Alabama Chain Gangs In for Rock-Crushing Work

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Life on the chain gang just got harder: Convicts will soon be smashing rocks with sledgehammers.

“The message we want to get out is: ‘Hey, if you goof up and come back to prison, it ain’t going to be a free ride,” corrections spokesman Tom Gilkeson said Thursday.

In May, Alabama became the first state to bring back chain gangs. Prisoners chopped weeds and picked up highway trash.

Arizona has since followed suit and put convicts out on the roadsides to work.

Details of Alabama’s rock-crushing project are still rough. To start, about 400 inmates will be brought out in leg irons to break the rocks into pea-size stones, said Ralph Hooks, acting warden of the Limestone Correctional Facility.

Prisoners on chain-gang detail are denied any television or smoking privileges.

Only medium-security inmates with at least two trips to prison are being forced to serve on the chain gangs.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, has filed a lawsuit contending chain gangs are “cruel and inhumane punishment.”