Week of October 30: Bar Rapping

[Jims]

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Bar Rapping

For those prisons whose cells have bars rather than doors with windows, the guards are required to “rap the bars” once a day to make sure the inmates haven’t sawed their way through the bars during the night.

Sounds reasonable enough, right? Except, they do this early in the morning and some of them do it with so much force that paint chips fly off the bars into the cells and land on the sleeping inmates! This happens and it happens quite often.

It happens because the guards aren’t content with just rapping the bars to make sure they haven’t been tampered with. If they have been tampered with, they thud instead of ring, much like a piece of porcelain or pottery that has been cracked. The older officers for the most part aren’t so aggressive with their rapping. The younger ones, who (like the younger and more aggressive inmates) are all machismo and no consideration/no brain, take great delight in rapping these bars early in the morning as loudly and as roughly as possible, thus, chipping the paint off the bars. Sometimes the bars are rapped so forcefully that the chips are propelled to the very back of the cells!

In the overall scheme of things is the bar rapping problem that important? No, probably not. It is just one more example of harassment. The inmates hate it. It is gratingly annoying and a rude way to be awakened in an environment where sound sleep comes dear. I question (truly question because I don’t know the answer) whether enough bars could be sawed through during the night to allow an inmate to escape. I don’t doubt for a minute the ingenuity of those inmates who are locked down 23 hours a day at the max prisons. If one was so inclined, I’m sure he could fashion a tool that would saw through those old iron bars. But would it be easy? And could it really be accomplished in a few hours?

The bars get rapped every day. The science of random patterns would show that IF the bars cannot be sawed through in a single night, then it wouldn’t be necessary to rap the bars every single morning, and therefore, a random pattern of rapping would accomplish the same thing. Some weeks, rap early in the morning, some weeks, rap at night. Some weeks rap two days in a row. Some weeks, rap every two days, etc. And then, too, if they’re rapping every morning because their theory is that the inmates could be sawing through the bars during the night, then perhaps a better solution would be for the 11-7 shift gallery officers to walk the galleries more often and more randomly, and to pay closer attention.

When was the last escape from a maximum-security prison CELL? I think the last escape from Menard involved an inmate escaping with the garbage truck during his work detail. What is the history of inmates escaping from their cells? I don’t know. Maybe it is a huge problem.

Here’s the other part of why bar rapping so religiously makes no sense. Because so many officers rap so hard and chip off the paint, the bars constantly have to be repainted! What a huge waste of money and labor in an industry that’s hurting for both. 

Again, it’s not a huge problem in an environment full of huge important problems. But it was worth an editorial.

 ^%$#

[Amy]

How sad!  I have low tolerance to noise. It would drive me nuts or cause me a heart attack.
My friends daughter is slightly Autistic, she seems to receives a shock everytime she hears a loud noise and poor thing reacts to it with a severe panic attack that almost looks like a seizure.
Most of Our guys live with so much noise as it is, daily and nightly.
Then there is the opposite, the ones that have to live with noise.
But I'm sure that even them can live without this RAPPING/CLANKING NOISE.

All this does is keep them wired, no wonder they so easily loose it.
This appears to me to be emotional/physical/ pschological abuse.

I can just hear IDOC say, oh but they deserve it. These appointed/paid Gods.

[Sister]

Thanks for that article, Jims........I didn't know about bar rapping, but I do agree with you,  it sounds to me like is just another way they can make the inmates miserable. :-(

[Jims]

Anytime I ask J what the worst thing is about being in prison, he immediately says THE NOISE. I don't know how they manage to sleep, especially guys who nap during the day when there's constant commotion.

[Scout]

Most places sell foam earplugs which helps somewhat with the noise.

[momof6grandmaof9]

Hi! I'm new to the prison system and have a son in Menards. I have already learned that the guards are very much control freaks and seem to get off on having power.Being able to tell others what and when to do things seems to rule thier lives.

[Jims]

Yes, that is true. One of the problems seems to be that Menard, located way down yonder in the boonies, is not monitored like Stateville and Pontiac. The guards and their band-of-brothers shit get away with murder. Quite literally.

[Sister]

Anytime I ask J what the worst thing is about being in prison, he immediately says THE NOISE. I don't know how they manage to sleep, especially guys who nap during the day when there's constant commotion.

My brother would definitely agree with that.  He has always been a private person to begin with.   He wears ear plugs all of the time.......drowns out some of the noise.