THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 31, 1996 TAG: 9605310042
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER DZIURA, TEEOLOGY COLUMNIST
LENGTH: 51 lines
PRETEND for a moment that you are no longer reading the newspaper. You are instead driving down an Alabama highway.
You're busy checking your mileage and trying to get to Mobile before sundown when you look up and see a long string of people by the side of the road.
The people are prisoners. They are wearing identical blue jumpsuits and equally identical leg irons. They are picking up trash.
``Ah,'' you say, ``at least these convicts are doing something productive while the taxpayers are spending coal cars full of cash to feed and clothe them.'' Then you ask around ``But don't prisons have regulations against long hair?''
That is when you realize that the prisoners on this chain gang are women.
According to a recent report by the Associated Press, the state of Alabama will soon boast the first female chain gang. Prison officials said that women may be exerting their jumpsuit-clad muscles as early as June.
The women's chain gang raises a distinct point about the place of women in America - basically, if you want to do all of the splendid things that men have been getting to do for centuries, you're going to have to do the garbage work, too (literally, if the place you call home is an Alabama prison).
Since the chain gang idea resurfaced in Alabama, however, the convicts have started suing. A civil rights group that agrees with the indolent prisoners is representing them in court, arguing that chain gangs, being ``cruel and unusual punishment,'' are unconstitutional.
But look at the jobs the prisoners will be doing. They will have to cut grass, collect garbage and plant a vegetable garden.
Now think about this. My guess is that you, the reader, have probably done at least one of these things in your lifetime. You may have done all three. Did you do these tasks out of sheer masochism? Were you punishing yourself for wrongs committed in a past life as a fascist dictator? I think not. This is pretty normal stuff.
I would even go so far as to argue that, if making prisoners perspire a bit is unconstitutional, then so, probably, is forcing them to make their own beds, failing to take them to symphony concerts and depriving them of Grey Poupon.
In fact, anyone who thinks women should be exempt from doing work during their prison sentences had best go home and tighten her corsets. But perhaps those of less progressive opinions might be soothed by the fact that some prison guard will surely be obliged to, in true chivalric fashion, hold the door for the long line of shackled women. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Jennifer Dziura by CNB