Here is a jail house torture trick, a dirty little secret of jail guards everywhere.

When prisoners are transported anywhere, maybe to a hearing in court, maybe to a clinic or to another jail, they are handcuffed and put in legirons. This includes the shoplifters as well as the aggravated batterers.

The leg irons are most often put on outside the pants legs of the jail uniforms because cinching the irons on over your bare legs is painful. But it's not always done that way. If the jailors don't like you they will pull up the pantlegs and cinch the irons down on your bare legs. If they REALLY don't like you they will park the transport vehicle as far as possible from the destination and then make you hobble in pain while they holler at you to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. All guards know this trick. All guards in all jails.

The ferocity of the crime has nothing to do with it. The most minor crimes get you the same treatment as violent, ugly crimes, up to the point where the crime is so horrible you can't get bond. If you can pay the bond you await your court functions out in the free world and go to your own clinics, unbound. Only those who haven't the money have to suffer tortures to be transported by prison staff to and from everything outside their cells. This even includes trips within the jail itself, such as visitation areas and the law library. Again this only applies to poor folk because even violent offenders with enough money can pay their way out. So it has nothing to do with the ferocity of the crime or with considerations of the public safety. It's all about the money.

To make it worse our wonderful society has a disease of superiority concerning prisoners. Again this includes the most minor of offenses right on up. Everyone with even the most peripheral contact with prisoners … including those not yet convicted of ANYthing … assume they are privileted to actively pile derision and punishment of their own devising down on any and all prisoners the have anything to do with. This includes such people as the cafe employees who prepare prisoners' meals., contractors who do repairs and construction inside jails and in-house jail medical staff. It is open season at all times to dump on prisoners.

I have long wondered about this. Most of the people behind bars already know how to be disrespectful, disobedient and destructive. Instead of reflecting the same right back at them would it not be more productive to demonstrate to them how to be respectful, competent and useful?

auntieracist