effects on inmates. Nevertheless, the spectacle of prisoners in chains — the majority of whom are African American — engaged in forced public labor is so profoundly disturbing and disheartening from a social perspective that the reintroduction of chain gangs could only be justified by clear and compelling evidence of their capacity to curb violent crime. Unfortunately, no such evidence exists. The most that can be said is that chain gangs may have some deterrent effect, and that some people subscribe to that view. Such reasons, however, do not justify this practice, given the enormous negative impacts it produces for society. The individual's dignity is not the only thing at stake — both social and national dignity are also negatively affected.

Judge Reinhardt, in considering whether it is appropriate to characterize a punishment as degrading or dehumanizing, emphasized social dignity in his analysis. He argued that we oppose all forms of barbaric punishment and label them unusual and cruel not solely because of the physical pain they cause, but because we regard ourselves as a civilized society (Gorman, 1997).

The issue of unethical treatment in prisons can best be addressed through the lens of classical utilitarian theory. According to utilitarian theory, the overall moral worth of any action is determined by its usefulness in maximizing utility and minimizing harm. Morality in this context concerns the distinction between actions and intentions that may be either good or bad. There exists a broadly shared moral code across the world regarding how people ought to conduct themselves with respect to rights and wrongs. Murder is universally recognized as a crime, and deliberately injuring another person is universally condemned as wrong. The principles of utilitarian theory can be applied within correctional institutions to help inmates improve their behavior — for instance, through the principle that whenever one faces a choice, all consequences should be considered carefully before action is taken.

References

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Gutierrez, A. (2013). Sufferings peculiarly their own: The Thirteenth Amendment, in defense of incarcerated women's reproductive rights. 15 Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy.

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United Nations. (1955, August 30). Standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/treatmentprisoners.pdf

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Meares, T. L. (1997, July). Let's cut chain gangs loose. U.S. Catholic, p. 20.

Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. (2015, July 31). News release: Tents 22nd anniversary. Retrieved from http://www.mcso.org/MultiMedia/PressRelease/Tents22Anniversary.pdf