Newstrack: Prisoners still doing road work

BACKGROUND

In 1995, the Legislature passed and Gov. Terry Branstad signed legislation stating that prison inmates could be required to perform 'hard labor,” including working on chain gangs. But prison officials were given two years to define what 'hard labor” meant and implement it.

WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE

In May 1996, inmates wearing bright-colored uniforms or dressed in khaki jump suits and bright orange vests were dispatched from prisons at Anamosa and Mount Pleasant by Iowa Department of Corrections (DOC) officials to perform cleanup duties and manual labor in state parks, along highways and in rural cemeteries under the watchful eye of armed guards.

Three years later, the chain gang concept was returned to the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison for the first time in more than 75 years as inmates - working in groups of three and clad in bright yellow pants and shirts - hit the roads and ditches of Lee County to work off some of their time in disciplinary detention for violating prison rules.

The prisoners were not shackled together but wore 18-inch leg irons, with their ankles chained.

Prisoners serving time for crimes such as murder, kidnapping, arson, sexual abuse or child molestation were not eligible for the chain gang. Work sites were chosen at random, and inmates were rotated daily and for security reasons never worked the same place two days in a row.

Supervising chain gangs was very staff intensive, with penitentiary work crews watched closely by armed correctional officers - sometimes with one officer for each inmate but more often one or two officers assigned with up to 15 offenders, officials noted.

The staff intensive element was one of the causes for the demise of a program that was popular with the public and with inmates. State budget woes in the early 2000s prompted corrections officials to refocus work details and rethink strategies for better achieving desired outcomes when returning offenders to communities and reducing recidivism rates.

Former DOC Director John Baldwin, who retired last month, said chain gangs and juvenile boot camps that also were a popular concept of the 1990s did not produce the positive results that come with education and learning a reasonable skills and behaviors.

'People are starting to say, prove that that works,” Baldwin said. 'No one could prove that that was a successful program. It was counterintuitive.

'All you were doing was teaching somebody skill sets that won't translate into jobs or education or treatment. That's what you have to be about.”

DOC Acting Director Jerry Bartruff said there are still states that incorporate chain gangs in their correctional programs, noting he traveled to a deputy directors' training session in Texas where he saw offenders chained together working along roadsides with armed officers on horseback.

Iowa still operates inmate work details outside of minimum-security facilities, but they're mostly outfitted in orange vests and hard hats.

'They're out and about,” said Rep. Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, co-chairman of the House-Senate justice systems budget panel. 'It's just not the ball-and-chain type situation that we used to think of years ago.”

He added that he has not heard chain gangs mentioned in the eight years that he's been in the Legislature.

'The idea of chain gangs is one that the research says that doesn't have the results that we want,” said Bartruff. 'I think it was in vogue for a while. Much like boot camps, I would say people who are interested in results wouldn't go down that path.”