Sun Editorial:
'No-contact" at DOC

In prison lore, correctional officers are said to sometimes shout out "Dead man walking!" when a death row inmate is being escorted from place to place. These days, Department Corrections officials seem to be doing their best to render condemned inmates dead-for-all-practical-purposes long before the execution actually takes place.

Under consideration is a series of changes that seem designed to do little more than make life even more miserable for those most miserable of all prison inmates; those awaiting their date with the executioner. The DOC wants to impose a "no-contact" rule that will prohibit physical contact - a hug, or even a handshake - between a condemned man and a wife, child or relative.

Why? Ostensibly, it is being done for the safety of correctional officers and to prevent contraband from changing hands. But reportedly, prison officials can show no substantial evidence that contact visits have resulted in abuses. Indeed, some argue that denying inmates human the comfort of even minimal human contact with loved ones will only make them even more dangerous and more likely to strike out against correctional officers in anger and frustration.

In that regard, perhaps the most revealing comment of all comes from DOC spokesman C. J. Drake, who says that personal contact visits are, after all, primarily intended to encourage inmates to rehabilitate themselves.

"For death row inmates, what's the purpose," he poses.

In other words, these people are already dead for all practical purposes. Why bother to even treat them like human beings?

This policy is as wrong-headed as it is potentially dangerous. But it's not surprising that corrections officials were unimpressed this week when death row inmates launched an apparent hunger strike over the policy change.

"It's not causing us any problems," Drake told reporters.

And why should it? Who cares if men who are already deemed dead for all practical purposes eat, sleep or simply rot away in their cells? In the corrections bureaucracy, death row inmates are to be processed, filed away and forgotten until execution day arrives.