The test of a civilization

Benton County’s sheriff upholds our honor

Monday, February 18, 2013

— CUB REPORTERS on the police beat quickly learn the way to talk in the jailhouse. If you’re there to report on a promising educational program, or doing a feature on the prison’s new menu, or just being escorted around a courthouse by a trusty, you soon find out that you don’t ask an inmate what he did to find himself a guest of the state. No, no. For said reporter would quickly hear something like: “You mean, what did they charge me with?”

You see, many of those serving jail time never did anything to anybody. Ever. And don’t you forget it. Dealing with, even interviewing, inmates can be an interesting experience. Sometimes funny. Sometimes sad. Sometimes hair raising.

We don’t envy those who work in jails and prisons full-time. Inmates have bad days every day. Their warders may be outnumbered many times over. And you’d suspect that least a fraction of those behind bars actually did something to deserve being there. So bless all those who go to work behind the clank of an iron gate. We wouldn’t change places with a prison guard, and we work in a newsroom.

All that said . . . .

A civil society doesn’t allow jailers to abuse the jailed. Any more than we’d allow a cop to pull you over for nothing, or a deputy to rough you up for looking at him funny. Those who serve and protect are to do just that. Serve and protect. That’s an order. From the rest of us.

So it’s hard to blame Kelley Cradduck, the sheriff in Benton County, for firing three jailers who were caught-on tape-taking down a prisoner. The video was disturbing even without sound. It seemed an inmate knocked on a cell-door window to get somebody’s attention, and then a handful of jailers charged him, took him down, and put him in a restraining chair. Minutes later, after the inmate had wiggled a leg free from one of the chair’s straps, more jailers came into the room. And one pepper-sprayed the man.

Pepper spray sounds bad enough in any situation, but imagine getting a mouthful-and an eyeful-with both hands tied down. It’s enough to make you cough thinking about it.

So after an investigation, the sheriff fired three people.

“You can’t restrain someone for knocking on a window,” the sheriff told the papers.

Not only that, but Sheriff Cradduck said it is never justifiable to pepper spray somebody who’s in restraints.

“We’re still a tough jail,” he said. “But we are going to be a professional one. That is the standard and I will not lower it.”

Good for him. We knew we endorsed him for a reason.

NO DOUBT inmates are going to get on their jailers’ nerves. Especially if the inmates are under the influence-and the inmate in this case might have been, according to reports. But that’s no reason for the video we saw. (You can find it all over the Internet.)

They say you can judge the quality of a civilization by how it treats the least of these-the poor, the disabled, the unborn child sentenced to death even before she is born, and, yes, the prisoner. In this episode at the Benton County jail, we failed the test of a civilized society.

It can’t be easy to work as a jailer. But the jailer needs to be competent and conscientious. And, as the sheriff said, professional. Even in the face of provocation.

A civil society demands it. And won’t put up with anything less. Neither, apparently, will certain sheriffs. Disappointing as the treatment of this prisoner was, the sheriff’s response to it was heartening. Thank you, sir. You’ve given us all hope, and upheld our honor. And civilized standards.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 02/18/2013