C

Sentences involving hard work have traditionally been used as both a punishment and a deterrent. Even prior to the building of penitentiaries in this country, statutes of the 1700s called for convicts to perform hard labor around the local city streets and country highways. Citizens were to observe their backbreaking efforts. Prisoners had their heads shaved and they wore “conspicuous multi-colored garb and were chained to their wheelbarrow.” Conditions were so degrading that some prisoners expressed a preference for hanging rather than to continue on the chain gang. Citizens would often ridicule and curse prisoners, even throwing things at them while they worked. There were often fights. Sometimes prohibited items were passed to the convicts by sympathetic passersby. Humanitarian groups, such as the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, sought to have laws passed that would put the errant into a more private, protective, and reforming environment-solitary confinement.