Bound in one chain: prisoner everyday life of female prisoners in one of the US prisons

By Pictolic

In the United States in Phoenix, Arizona, there is a prison called Estrella. She is very well known for being the only one in the United States that uses a punishment program called the Chain Gang to rehabilitate female prisoners. In simple terms, it involves the joint performance by the prisoners of menial and unskilled work, in the process of which they find themselves bound together by a long chain.

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Bound in one chain: prisoner everyday life of female prisoners in one of the US prisons Source: JJournal/tipolog

In general, this system was traditional for the southern states of the USA in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, and in 1955 it was canceled as inhumane and not in keeping with the spirit of the present. However, in 1995 it began to be used again in relation to the male contingent in some prisons in the southern United States of America. And in the Estrella prison in Phoenix, they decided to go even further - to extend the system of such punishment to women on the simple basis that both women and men in the United States have equal rights and therefore no concessions should be made to anyone.

But enough lyrical digressions - it's time to get to the point. According to existing rules, this program is called “Last Chance” and can only be assigned to those female prisoners who are serving their sentences for not very serious articles (such as drunk driving, perjury, petty fraud and theft of goods in supermarkets) and with a term no more than 1 year. It may seem surprising to some, but female prisoners choose for themselves the punishment in the form of shackling with one chain and free community service in an exclusively voluntary manner. The reasons that motivate many American convicts to make this choice are very simple. According to the verdicts of the courts, despite the rather short terms of imprisonment, most of them are assigned harsh conditions for serving their sentences (something like punishment cells, to put it in the Russian manner). This regime of punishment presupposes the obligatory wearing of striped prison robes, the non-exit stay of prisoners in 2-4 local cells for 23 hours a day and meager 2 meals a day. Prisoners are also forbidden to have salt, cigarettes, coffee, ketchup and mirrors, listen to music and watch TV (with the exception of programs about the weather and how to cook delicious food), and for any trip to the nurse they must pay 10 dollars and see to them on a date with relatives exclusively through glass. The whole trick in this case lies in the fact that after serving the 30-day period of voluntary chaining and doing community service free of charge, convicted women receive special certificates, and with it the right to relocate to a general tent camp with a lighter regime for further serving the sentence.

In turn, the Chain Gang system itself involves shackling 5 prisoners in one long chain and jointly performing such work as garbage collection along roadsides, mowing weeds in wastelands (in the local 40-45 degree heat) and burying the corpses of homeless people in the city cemetery. And the main purpose of using such a system of punishment, according to the head of this prison, is to accustom short-sighted prisoners to discipline and organization in their actions and forever discourage them from ever committing offenses again in their lives.