Read Online Blunt Impact by Lisa Black - Free Book Online Page B

needed a new jail. They already owned the land, so money trumped history.’
    ‘Not for the first time,’ Ian Bauer murmured.
    ‘But those aren’t them,’ Novosek said before he slumped to a stack of concrete blocks and pulled out a small box. ‘Those are the new ones. Cigarette?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ Theresa said. ‘What do you mean, new?’
    He sighed again. She got the feeling the man needed a vacation, or at least forty-eight straight hours of sleep. ‘Just how I got to thinking of them. The old ones protest our disrespect of the past. The new protestors think we have no respect for the present. This jail has a new design. I mean,
new
, as in never having been done in the history of the world.’
    ‘You’re using some new building technology—?’
    ‘No, no. Nothing radical about the actual structure, it’s just steel and concrete like anything else. I mean, some eggheads got together and decided that what causes the chronic failure in the rehabilitation of prison inmates is other inmates, and that the most danger to any inmate comes from other inmates. Fighting, shivving, rapes, settling scores left over from the outside – if they’re kept away from each other, that kind of stuff can’t happen. So they’re physically safer when isolated. Then the reason that rehabilitation falls short is that the mopes don’t learn skills for a constructive life, they learn skills to become better criminals. The same habits, the same gangs, the same occupations just transfer from outside to inside and back again. The only way to get them to build up enough of their own identity to be able to break away from all that is to give them a vacuum in which they finally have the freedom to think for themselves. I.e., isolation again. I’m quoting, understand. Nobody asked my opinion on the relative merits of social reform programs. I’m just building the building.’
    Theresa studied the group, which had now grown to six, spanning race, gender and age from a white-haired grandmotherly type to two men, one black, one white, who looked as if they could work as bouncers or perhaps extras on
The Wire
. Plus a person shaped like a tall barrel with hair to his (her?) waist. All were united in the evil stares they sent in her direction. ‘So the designers think the perfect prison is one where each prisoner is kept in solitary confinement for the duration of their sentence?’
    ‘As I said, I’m just building the building. The cells will be set up with two sections: a bedroom and a small exercise area. How they’re going to exercise without equipment, I don’t know. Supposedly they’re trying to design an indestructible treadmill as we speak.’
    ‘Complete isolation,’ Ian Bauer mused aloud.
    ‘Complete
physical
isolation. They’ll be able to hear each other and will be able to talk all they want. But never physical. Food will be delivered. Books, supplies, and temporary and highly monitored laptops will be brought to the cells. They’ll actually have more personal space than ever before but no common space. No cafeteria, no library, no prayer meetings. No exercise yard, which should reduce the number of murders to a fraction right there.’
    ‘Like a kennel,’ Theresa said, picturing where she had once had to leave Harry for a brief stay. ‘No wonder they’re protesting. The concrete block cell with a remotely operated door to an outside area. Shoving in dinner through a slot in the door.’
    ‘Exactly like a kennel. The blacks say the man has been trying to get them back in chains since 1865. The Hispanics say they’re treated like dogs everywhere in America and apparently that includes prisons. The whites say it’s barbaric to deny any human simple human interaction. I say maybe it’s more barbaric to toss a guy into a pit of snarling hyenas, but there’s no capital letters at the end of my name. I’m just building the building.’
    Theresa ran one thumbnail along her teeth. ‘So this patch of land was