 |
| Just because Cook County had a miserable jail back in 1910 doesn't mean we have to strive today to be even worse |
Of course, that film shows us the dirty underside of such a white-washed community. And a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court shows us the dirty underside of Chicago these days.
AS
IN THE Cook County Jail.
The
lawsuit says that the county’s management of the jail amounts to “sadistic
violence and brutality.” What with the way guards use physical force to
maintain order, or turn their heads to look away from brutal acts committed by
inmates on themselves.
Now
I know the reality I have heard from corrections officials that they are
outnumbered by inmates within a jail or prison facility, and how any attempt to
impose order by total domination would likely provoke the inmates into a riot.
So
they tend to let the inmates have a sense of policing themselves.
THIS
LAWSUIT BY the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People’s Law Center
gives a horrific image of incarceration that ought to make us ashamed that we
could permit such a thing to happen within our society.
Although
I’m also sure there are those amongst us who will read the reports about the
lawsuit and merely shrug their shoulders, thinking to themselves, “Prison isn’t
supposed to be pleasant.”
I’ll
agree. But I also tend to believe that how we treat our most vulnerable (or
choose to ignore them) also says a lot about us as a society and how seriously
we deserve to be treated.
Personally,
I’d like to think we deserve better than any reputation we’d get from letting
the violence run amok out there at the jail in the Little Village neighborhood.
EVEN
IN PLEASANTVILLE, in that scene where Toby McGuire’s “Bud” character spent time
in a jail cell (charged with actions that made life “less pleasant”), nobody
was threatening him with “an elevator ride.”
As
in a place where he could be beaten up without being recorded on any security
cameras – according to the jailhouse code included in the lawsuit.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment