It seems I find myself caught up in argu­ments that are sud­denly rem­i­nis­cent of an iden­ti­cal argu­ment – well, not exactly iden­ti­cal, not exactly déjà vu, “I’ve been here before” – but where the cho­rus seems to sound like, “and if you didn’t the con­clu­sion last time, you’re not going to like it this time.” The issue at hand: Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian clergy dis­cussing when to “sep­a­rate” some­one from the full­ness of the church – the sacra­men­tal life – when they are homosexual.

I have watched indi­vid­u­als “admin­is­ter,” “dis­pense,” “ren­der,” and “mete out” jus­tice for many years; begin­ning with my par­ent & grand­mother, other sig­nif­i­cant (and a few “not-so-significant) rel­a­tives, babysit­ters, those under a gen­eral clas­si­fi­ca­tion “adults” (e.g. “What are you kids going? Stop it!”), parish priest, teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, “offi­cials.” employ­ers, law enforce­ment, courts, judges, and prison per­son­nel. While I am sure there are many “ratio­nale & jus­ti­fi­ca­tions,” pri­mar­ily I have heard its inten­tion to be instruc­tive and reha­bil­i­ta­tive (“You have to learn these things”) in order to func­tion socially; puni­tive, as a fre­quent sub-category of instruc­tion, but as likely to be a “reparation/penalty” and pun­ish­ment; and finally, as means of separating/segregating you from soci­ety for the pro­tec­tion of soci­ety – with the occa­sional adden­dum, “and to pro­tect you.” Occa­sion­ally it is pos­tur­ing, and on even rarer occa­sion, it is sub­stan­tially mis­guided and harmful.

I have a strong opin­ion that this final aspect – separating/segregating an indi­vid­ual from the social or spir­i­tual con­text in which they are, in fact, defined, is an awe­some respon­si­bil­ity for the applier of such jus­tice, and the man­ner and process of such a deci­sion must be trans­par­ent and account­able to both the soci­ety and to the indi­vid­ual involved. And those with­out the fun­da­men­tal courage to do so, in my mind, are unwor­thy of the author­ity of such an imposition.

I was stand­ing at the recep­tion desk, look­ing to see who had checked in to see me. As usual, the assigned staff sat at two desks fac­ing each other, while the “escort offi­cers” casu­ally walked around, frisk­ing patients as they entered, col­lect­ing ID’s and appoint­ment slips. I sat down behind the super­viz­ing offi­cer at the desk, and almost imme­di­ately, a ther­apy group con­cluded and 15 or so men were nosily pick­ing up their ID’s and hav­ing their appoint­ment slips signed in order to go home. If a patient hap­pened to live on the same yard as the psych unit, he is just allowed to leave, but the oth­ers are gath­ered into groups, frisked, and escorted by CO’s to their respec­tive yards. Within a few more min­utes, another group con­cluded, oth­ers were arriv­ing for a group, all were con­verged, impa­tient, loud, frisked as they entered, frisked as they left, turn­ing in papers as they arrived, col­lect­ing papers as they left.

Wad­ing his way back through the crowd, one young man approached the desk and was look­ing at the ID’s spread out in front of the super­viz­ing offi­cer. “I for­got my ID when I left. Can I get it back?” The CO at the desk asked, “What’s your name?” The patient told him, the offi­cer picked up his ID and said, “Go have a seat.” “Why? I just for­got my ID. I got my time on the yard now. Can I just have my ID? I just got out of group.” “I said go have a seat.” I stood there con­fused by what has hap­pen­ing, and I actu­ally was amazed at the young man’s restraint. With­out react­ing, he walked over and sat down on the long line of benches and patients.

Approx­i­mately 5 more min­utes passed, the pop­u­la­tion at the door was con­sid­er­ably thinned out and all the offi­cers began to sit down. The young man got up from the bench and approached the desk. “Can I get my ID now? I just got out of group and want to go to the yard.” “Didn’t I tell you to take a seat?” “Yeah but…” “Go sit down.” Frus­trated and mum­bling, the young man went back to the benches. Another 5 min­utes, all the entries & exit­ing had con­cluded, and the young man was up and pac­ing. When the CO noticed the pac­ing, he yelled out, “You had bet­ter sit down like I told you.” Another 5 or so and the young man started slowly mak­ing his way back to the desk. “Why you doin’ this to me, man? I just for­got my ID. Why can’t I go? I didn’t do any­thing to you, man.” “Do you want me to put you in a cage, or are you gonna’ go and sit down and shut up like I told you?” Some­one already in a cage yelled out, “Why you messin’ with him, man? That ain’t right.” Point­ing to one, “You, shut up,” and the other, “You, go sit down, now!”

The other offi­cers see what’s hap­pen­ing and they are angry. But it’s prison, and they can’t sup­port the inmate against the offi­cer, so they do the next best thing. They get up and leave. I said, “Isn’t that enough?” The CO turned toward me and said, “when I get his doc­tor to let him go, I’ll let him go.” But he made no effort to do any­thing, and I looked at patient, then and I looked the offi­cer and left to see my next patient, feel­ing very angry. About 45 min­utes later, as I walked my patient out, there was the same young man, now in the cage. He was fully esca­lated, yelling obscen­i­ties, and being com­pletely ignored by other CO’s, many of whom did not know what had tran­spired ear­lier. I asked the super­viz­ing CO as to who was the young man’s doc­tor. He stared at me for a moment, then told me the doctor’s name. I walked to the back and informed the doc­tor I needed to dis­miss his patient so he could go home. “Why’s he still here? What hap­pened?” All I said was, “Trust me on this. I’ll take care of it.” I walked out, picked up the ID and said to the CO, “I spoke to his Dr. and I’m send­ing him home.” The CO started, “But he…” I leaned in into his face, “OPEN the door.” I stood at the cage and put the kid’s ID through the port: “Don’t you say one word. Just go home and chill.” He nod­ded his head.

As I was leav­ing later, the desk offi­cer casu­ally said, “Have a good week­end,” to which I did not respond. On the whole, I inter­pret this entire episode, though par­tic­u­larly offen­sive, to be a clear abuse of power and intim­i­da­tion, but was pos­tur­ing, nonethe­less. It is ugly. It reflects very poorly on the sys­tem and the indi­vid­u­als entrusted by the sys­tem to admin­is­trate, even at the low­est lev­els; but it is also endemic. And there is sig­nif­i­cantly worse to be had.


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