Brick 'Em, Danno!

So I heard this story tonight about an incident that happened several years ago. It was a pretty inventive solution and possibly a deterrent for at least one offender.

When an offender gets a conduct violation, he has to see the "team" who measures out whatever punishment they are able to for the violation. The punishment can range from room or activity restriction for a number of days to sending them down to the Hive and even recommending for prosecution, depending on the nature of the violation.

Years ago, the team was a caseworker and an assistant caseworker and a Sergeant. Nowadays it's usually just one caseworker or an assistant.

But on this particular day it was all three of them in the office with this one certain offender.

I won't say who all was involved, just in case the statute of limitations hasn't passed yet.

The conversation went something like this:

Caseworker One: "Well, this is a pretty serious violation, here. What do you think we should give him?"

Sarge: "Heck, I dunno. Whatever you guys think is appropriate. I'll go along with it."

Caseworker Two: "I think you should check the book."

Caseworker One looks through the rule book then throws it down in disgust and says "Heck, we've tried everything else. I'm afraid we're going to have to brick him."

Caseworker Two: "No! Not that!"

Inmate: "Brick me? What are you talking about?"

Caseworker One pulls out two bricks and lays one on the table. He holds the other one a few inches above the first one.

Caseworker One: "You lay your p*cker on this here brick and I smack them together."

The inmate jumps up, both hands over his crotch saying "No way, man! I don't want that!!!"

Caseworker Two: "How about we just give you ten days room restriction instead? Would you go for that?"

Inmate: "Yeah! Yeah! I'll do that! I don't want you smashin' my stuff with no brick, man!"

The inmate signs the paper and goes to lock himself down, thinking he got off with a lighter punishment. Probably with his hands still covering his crotch every time he thinks about it.

The Sergeant looks at the two caseworkers and says "You know you guys are completely crazy, right?"

Caseworker One: "It worked, didn't it?"

And what's sad is if we tried something like that today we'd get fired.

One day when I was fairly new and didn't know any better, I caught an inmate dong something dumb. It wasn't anything big, it was just dumb. He should have known better. So I made him write "I won't ever do (whatever it was) again" 100 times before the end of my shift.

Boy, I caught nine kinds of hell for that. Apparently they consider that to be "corporal punishment" and we aren't allowed to mete out that sort of punishment. And I was told I could get fired for that. But since I was new and promised not to do it again they let me off with a warning.

I guess it was a real good thing I didn't offer to smack his d*ck with a brick.

You'd think that since the word "Corrections" figures so largely in our name, that we would be allowed some leeway in actually trying to correct something.

But that's not going to happen any time soon.

Today was Chaos Never Dies Day. I think I forgot to mention that last night. It was fitting. And tomorrow is Forget Me Not Day. I think they are referring to the flowers, but you just can't tell, sometimes. Whatever it means, have a happy one!