ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 26, 1996 TAG: 9604260070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MONTGOMERY, ALA.
SOURCE: Associated Press
The Alabama prison system is preparing to snap shackles around the ankles of women prisoners, creating female chain gangs in the state that revived male leg-iron crews last year.
Alabama prison officials said the female chain gangs would help resolve lawsuits from male inmates challenging the exclusively male work units.
``There's no real defense for not doing the females,'' said state Corrections Commissioner Ron Jones.
Stephen Dees, the warden at Julia Tutwiler State Prison for Women near Montgomery, is developing the chain-gang policy. Women could be working in leg irons as early as June, Jones said.
``We have done a lot of historical research, and I have never come across a female chain gang,'' said Rhonda Brownstein, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center. ``They have previously said it's not practical or feasible to have chain gangs for women.''
The civil rights watchdog group is representing inmates in a lawsuit contending that chain gangs represent unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
``They said the number of women [who would qualify] is so small, it makes no practical sense to put them out on the highway. So why are they doing it now? Because they don't want to be caught with egg on their face,'' Brownstein said.
Alabama became the first state to revive chain gangs last year under Gov. Fob James, who took office in January 1995. James said his objective was to make incarceration so unpleasant that inmates wouldn't want to return. Florida and Arizona followed.
The 400 men on Alabama's gangs are mostly repeat offenders and those with discipline problems. Jones said similar criteria would be used in picking female inmates.
Shackled women will be ordered to cut grass, pick up trash and plant a large vegetable garden behind the prison, officials said.
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