If I had been on the staff, I would have been screaming bloody murder on behalf of the prisoners as well as myself. OTOH, there is also reporting that about 40% of Galveston residents stayed despite the "mandatory" evacuation order.
The death toll is going to be horrific, if the Weather Service is at all right.
Yeah, and in addition, prison staff are usually unionized and have the ability to push back on things like that. Surprising they agreed to stay, rather than just pulling everyone including the prisoners.
Cheryl, I don't think you would have been on the staff in the first place. Neither would I. (Even now, when I'm looking hard for work, I'm not applying for jobs in the munitions industry.) People inclined to be sympathetic towards prisoners rarely work in prisons. As far as I can tell, staff training and formal protocols tends to encourage staff members to regard prisoners are a dangerous mass of Them, and discourage thinking about them as individual human beings.
It looks like the only thing keeping the death toll down is the fact that the worst of the storm struck the island at an angle, rather than being a direct hit. That's important. It means the coast flooded badly, but "inland" neighborhoods only flooded a few feet deep. I don't know if the jail is close to the coast. I expect it will take days for anyone to figure out exactly what happened.
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cherydactyl) wrote2008-09-13 07:47 am
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The death toll is going to be horrific, if the Weather Service is at all right.
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Yeah, and in addition, prison staff are usually unionized and have the ability to push back on things like that. Surprising they agreed to stay, rather than just pulling everyone including the prisoners.
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It looks like the only thing keeping the death toll down is the fact that the worst of the storm struck the island at an angle, rather than being a direct hit. That's important. It means the coast flooded badly, but "inland" neighborhoods only flooded a few feet deep. I don't know if the jail is close to the coast. I expect it will take days for anyone to figure out exactly what happened.
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It's a fair point. The lack of compassion is one reason jail or prison guard is *not* right livelihood for me.
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