Re: Chained Convict For Life Pdf
Marnie Monteverde
In the early 1900s, dramatic stories of the abuse and wretched conditions of convict laborers began to be publicized through trials and newspaper accounts. The egregiousness of the violence and corruption of the system began to turn public opinion against convict leasing. Though many citizens and politicians wanted to abolish convict leasing, the problem of the expense and difficulty of housing convicts remained. Chain gangs developed as a popular solution to that problem.
Chain gangs were groups of convicts forced to labor at tasks such as road construction, ditch digging, or farming while chained together. Some chain gangs toiled at work sites near the prison, while others were housed in transportable jails such as railroad cars or trucks. The improvements they made to public roadways had significant impact on rural areas, allowing planters to more quickly and more easily transport their crops to market.
Chain gangs had a brief existence, as economic forces played a central role in their demise. During the Great Depression, as jobs became scarce, criticism was heard that convict chain gangs took work that rightfully belonged to free labor. The government stopped providing federal funds to finance roads built using convict labor. Enthusiasm for chain gangs also decreased as the number of white convicts on the roads increased. By the 1940s, chain gangs had almost vanished. The last few chained prisoners were pulled off the roads when Georgia finally eliminated the practice in the early 1960s.
everyday life suffered by black convicts on the chain gang. Prisoners were restrained at all times with heavy chains that were riveted around their ankles and were only removed (by a chisel) when the convict was released. At night another long chain was run between his legs, so that every man was connected to every other man, and no one was able to go to the toilet (a hole in the floor) without waking everybody on the chain gang. In the movies, the protagonists were mostly white, while in reality, the racial composition of the chain gangs were disproportionately African American. It took white actors, however, to generate a national scandal and shame a mostly Caucasian audience.
The spectacle of black prisoners in chains is powerfully linked to the images of slavery serving as a forceful reminder of their heritage of racial oppression in America. It brings to mind southern slave auctions where black families, linked by leg irons and iron collars, were sold and transported to the plantations. After the Civil War when slavery was abolished, southern states passed Jim Crow laws to hinder migration and control freed blacks. Blacks found guilty of these laws were forced to work as convict contract workers, and on the prison farms and southern roads in chains. The iron chains were the emblem of degradation and humiliation. The states that have revived and continue to use chain gangs (a practice embedded into the cultural history of oppression of an entire race) undermine the moral legitimacy of their criminal justice system.
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The bagne was created by an ordinance of King Louis XV on September 27, 1748 to house the convicts who had previously been sentenced to row the galleys of the French Mediterranean fleet. The decree stated, in article 11, "All the galleys in the port will be disarmed, and the chiourmes (the ancient term for the convict galley rowers) will be kept on land in the bagnes, guarded halls, or other places which will be designated for their confinement." [1] The name 'bagne' came from the Italian word bagno (giving bagnio in English), or "bath", the name of a prison in Rome which had formerly been a Roman bath.[2]Other authors point to a prison in Livorno.[3]
Since the 15th century, French prisoners had been sentenced to serve on the galleys, sometimes even for minor crimes. The galleys were long, narrow craft with cannon mounted on the bow and a high, ornamentally-decorated deck at the stern. Unlike sailing ships, they could operate when there was no wind. They were a force used only on the Mediterranean, where the sea was relatively calm, and were entirely independent of the Navy, with their own Grand Admiral. The galleys were used both for military missions and for ceremonial travel, for example carrying the Cardinal de Guise from France to Rome for the election of a new Pope after the death of Pope Paul IV in 1559. By the 18th century, changes in naval tactics and weapons had made the galleys obsolete, and the galleys were decommissioned, However, prisoners sentenced to forced labor continued to be sent to the south of France.[2][4]
The galleys were originally based in Marseille. In 1749, with the new decree, the galley fleet was transferred to Toulon, to the port and arsenal of the French Mediterranean fleet. By the end of the 18th century there were about 3,000 prisoners in the Bagne. The convicts lived on the galleys, and then on larger prison ships, where the sanitary and health facilities were deplorable. Because of the poor health of the prisoners, in 1777 a hospital for the prisoners was installed in a casemate of the southeast rampart of the Darse Vauban, the immense naval port begun by Vauban during the reign of Louis XIV. The bagne was placed next to the first dry dock on the Mediterranean, built between 1774 and 1779. In 1797 a new building was constructed on the west quay of the Darse Vauban. It was two hundred meters long and two stories high, with towers with pyramid-shaped roofs at either end. The hospital occupied the first floor, a chapel for the prisoners was placed in the north end, and the rest of the building was occupied by the administration of the prison.
In the beginning, able-bodied prisoners lived in the casements of the ramparts or on prison ships. In 1814 they were transferred to a building on shore, 115 meters long, which was perpendicular to the hospital, located on the southwest quay, between the Darse Vauban and the entrance to the old port.[5] Even after the construction of the new building, some prisoners continued to be held on ships when there was no place on land.[2]
Docked next to the Bagne, at the entrance of the old port, was a decommissioned French ship, called L'Amiral. It had formerly been the frigate Muiron, which transported Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt to France in 1799. It now had only a single mast. It fired a cannon every morning and evening, the signal to open and close the gates of the arsenal and to move the heavy chains which blocked the entrances to inner ports. If a prisoner escaped from the bagne, the Amiral fired a cannon, and hoisted a yellow flag, which remained until the prisoner was recaptured.[4]
In 1836 the Bagne held 4,305 prisoners, of whom 1,193 were sentenced to life imprisonment; 173 to more than twenty years' imprisonment; 382 to terms between sixteen and twenty years; 387 to terms between eleven and fifteen years; 1469 to terms of between five and ten years; and 700 to terms of less than five years.[6]
Beginning in 1820, prisoners sentenced to forced labor were marched, in chains, from the Bictre Prison in Paris to Lyon. The prisoners were attached by collars around their necks to a single long chain. They walked in a group, called la chaine (the chain), escorted by soldiers. In towns along the way between Paris and Lyon, additional prisoners were added to the chain. The prisoners wore their original civilian clothing, rather than prison dress. When the chain arrived in Lyon, the prisoners, still chained, were transferred to open boats which were towed by ship down the Rhone to Arles, and then continued by land to Toulon. The entire journey took thirty-five days. Later in the 19th century, the chain was abandoned and prisoners were transported in closed prison wagons.[7]
When the prisoners arrived at Castigneau, a town on the harbor of Toulon, they were formally handed over to the Commissaire of the Bagne, an officer of the French Navy. There the iron collars around their necks were removed, their hair was cut and they were shaved, they were given a bath in large basins under a tent, and then they were conveyed by boat to the Bagne.[8]
The predominant color of the prisoner's costumes was red, the traditional color of the uniforms worn by the crews on the galleys in the 16th and 17th centuries. The costumes of the prisoners consisted of a white shirt, yellow trousers, red vest and smock and a cap which had different colors depending on the sentence duration. In early years those sentenced to life imprisonment wore green caps, all the others red caps. During the French Revolution, because the revolutionaries wore the red Phrygian cap, the symbol of freedom, the French Convention forbade prisoners to wear red caps, and they went bare-headed. Under Napoleon, the red caps were reinstated for all prisoners. The trousers were buttoned the whole length of the leg, so they could be removed without taking off the iron ring and chain on their ankle. The prisoners were shaven and were given a peculiar haircut, with one sideburns on one side shaven and on the other allowed to grow, so they could be identified more easily if they escaped. [9]
An iron ring, called manille, was attached to one ankle. Attached to the manille was an iron chain with eighteen links. The ring and the chain together weighed seven kilograms and 250 grams. There were longer chains, of twenty-four links, for those with longer sentences, and for those sentenced to life imprisonment, an additional triangular ring so they could be chained to their bed.[10] Before the French Revolution and again after 1810, the prisoners were also branded on the shoulder with a hot iron, using the letters TF (travaux forcs, hard labour) and TFP (travaux forcs perptuit, hard labor for life).
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