BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - One-and-a-half years after Alabama became the first state to bring back chain gangs, the practice has been banned here. Lawyers suing the state announced September 6 that U.S. magistrate Vanzetta Penn McPherson would approve a settlement that ends chaining inmates together for work details.

The state of Alabama stopped forming chain gangs May 21, and now it is blocked from bringing them back. Currently, prisoners are shackled individually.

Chain gangs were started in May 1995 by then corrections commissioner Ron Jones. Their use has been debated nationally, with other state and county administrations initiating plans for chaining prisoners together. The practice had formerly been common, particularly in the southern part of the United States. As awareness grew about the horrors meted out to the prisoners, opposition to chain gangs grew and they faded by the 1960s.

The return of the gangs never attained the popularity that government officials had hoped. The hype about striking a blow in the "war on crime" gave way to memory of the racist nature of chain gangs under the Jim Crow system of segregation. The fact that most of the 2,700 inmates forced on to chain gangs were Black, aided the misgivings many working people maintained about re-instituting the practice. A class action suit was soon filed by lawyers with the Southern Poverty Law Center for several prisoners opposed to the gangs. Killing prompted end of chain gangs
In the spring of this year, the government's confidence in maintaining the practice disintegrated. In April, Jones announced that women prisoners would be put on chain gangs. In response, Alabama governor Fob James demoted Jones to prison warden. He vowed that there would never be female gangs in Alabama.

On May 15 a prisoner was shot to death by a corrections officer when he attacked a fellow chain gang member with a bush ax. As part of the class action lawsuit, prisoners expressed concern that killings such as this will be repeated since it is not uncommon for disputes to break out between people forcibly shackled together.

Six days after the May 15 killing, chain-gang use was suspended for review of the activity. Then in June, state officials agreed to make the suspension permanent in order to settle the lawsuit.

"They can never bring chain gangs back," said Rhonda Brownstein from the Southern Poverty Law Center. "They can call what they have now a chain gang, but it is not. They can never bring the chain gang configuration back again."

A trial for other issues in the lawsuit is set for October 7.

Among the policies still contended is the use of hitching posts, where prisoners who resist the authorities are chained up to 12 hours in the sun.  
 
 
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