By George Frobisher
K.R. Claviger commented sagely, “A bust occurred at the Manhattan Correctional Center (MCC) rather than the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) where Keith Raniere is lodged. The same exact stuff goes on all the time at MDC.
“Most of the so-called ‘contraband’ is brought in by the guards – and sold by them to the inmates. Every once in a while, they’ll do a bust like this, but it’s mostly for show – and the main players will have been warned, in advance, of when and where it was going to happen.”
Yeah, it was done for show. And I loved the way it was described in mainstream media:
The Daily Mail wrote in their headline and subheadline
“Guards at troubled New York jail find weed, cigarettes, cellphones, cords and barbecue sauce hidden in shower vent…
“Included in the stash were a pack of Newports, a lighter, vape pen, numerous iPhones, some five ounces of cannabis, loosies and cellphone charges
“Barbecue sauce was also found and it was theorized that the condiment was used to season the chicken at the facility”
OK. So this is a big story. Look what they got and its value:
A pack of cigarettes [$10]
A lighter [$5]
vape pen [$20]
four iPhones [$1,000]
5 ounces of marijuana [$1500 or 270 per ounce]
100 loosies [$100] [Loosies are individual cigarettes sold outside of the pack,]
four cellphone chargers [$100].
BBQ sauce [$3-
Total take — less than $3,000 in contraband.
Hardly headline news.
The New York Daily News called however called it a “sizable stash.”
The contraband was found in a ceiling vent in an inmate shower area.
***
If anybody thinks this raid got anywhere near 10 percent of the contraband in the facility, they are naive. Like Claviger said, “it goes on all the time.”
Many guards make a nice addition to their biweekly paychecks by regularly smuggling contraband. For the most part, I think it is benign.
What struck me most in this story was the BBQ sauce.
The idea that an 18 oz bottle of Kraft Sweet Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce is contraband speaks volumes about the sick and sadistic way Americans treat prisoners.
Not to mention Americans put the largest percentage of their population in prison. As of 2016, 2.3 million people were incarcerated in the United States, at a rate of 698 people per 100,000. The US has around 25% of the world’s prisoners with 4.25 percent of the world’s population.
Not only does the US have the highest percentage of citizens in prison, it also has the most prisoners. The slave state of China with 1.4 billion people has 1.6 million in prison compared to the US’s 2.3 million and a population of 327 million, or 23 percent of China’s population.
Picture of the “sizable stash.”
Which brings us back to BBQ sauce.
The Daily Mail contacted an expert to explain why illegal BBQ sauce might be found stashed in prison.
“‘The inmates use the warmers that warm up the food to make special barbecue chicken,’ said Fitzgerald David, a retired corrections officer. ‘They use it to flavor up their chicken on chicken day.’
“David added that inmates have to get innovative to add flavor to the bland chicken they get from the facility.
“‘If you put meat on the electric warmers for a long period of time, it cooks even more. It’ll brown the meat, make it … like fried chicken,’ David added.
“‘Somebody had to bring that to them. There’s no way in hell an inmate can get f–king barbecue sauce in jail unless someone brings it to them.'”
Sure somebody – likely a guard – had to bring the BBQ sauce into prison. There is demand because the food prisoners get is not only lacking in nutrition, it tastes horrible.
To me, this is more pathetic than criminal.
Even the stash of marijuana, which is increasingly being touted as healing for those who suffer a myriad of ailments – from pain to depression to cancer – and in prison they suffer – and don’t get adequate medical care – is hard for me to work up great wrath over.
A group of prisoners- maybe a group of cruel and sadistic men – seek out small pleasures – a cigarette, a toke on a joint, a phone to make a call to wife or child not monitored – and BBQ sauce to make the horrid food they eat day after day taste decent – on the occasion they get some real chicken.
Yeah, cruel men no doubt – most of them in prison deservedly. And Americans seem as cruel as their prisoners. Rape is condoned in prison either tacitly by indifference or proactively by the mindset that says “they deserve it.”
One wonders how prisoners will learn anything other than that official cruelty is not much different than their private cruelty.
We house them in places that ruin their health. We feed them food we would not give our dogs. We allow them to be raped without any outrage or serious effort to eradicate this monstrous invasion of rights. We allow them to be beaten. Sometimes killed.
All the while feeling they are only prisoners so they deserve it. [Forget the fact that there are innocent people in prison caused by the mad epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct in America.]
Without losing rational judgment and while insisting on safeguarding society from menaces, a little decent behavior is more likely to prompt some prisoners to change in these so-called “correctional facilities.” The present system is right out of the middle ages.
From slave state with Africans to slave state with prisoners, land of the free with 4 million slaves in 1865 to the land of the free with 2 million slaves in 2019.
Suppose the slaves could have BBQ sauce on their chicken legally? Would that somehow lessen or increase crime in America in the future?
