Because It's Their Job To Beat Up the Prisoners

Indulge me in a thought experiment.

Imagine that you’re an inmate at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York.  That’s the maximum security prison from which Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped earlier this year with the assistance of Joyce Mitchell.  So you’re locked up, maximum security. 

Imagine that there was no mistake.  You’re a badass.  Clinton Correctional indeed.  You’re right where you should be. 

Matt and Sweat have escaped, Matt’s been killed.  Sweat captured.  And Mitchell’s locked up now, too.  Of course, it’s always possible someone else was also involved.  The corrections officers obviously want to know.  I mean, if there are other folks involved in the escape, they need to be found. 

What to do?

We know what they did at Gitmo.  There’s a model.  But waterboarding requires so many supplies.  (You know, water and boards.)  Not everyone has those handy.  Ah, but the COs do have fists and feet.  So here they come.  At you, an innocent inmate (innocent of involvement with the escape, that is) regardless of whether the guy two cells over is also innocent.  Doesn’t matter.

OK, at least they had a reason.  They were trying to beat a confession out of you. 

Now imagine that you’re an inmate and, oh, what the hell.  They just beat you for no apparent reason.

Cause why the hell not?

And so you complain.  About the brutality.

And some reporter asks the governor.  Andrew Cuomo.  Man who wants to have the Attorney General rather than the local DA go after cops who murder unarmed black guys for no apparent reason.  Decent.  Catholic.  Democrat.

                  Is there a problem with brutality in prisons?

And he says.

Well, state prisons have brutal people in them. So, unless you call that a brutality problem, no.

To which the reporter says

And then explains that no, no, no,

I was asking if the COs are brutal.

And Governor Cuomo, son of Mario, explains that of course not.

They have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt. So, I think they're doing a good job.

Because if they don’t beat the hell out of prisoners for no good reason . . . .

Sigh.

Law of Rule.