Chain Gangs: From Australia's Iron Gangs to a 1990s Political Revival

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A chain gang was more than prisoners in leg irons. Each man's shackles were fastened to a long central chain that bound the group into one unit, forcing a synchronized gait known as the convict shuffle. Chains used in Georgia in the first half of the 20th century weighed up to 20 pounds. Iron rubbing on skin for hours caused shackle sores that became infected, and one man's stumble could pull down everyone attached to him. The system made labor slower and more dangerous, yet governments on more than one continent scaled it up.

This episode starts with the iron gangs of colonial Australia, a second tier of punishment for transported convicts who offended again, then moves to the American South after the Civil War, where wrecked infrastructure, empty treasuries, and the exception clause of the 13th Amendment turned convicts into a rentable workforce. Largely phased out in the United States by 1955, the chain gang returned in 1995 as a symbol of tough-on-crime politics, and it still surfaces in campaigns in Canada and the United Kingdom.

• Australian blacksmiths sealed leg irons with hot rivets. By 1828, under Governor Ralph Darling, a single gang could hold up to 60 men, and boys as young as 11 were included.
• Iron gangs built the Great North Road and the road over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst. Escapees, called bolters, became some of Australia's first bushrangers.
• Southern counties rented gangs to railroads, mines, and logging camps, giving sheriffs a financial reason to arrest people for offenses such as vagrancy.
• Alabama revived chain gangs in 1995. A Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit ended the practice within about a year, and prison commissioner Ron Jones was fired in 1996 after trying to extend it to women.
• When Brevard County, Florida, tried a pilot project in 2013, former convict Larry Lawton argued it would hurt tourism and ignore drug addiction, the real driver of local crime.