Last Wednesday, after six weeks of practice runs inside the facility grounds, Limestone became the first American prison to institute chain gangs in more than 80 years. Shackled at the ankle in three-pound leg irons-the warden advises prisoners to wear two pairs of socks-and bound together by eight-foot lengths of chain. inmates took to the fields with swing blades, shovels and plastic garbage bags. “This is our first time coming to the high-wavy said Charles Wilson, 21, sentenced to 25 years for theft and drug possession. “Usually they have us picking rocks.” The men work 12-hour shifts, remaining bound for meals and when using the makeshift latrine. More than 60 percent of them are black-reflecting Alabama’s prison population. “I know one thing.” said Carlos Robinson, 24, sentenced to eight years for drug possession. “When I get home. I’m going to let my dog go. This ain’t nothing but a circus, a big old zoo. We all animals now.”

The program is part of a campaign pledge by new Republican Gov. Fob James to track down on parole violators, repeat offenders and prisoners with disciplinary problems. But it is also a way to cut costs. one armed guard can oversee 40 prisoners in chains, a job that would otherwise take two. “My reality is [that] I’m losing 30 employees a month, net, and gaining 100 inmates a month, net,” said State Prison Commissioner Ron Jones. Prisoners’ advocates denounced the chain gangs as political grandstanding. But Jones finds an odd tom-passion in the shackles. “It became real humane on my part to put these inmates out there in leg irons because they have virtually no chance of escaping,” he said. “Therefore they’re not going to get shot.”

As they worked the dewy fields in their neat prison whites, the Limestone inmates made for a haunting spectacle. Since 1960, thanks to Sam Cooke, two generations of Americans have known the sound of the men working on the chain gang. Cooke heard it in the fields of Georgia, where he and Jackie Wilson offered cigarettes to the prison crews and listened to their songs. As captured in Cooke’s classic “Chain Gang,” that sound is upbeat. But for Arum Noble, 23, there was no dancing last week. “This is a mental thing right here,” he said. “If your mind ain’t stable you ain’t gonna make it. I’m going to talk to my 6-year-old son. My mama say he’s been acting up. I want him to know he better straighten up, ‘cause they got a place for him.”