Word: chaine
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Today's advocates of the chain gang offer a much more sanitized scenario for its institution. But even without the squalid conditions and whippings, the spectre of back-breaking labor mandated by the state remains. It is the promise of that very labor that people such as Edwards use to press the chain gang's case; the new workforce can be turned to improving roads, public lands and other state infrastructure...
Couldn't that labor also be turned to manufacturing toys and garments that a scrupulous nation such as ours would refuse to buy from an exploitative nation such as, say, the People's Republic of China? The working conditions on the chain gang are hardly better than those in China's prison sweatshops, and the compensation of the laborers is hardly any better. We began by opening trade with China, but perhaps we should stop short of importing their techniques for punishment...
...question of image also pervades the debate over the chain gang. Why do southern politicians such as Edwards gabble so eagerly about the prospect of lines of predominantly Black prisoners chained together and working for virtually nothing? Chain gangs were arguably the last concrete remnant of slavery in this country, and they lasted for almost 100 years after the Empancipation. From a completely pragmatic point of view, their revival could hardly contribute to further racial understanding and respect...
...death penalty and chain gangs should be linked in public discussions, since they both involve punishment that threatens the human condition. But the question of chain gangs should generate more attention because of one important distinction. Victims of the death penalty cannot complain of their pain, but the cruelty of forced labor is shockingly evident--its victims live to testify to their ordeal...
...Chain gangs further differ from the death penalty because they add a more humanitarian overtone to the right to live. Maintaining the ban on chain gangs would guarantee the right to live under decent conditions. Even if convicted criminals lose their rights to voting and social services, they are still protected from "cruel and unusual punishment...