The criminal justice system in America has a storied history regarding the incarceration and work detail of its' inmates. It has been commonplace for prisoners to supply free labor to the public. Over time jails and prisons have rescinded that policy with some even paying inmates a small stipend for menial jobs within the jail. More and more liberties and privileges have been extended to convicts at the expense of the tax payer. It is bad enough that we are victimized by their criminal endeavors. We then pay for their housing, food, drink, medicines, clothing and entertainment while they are incarcerated in our jails and prisons. To add insult to injury, consider the fact that Hillsborough County, Florida currently has a program where inmates can become vested in the state retirement system for labor that they provide while in custody! What a slap in the face that is to the hard working honest men and women in this state.

Enough is enough with the coddling of these criminals! It is high time that we begin to take a stand against the wasteful spending of our tax dollars. Once a person is convicted of a crime he/she loses many of the rights that we enjoy as law abiding citizens. One such right is the ability to come and go as they please and maintain a personal schedule of activities. Our correctional staff reserves the right to dictate to a certain extent what the inmate will and will not do during the term of his incarceration. For example, those who do not partake in voluntary work programs should be sent-out to work on chain gangs. The State of Florida resumed this program in the mid-nineties thus paving the way for us to recoup some of the financial loss we incur when housing a criminal. Governor Charlie Crist (R) sponsored the bill when he was a state senator. He stated, “The idea is not to be cruel but to have an appropriate punishment that also serves as a deterrent.”

The chain gangs consist of low-risk inmates shackled together with leg irons and other visible restraints. They wear clearly marked and identifiable prison clothing and are supervised by armed correctional officers. The inmates work in small groups on various projects around the county such as trash removal, road repair, graffiti eradication, farming and landscaping. This type of work detail achieves two distinct and separate goals: first it provides a general deterrent to other would-be criminals; and second it saves the tax-payers tens-of-thousands of dollars a year in labor costs.

The usage of a chain gang is one way to quickly resolve a very pressing issue in our community. Gang-related tagging or graffiti has been on the rise leaving us with defaced property, both governmental and privately owned. A chain gang could be sent-out to paint over the graffiti within 24 hours of it being noticed. We currently have no plan of action to combat graffiti and this type of free labor could enable us to quickly reclaim our cities and fight back against vandalism.

The chain gang concept has been working quite well in other jurisdictions across the country. To illustrate, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona routinely utilizes chain gangs to offset labor costs in their community. The programs at the MCSO have been a national success story, something we can learn from and implement at all county jails around the State of Florida. In this difficult economy we must be more frugal with the monies we have available and look for cost-effective legal alternatives to resolving community problems.

 Dr. Santarlas is a former Deputy Chief of Police. Thomas Santarlas