chain gang

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chain gang

(US) a group of convicted prisoners chained together, usually while doing hard labour.

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Inmates who are considered escape risks or who are deemed dangerous to the public are usually kept off the chain gangs.

Stunning technology: corrections cowboys get a charge out of their new sci-fi weaponry

First, for many, chain gangs are a painful reminder of the injustices of the post-bellum South.

Chain gangs are cruel and unusual punishment

Usually, the chain gangs clean the streets, wipe off graffiti and bury the dead who have no one, such as the homeless.

The meanest cop on Earth; Meet hard-line jail boss Sheriff Joe Arpaio - the man who treats his dogs better than his prisoners

Replacing the lease system was the public works system (a labor system under which inmates work on public construction and maintenance projects) and its well-known chain gangs.

Back on the chain gang

Unfortunately, the chain gangs that emerged as replacement mechanisms were indistinguishable from the work camps in terms of their brutality and loathsomeness.

State violence against black women

Here, the author (associate professor of literature and an affiliated faculty member of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego) argues that the incarceration of Black people and other historically repressed groups in chain gangs, peon camps, prison plantations, and penitentiaries represents a ghostly perpetuation of chattel slavery.

Childs, Dennis. Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary

Constitution, and the practice of forced labor in our nation's prisons, chain gangs, prison plantations, and peon camps, arguing that the incarceration of black people and other historically repressed groups amounts to a perpetuation of chattel slavery post-emancipation.

Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration From the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary

Hard labor and hard time; Florida's "Sunshine Prison" and chain gangs.

Hard labor and hard time; Florida's "Sunshine Prison" and chain gangs

Some Southerners responded that the scenes of baying bloodhounds and bloody whips were grossly exaggerated, that chain gangs were a reasonable and effective crime deterrent, and that the Southern penal system was of no concern to the rest of the nation.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang! and the materiality of Southern depravity

See, if they exchanged diggers for a chain gangs, they'd also reduce gallons of carbon emissions.

Grim for prisoners if they are eyeing Kelly

Put prisoners in chain gangs to build their own prisons and perhaps we will then reclaim our streets.

Letter: Short points

In 1996 he called for criminals to be put in "distinctive uniforms" to clean up litter and graffiti like US chain gangs.