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Embracing the Private Self ...
HOBBS, N.M. - Some Lea County inmates set fires and broke toilets and windows after being told they would be allowed only one sausage at dinner. Jail officials said the inmates began yelling and banging on their doors in what they described in a news release as a "temper tantrum."
Officers from the Lea County Sheriff's and Hobbs Police departments were called in to restore control, and the jail was locked down after Tuesday night's incident.
Some 33 prisoners were involved, Warden Jann Gartman said.
The remaining 300-plus prisoners at the jail accepted the meal without incident, authorities said.
The damage to the jail was light, with some smoke damage and broken toilets and windows, the warden said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20772719/?GT1=10357
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I am torn. Torn between being a Scrooge and a forgiving god. People in prison have it easy, considering .. considering what it used to be like with starvings and beatings and out-n-out illegal, immoral and unethical treatment of inmates. And now, they sue to have spas, televisions, peanut butter and riot over dinner sausage. Granted, the world inside is skewed and can't be held up to how things are on the outside but really. Only pampered princesses hold their breath, stomp their feet and play ring toss with toilet seats. I think it's time things went a bit back to what it used to be like; make 'em work hard so they're grateful for the thin cot mattress on the floor of a small cell with only a brief shaft of light that appears but twice a day. Feed them boiled oats for breakfast, boiled rice for lunch and combine the two for dinner. No t.v. No radio. No doctors. No getting degrees. They shouldn't have anything in there that I can't get out here if I were jobless, or working part time at minimum wage, which is pretty much where the whole country is now thanks to our government and companies like Wal*Mart. But, I digress.
Then on the other hand the world inside IS skewed. Suddenly money means little but other items become valuable, inmates beat each other, gangs form and the world never quite seems the same like when you come home from after a long vacation, or when you have to stay at your parents' in your old room ... and you're 50. Then there are those who are falsely accused and imprisoned wrongly. I'd like to see them all treated humanely but then ..
.. they go nutso over a single sausage. Who knows what these inmates had done to earn a trip inside .. killed? Took money from people who are now homeless? Drank, drove and killed a teen just starting on life's journey? And they get pissed off because their dinner lacks a sausage?? Give me a break. Send them all to solitaire without dinner. Without breakfast. Make them work in the old folks ward emptying out bedpans and then send them to bed, again, without supper. No t.v. for .. forever. No music no books nothing. They so need to get over themselves.
And, I'm Scrooge. And, I'm embracing my inner Ebenezer.
September 14, 2007