Chain Gang - History

History

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

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

  • 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 convict leasing cost for private businesses
  • a way of perpetuating African-American servitude after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ended slavery.
  • reducing inmates' idleness
  • to serve as a deterrent to crime
  • to satisfy the needs of politicians to appear "tough on crime"

The use of chain gangs in the United States generally ended in 1955. Chain gangs experienced a resurgence when Alabama began to use them again in 1995.

Read more about this topic:  Chain Gang

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
    —Aristide Briand (1862–1932)

    “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
    —Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)