Paper Dolls: Arizona Chain Gang Edition
What if We Told the Whole Truth About the Land of the Free

Poster of computer-edited ink and acrylic, with accompanying stack of pamphlets
Poster: printable at 18 x 24 or 24 x 36
Pamphlets: Informational paper doll booklets, 5.5 x 8

Paper dolls traditionally display either extravagant costumes from theatre, film, legend, or fashion, or the “perfect” girl from the “perfect” setting. In the United States, since the start of the 20^th century, paper dolls have been used as a tool to teach a sanitized version of American culture. Here I use paper dolls for the opposite purpose: to show what some people avoid recognizing, or what they haven’t even heard about.

Chain gangs were abolished in the U.S. by 1955. However, in the 1990s, they were reintroduced in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Most were cancelled within a year, but they continue in Arizona. Members work while chained together, each shackled by their left ankle to the chain. Members clear roadside land, and bury the county’s anonymous deceased in the desert heat. In 1996, the first American female chain gang was begun in Maricopa County in Arizona by the sheriff, Joe Arpaio. This is the sheriff, who, in 2008, and again in 2010, was found in violation of the constitutional medical rights of female and male inmates of Maricopa County Jail (2008 ruling by Federal Judge Neil V. Wake; 2010 ruling by U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals). Arpaio was then found guilty of racial profiling by first the Justice Department, and then by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in December of 2011.

Human rights violations and racial profiling are concerns to be addressed, but Arpaio remains sheriff, has not stepped down, and has been allowed to continue practices like chain gangs.

Arizona female chain gang members are not murders, embezzlers, or jewel thieves. They are small time violators of the law. They have problems relating to prostitution, drugs, and cars. They are not infamous. Violent people are under higher security, not on the chain gangs near the public.

Art can draw attention to a topic. Here, the paper doll format in particular, with a figure and an overlaid costume, can suggest that these women are actual human beings, onto whom only one role as been projected.