My initial reaction was doubtlessly the same as many others when I heard about Florida spending $100,000 to upgrade 1,500 televisions to accommodate the national switch from analog to digital broadcasts.
During such dire budget straits, we’re spending $100,000 for what? If prisoners don’t have television, too bad. Let’s call it part of the punishment. Don’t want to do the time? Don’t want to miss “Boston Legal”? Don’t do the crime. Next case.
But I also hearken back to a tour I once took of Tampa’s Orient Road Jail. We saw the televisions, which seemed to reinforce the label of the “Orient Road Country Club.”
What we found out is that those TVs are more for the guards than the prisoners. The guards will tell you the TVs can help make the prisoners more malleable and manageable. Which equates to safety.
That’s especially relevant now with burgeoning prison populations and personnel cuts creating ever higher prisoner-to-guard ratios.