CRIME : The Chain Gang Is Resurrected in Alabama : Proponents say shackling is cost-effective corrections. Critics charge it’s only a source of ‘photo ops.’

Despite criticism that it is turning back the clock to a time of less enlightened punishment, Alabama is moving ahead with plans to reinstitute the prison chain gang.

Starting today, up to 400 shackled, high-risk inmates from a north Alabama prison will be put to work picking up trash along interstate highways.

Chain gangs, the primary form of prison labor in the post-Civil War South, came under attack in the 1920s and ‘30s because of inhumane conditions--including beatings, malnutrition, overwork and the lack of medical care.

“The convict on the road is the slave of the state,” wrote one prison reformer in 1912, when prisoners--nearly all of them black--were used primarily to build roads during an era of Southern economic expansion. Despite a series of exposes, chain gangs did not completely disappear until the 1960s.

At a legislative budget hearing in March, when asked by lawmakers why Alabama was about to revive the long-abandoned practice, Prison Commissioner Ron Jones had a simple answer: “It’s cost-effective.”

With shackles and chains, up to 40 convicts can be supervised by one guard with a shotgun. Normally one officer is needed for every 20 to 22 convicts, without chains, who are assigned to road-cleaning crews, he said.

The state prison system has been trying a number of measures to cut costs in the face of a $12-million budget shortfall. Jones has said that he wants to avoid the need for new prisons, in part by making conditions so tough that inmates don’t want to return to prison.

The revival of chain gangs has brought harsh criticism by civil rights and prison reform groups. There also have been suggestions that the sight of chained prisoners along the interstate would hurt tourism. But state officials, who declined requests for interviews, have forged ahead.

“I don’t see the rehabilitative effect,” said Langston Thomas, first vice president of the Huntsville chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which opposes the plan.

“It makes for terrific photo ops for people running for office. But it has no correctional application,” said Herb Hoelter, director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives.

He said the move was indicative, however, of the prevalent get-tough attitude in modern-day corrections.

California, he said, is probably the best example of “the insaneness” of modern corrections--with its emphasis on building more prisons to warehouse inmates rather than exploring other options for nonviolent criminals.

In the South, chain gangs replaced the old practice of states leasing inmates to private concerns in the 19th Century. The demise of the leasing system not only took inmates out of direct competition for jobs, but also was seen as more humane. But muckraking accounts continued to document widespread brutality against inmates for much of the first half of this century.

Several African American groups in Alabama have passed resolutions opposing chain gangs, which they predict will reinforce racist attitudes by putting mostly black prisoners on display.

Thomas also said there was concern about the possibility of inmate escapes.

But a poll conducted April 10-13 by the Mobile Register newspaper and the University of South Alabama found that 70% of the state’s residents support the plan, including 43% of black respondents and 77% of whites.

Meanwhile, Jones was quoted in the Birmingham News as saying he has been contacted by four other states curious about the program. Oklahoma and South Carolina plan to send observers, and Michigan and New Jersey have asked about state laws and procedures, he said.

A spokesman for Gov. Fob James referred a reporter to Jones for comment on the chain gang program. Jones did not return several phone calls. A written statement from his office, however, said assaults at one prison where leg irons were tested as a pilot project dropped from one a week to one every three weeks. (A prisoner found guilty of assault was automatically placed on the chain gang.)

Jones also quoted the prison warden as saying that prisoner work habits, behavior, grooming and punctuality had “improved tremendously” since limited use of the chain gang had started.

Hoelter predicted, however, that a likely result of the practice will be the humiliation of prisoners, making them resentful, which he said could “backfire” on prison officials. “I think it’s kind of a miserable thing to do, all in all,” he said.

Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.