It's A Goat Rope

My old drill sergeant would have called it a "Chinese Fire Drill." As I got older and more sophisticated I just called it a cluster-f*ck.

What it all boils down to is having too many goats and not enough rope.

They have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that it was time to tear down the little shack that we used to pat search the inmates on the way in and out of laundry and build a new bigger facility. Supposedly with the aim of strip searching them all both coming and going.

I can't really see that happening with any regularity. Not with only one officer down there and often more than a hundred offenders. The searches alone would take hours.

At any rate, they have torn down a bit of the fence to access the shack so we have decided to route the offenders all the way around the building past the semi trucks and the sallyport gate. To facilitate this we have two laundry officers, the nine yard officer and now two supervisors (if available, if not at least one) to make sure nobody runs off during their trip around the building.

Since we do a good number of our movements down there after dark, they have set up some temporary lights plugged into a hundred foot extension cord.

Nice. So they are now in an area with no razor wire on top of the fences and we have supplied them with a handy hundred foot rope.

Are we geniuses or what?

Granted, we have staff down there when they are outside of the building. Supposedly. But it only takes a few seconds for one of them to be long gone.

I really don't see a better solution to the problem, unfortunately. If we'd have had more time to think about it, we might have come up with something better, I don't know. But this is the solution we're stuck with so I guess we have to make the best of a bad situation.

But pulling this when we are already short staff just isn't cool. Every year we have to work with more inmates and less officers.

Where does it end?

One day the place will be packed full right up to the top of the fence and there will be one officer outside with half a can of expired pepper spray saying "Y'all be good now, okay? Don't make me come in there!"

Hopefully I will be long retired and far away from this place by that time.

Hopefully.

Saturday is going to be Limerick Day, Hug Your Cat Day, National Windmill Day and International Nutty Fudge Day.

There was a young man from Nantucket.....

Oops. Never mind......