is a classic miscarriage of justice film. In the film, James Allen has just returned from WWI, and decides to skip on the secure job waiting at home in order to be an engineer, doing the work he liked for the Navy. When he falls on hard times, he gets dragged into pulling a five spot out of a register at gun point, fleeing the scene when the police show up, and gets a prison sentence of hard labor.After months in prison, he escapes, gets a job in construction, and becomes a man of respectable means. But it all falls apart when his landlady finds out that he's a wanted escaped criminal, and he feels trapped between two different prisons, being married to a woman he doesn't love or serving out his time to be free of her blackmail.
The film was similar to the more recent Shawshank Redemption. In the older film, the character is guilty, and in the newer innocent, but the system deprives both of justice in the end. I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang does spend a bit of time covering the debate between those who thought criminals should work v. those who thought the conditions of the prisons were not conducive to promoting rehabilitation.
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