is most often used on prisoners expected to be violent, or prisoners appearing in a setting where they may be near the public (a courthouse) or have an opportunity to flee (being transferred from a prison to a court). Although prisoners in these restraints are sometimes chained to one another during transport or other movement, this is not a chain gang—although reporters may refer to it as such—because the restraints make any kind of manual work impossible. Purpose Various claims as to the purpose of chain gangs have been offered. These include: punishment societal restitution for the cost of housing, feeding, and guarding the inmates. The money earned by work performed goes to offset prison expenses by providing a large workforce at no cost for government projects, and at minimal convict leasing cost for private businesses a way of perpetuating African-American servitude after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ended slavery outside of the context of punishment for a crime. reducing inmates' idleness to serve as a deterrent to crime to satisfy the needs of politicians to appear "tough on crime" to accomplish undesirable and difficult tasks History Australia In the Australian penal colonies, chain gangs were also referred to as "iron gangs". They were used as a punishment for convicts who reoffended after being transported. Iron gangs were frequently employed on the construction of roads in remote areas where escape was a possibility, such as on the Great North Road from Sydney to the Hunter Valley and the road from Sydney to Bathurst over the Blue Mountains. The leg irons were installed by blacksmiths using hot rivets, and then attached to a single "gang chain" to allow for control by an overseer. The irons and chains could weigh as much as or more. Some of the convicts on iron gangs were as young as 11 years old. The use of iron gangs in the Colony of New South Wales was expanded by Governor Ralph Darling as part of his infrastructure program. Their tasks included "breaking rocks, clearing trees, constructing stone culverts and bridges". In 1828, the colony's chief surveyor Edmund Lockyer directed that each iron gang could contain up to 60 men, supervised by one main overseer and three assistants. The iron gangs "received the worst and least trustworthy characters, together with the strictest security measures". Better-behaved convicts still worked in gangs but were unshackled. Convicts who