Chain Gangs And The Prison Population

The United Congregation of Israel

A recent report outlining the outrageous number of young black men being incarcerated has prison activists warning that a new type of slavery has been introduced to modern society. With the resurgence of the previously abolished chain gang, the trail is easy to follow once you examine the amount of money states are spending to keep people locked up. The profits being made through cheap prison labor and the number of for-profit-prisons springing up throughout the country is chilling. State prison spending is close to $50 billion a year, in addition to the $5 billion spent by the federal government. Even progressive states like California are pushing mass incarcerations, locking up the misfortunate and the marginal. It’s most ironic that in the land of the so-called “free”, almost 2.5 million Americans are incarcerated. With less than 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States has almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and more than half of America’s prison population is behind bars for non-violent, petty crimes such as possession of marijuana, public intoxication,

street hustling, prostitution, loitering, bouncing checks, failure to produce identification, and even writing graffiti. And of course, African Americans have been hit particularly hard with one-ninth of black men, ages 20 – 34 in prison. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group. The United States has a higher incarceration rate than China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Burma. It’s no wonder she has earned the title of “The Incarceration Nation” in 2002. The reason for this phenomenon is that chain gangs and the prison population are deeply tied to America’s inhumane historical addiction to slavery; to which the middle class and the under class are being relegated, and African Americans are being returned. Before the abolition of slavery there was no real prison system in the United States. Punishment for crimes consisted of physical torture which is referred to as corporal or capital punishment. While the model prison in the United States was built in Auburn, New York in 1817, it wasn’t until the end of the Civil War that the prison system took hold. The 13th Amendment legally abolished slavery in 1865, freeing all African American slaves except those convicted of a crime. To restrict and criminalize legal activity for African Americans, a new set of laws called the Black Codes was created immediately. Simple things such as standing in an area of town or walking at night became the criminal acts of ‘loitering’ or ‘violating curfew’. Surprising whites for the first time, under the Black Codes the number of African Americans in prison exploded. As the number of African Americans entering prison continued to climb, a system of convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners in the South to buy prisoners to live on their property and work under their control. This institution resulted in the conversion of plantation slave quarters into prison cell units because of the revenue it generated for the states and the profits it generated for plantation owners. Simply a modern day variation of chattel slavery, convict leasing was just as violent and abusive as the institution of slavery. This is easily confirmed by the death rate for both systems which were abnormally high. For 35 years, convict leasing thrived before it began to phase out; succumbing to the pressure from the public outcry of abolitionists, labor unions and other community organizations. But it would not take long until yet another system of forced labor would take its place and that system was the Chain Gang.


The Chain Gang was the tool that Gentiles used to continue to terrorize, control and humiliate African Americans. The chain gangs originated as a part of a massive road development project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of prisoners, shackling five or more men together while they worked, ate, and slept. The use of chain gangs spread rapidly throughout the Southern U.S. For more than 55 years, African-American prisoners (and some white prisoners) in chain gangs were worked at gunpoint under whips and chains in a very public spectacle of chattel slavery and torture. In fact, it was such a road-side spectacle that eventually, the brutality and violence associated with chain gang labor in the United States gained worldwide attention. The chain gang was abolished in every state by the l950s; almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War.

Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to Black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave Black workers. In the late 1920’s South, an extensive prison system was developed to maintain the racial inequalities and to reestablish the economic relationship that slavery promoted. Obviously, if African Americans were free, there would be no economic relationship by which to relate so the system would have to continue to be one of involuntary or forced labor. Incarceration makes sense politically and economically because inmates provide cheap labor and large profits. As a result, no one should be surprised that prison chain gains are resurging nationally once again along side of the growing magnitude of the prison industrial complex; and this time around, women’s liberation has made the female chain gang a 21st century reality. North Queensland's Mayor of Bowen went on record with ABC News in 2006 saying he would be happy to have chain gangs on the highway cleaning up after litterbugs. Since corporate prisons are paid on a per-prisoner/per-day basis, they lobby hard for longer mandatory sentences to keep the profits self-generating. Prisons also provide jobs to rural and small town Americans who would otherwise be unemployed. Many cities, like San Francisco, along with eight other California counties, are implementing gang injunctions—curfews, anti-loitering, and anti-association laws that function very similar to The Black Codes for African Americans, Latino, and Asian youth. Using gang prevention as a cover, authorities are tracking young men into the prison system to become prison labor. While they are gone, with the neighborhood beginning to empty, their communities are targeted for redevelopment and gentrification; making sure that African Americans can no longer afford to return to the area. Today, in our present economic down-spiral, as the number of unemployed people increases, the number of people working actually increases because many of the unemployed will become prison laborers. As times become harder for the general population, it becomes dually hard for African Americans. The crime rate rises with the unemployment rate as more people resort to criminal activity to survive. This cycle becomes an automatic pool for free prison labor. Today, as losses are consuming corporate America much faster than she can


control, the face of corporate America and business as usual is rapidly changing. Taking advantage of our down-trodden condition in this economy, increasing the prison population is the ideal solution to the growing problem of keeping corporate America alive. The prison industrial complex has returned to its former status as a ‘private corporation’ that is precisely the same institution of chattel slavery that’s been resurrected due to their greed and lust for money by any means necessary. As the Prison Industrial Complex grows fat and lazy, inmates grow thinner. They are cutting corners on guard training, libraries, education centers and even food. This is supported by the fact that in Maricopa County, Arizona (for example), canine guard dogs eat $1.10 worth of food daily while inmates eat only 90 cents! In Florida, mushy bland broccoli stems accompanied by a greasy mystery meat served over undercooked rice is as good as it gets for inmates. It’s capitalism in its original form. http://www.urbanhabitat.org/rpe Race, Poverty & the Environment / Rooted in Slavery: Prison Labor Exploitation By Jaron Browne Jaron Browne is an organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). African American History (Reconstruction) Slavery in the Third Millennium, Part III – Human Bondage Revisited: The Return of the Chain Gang By Randall G. Shldon http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-‐01-‐04/mayor-‐wants-‐chain-‐gangs-‐to-‐clean-‐highways/772680 Mayor Wants Chain Gang to Clean Highways: Jan 4, 2006, 11:36 am

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Chain Gangs And The Prison Population