A Life Wasted

Cool Hand Luke - 1979

Chatham Correctional Institution was a punishment camp.  They called us "rabbits" because all of us had previously attempted an escape before getting there.  When I first heard this I thought it was a poor choice since it reminded us what we'd once been, before they broke us.  And break us they did, through a combination of constant hard work, just enough food to survive, little sleep, and no medical care for the injuries caused by everything else.  When I first arrived the first thing I noticed was how thin and beaten down every convict was.  Few had a spark left in them.  Chatham CI would be considered unconstitutional today.  It wasn't legal then, but they got away with it.  Their stated mandate was to punish rabbits with hard labor.  Hard labor was part of their security plan.  A man who'd been worked to the point of exhaustion six days a week doesn't have the time or energy for planning and executing an escape.  There were only three ways to get out of the work: 1) die, 2) try to escape, which would mean death if you failed, and 3) cut your Achilles tendon with your shovel.  There had been numerous suicides, no escape attempts in four years, and dozens of cut Achilles tendon.

They call it the "rubber chain gang".  Those pesky federal courts had made actual chains on a chain gang illegal, so Georgia came up with an effective solution.  They didn't allow a chain gang member to have shoes, only over-sized heavy boots that came above the knee.  It's difficult to walk in such boots, impossible to run in them.  Which was the point.  Convicts were worked hard in the wet and muddy areas of South Georgia swampy regions.  The strategy was to work us on the border of a large swamp, always placing a chain gang crew down in a ditch, a ditch that was required to be deep, wet, and thick with mud.  The rules were that we couldn't come out of the ditch until ordered to do so and we couldn't remove our boots until after our return to the prison at the end of the long day.  Taking off your boots in the rubber chain gang was the same as removing your leg iron in the old post-civil war area chain gangs.  The boot was your tether.  Removed the tether and you were trying to escape.  Try to escape and you'd be shot without warning.

Aside from the fact that the rubber boots prevented a convict from running, they were tortuous when used as they were.  The boots were issued several sizes too large, they were old, the rubber hard and cracked.  They leaked.  The only good thing about the boots is that they were thick enough to protect you from snake bites, and there was never a shortage of snakes in those deep ditches boarding the swamp.  We were given one pair of thin socks, which we were required to wear.  After an hour in the ditch the socks were soaked from the leaky boots, and half of your foot, which made things worse, especially since you couldn't pull off the boot to pull your socks up.  The feet of every convict on the rubber chain gang were torn up from infected blisters.  Every man walked with a limp.  He'd better walk with a limp because if he didn't they would think  you weren't worked hard enough, something they would correct immediately.  Forget medical care, there was none.  If you had a problem serious enough to require an emergency room visit they'd take you, but there were few medical conditions deemed that critical.  Blistered and infected feet were considered normal wear and tear, not a medical problem.  All part of their carefully planed punishment and escape prevention technique.  It was a brutal, but effective system.

The problem with operating a chain gang full of proven "rabbits" is that they had to take the rabbits outside of the prison to work.  They overcame this problem with a combination of location and overwhelming force.  They understood well that their rabbits were born to run, so they were fully prepared when it happened.  Each chain gang had ten convicts on rubber tethers, two armed guards, and one trustee who drove the van and ran errands for the guards.  Each of the two guards had a holstered .38 revolver and a Remington 870, 12 Gage shot gun loaded with double 00 buckshot.  Most important from the rabbits point of view, the guards were well trained.  Throughout the day one guard was positioned on each side of the chain gang crew of twelve convicts.  The guards kept the gang close together as we worked and never allowed us to get close to them.  This was wise as each of us had a shovel to dig with.  If one of the guards had to go to the bathroom they had us lay down our shovels, then would march us to the truck and lock us in it.  At that point one guard would watch the truck while the other took a leak in the ditch we were working in.  When we had to take a leak we did it where we stood, in the ditch we worked in.  They were good and rarely made a small mistake, but they never made a big one.