Chapter 2

Tuesday, October 19, 9:02 a.m.

“You’re late,” the frowning woman sitting behind the counter said after looking at the driver’s license Amanda Prescott had handed her.

“I’m sorry. The taxi I arranged arrived late,” Mrs. Prescott replied.

She had instructed the taxi driver to deliver her to the front of the Main Library and walked the three blocks to the County Courthouse building. She didn’t want anyone seeing her in front of the sheriff’s department headquarters and she certainly didn’t want anyone seeing her going through the entrance for Alternative Corrections System “participants.”

She still refused to believe that this could be happening to HER. She was, after all, the wife of a lawyer for the second-largest property developer in the state. Surely, she thought, someone would recognize how ... inappropriate this was.

The woman behind the counter took a sheet of paper and slid its top into a gray, metal device on the counter that made a metallic “clunk”.

She pushed the paper toward Mrs. Prescott along with a cheap, plastic pen and instructed, “Read this and sign it.”

The sheet of paper was almost identical to the letter she’d received from ACS three weeks earlier:

Amanda Evelyn Prescott

2647 Primrose Lane.

Your session with the Alternative Corrections System is scheduled for:

Tuesday, October 19 at 8:40 a.m. You will receive six strokes.

County Courthouse Building

35 State Street.

Failure to comply with these instructions may result in an increase to your sentence.

1) You must sign in at the ACS admitting desk BEFORE your scheduled check-in time of: _ _ 8:40 a.m. _ _ Use the entrance on the east side of the County Courthouse Building at 35 State Street. Be sure to allow extra time to go through the security checkpoint.

2) You must provide a photo ID when you check in.

3) Appearing for your session under the influence of alcohol or drugs will result in an automatic increase to your sentence.

4) You must follow all instructions by ACS staff. Verbal abuse of the ACS staff will result in an increase to your sentence. Physical abuse of the staff will result in criminal charges.

5) It is strongly recommended that you not plan to drive after your session. Your session will be completed 90 minutes after your scheduled check in time.

6) It is strongly recommended that you not eat anything for three hours before your session and not drink anything, except for small sips, for two hours before your session.

7) A locker will be provided in a private changing room for your possessions. The key for the locker will have a stretchable coil wristband that you will wear on your arm during your session. Be sure to leave the key in the lock of the locker when your session is completed.

8) You will be provided with a gown and rubber shower shoes to wear during your session. ALL personal clothing and other possessions must be stored in the locker during your session.

9) All jewelry except for wedding rings, engagement rings and stud earrings must be removed before your session. We recommend you leave all other jewelry at home.

10) All phones must be turned off while you are inside the building. No other electronic devices are permitted. Use of phones while in the building will result in an increase to your sentence.

11) No bags or other containers of ANY kind may be brought into the facility.

12) A licensed physician will conduct a brief physical examination prior to your session and after your session.

All Alternative Corrections Sessions are recorded by audio and video. These recordings will NEVER be released to the public. The recordings will be used ONLY to adjudicate allegations of inappropriate conduct by ACS staff and reports of non-compliance by ACS participants.

AGAIN, FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE INSTRUCTIONS MAY RESULT IN AN INCREASE TO YOUR SENTENCE.

The only differences between the letter she’d received and the paper she was holding were a time stamp in blue ink on the top reading “9:02:08”and that only that day’s session date and time was listed.

She signed her name on the line on the bottom and slid the paper and pen back to the woman. The woman handed her a white plastic card the size of a playing card with the number “14” on it. The card was attached to a neon-green lanyard.

“You will be addressed by this number in public areas instead of by your name. This is not meant to be de-humanizing. We use this procedure to maintain participants’ privacy,” the woman said with an emotionless tone that indicated she had repeated the same words hundreds of times. (She had.) “Take a seat. Someone will be here for shortly. Go to them when they call this number and follow their instructions.”

Mrs. Prescott put the lanyard around her neck and sat on a plastic chair, adopting the perfect posture her mother always insisted upon and with her hands folded in her lap. She did her best not to look around or appear nervous.

Another woman checked in while she was waiting. Finally, when the round, institutional clock on the wall showed the time was 9:15, she returned to the counter.

“Excuse me. When will someone come for me?”

“Ma’am, we function on a very tight schedule here. That’s why we are so insistent that people be on time. Not only does someone being late inconvenience every participant after them, but it also costs the taxpayers money in overtime.

“Fortunately for you, the participant scheduled after you arrived early. So we were able to move her into your 8:40 spot and move you into her 9:25 spot. If we had needed to reschedule your session, your sentence would have been increased significantly.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize,” Mrs. Prescott said. “I’ll need to re-schedule my ride. May I make a phone call here, or must I step outside?”

“We prohibit the use of electronic devices for the obvious reason that we don’t want anyone taking pictures or video of other participants. We take confidentiality very seriously here.

“But I can see that you’re in a bind. So if you’re willing to make your call here where I can watch you and turn so I can see the screen of your phone, go ahead. But someone will be here to take you inside in ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Prescott said. “I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate the fact that the rules were for our benefit and not just for yours.”

She quickly made her call to the taxi company to move her pickup to 45 minutes later than the previously scheduled time.

A few minutes after she turned off her phone and sat down again, a woman opened the door to the left of the counter and called out, “Number 14.”

Mrs. Prescott stood, and lifted the plastic card hanging around her neck to show the number.

“Come with me please,” the woman said, holding the door open.

The two walked down an institutional green corridor. Mrs. Prescott had noticed that the woman was dressed the same as the woman at the counter, wearing navy blue cotton slacks and a light blue, short-sleeved uniform shirt. The button-up shirt had an embroidered version of a badge above the left pocket, where a metal badge normally would be.

Mrs. Prescott could see that the woman was tall, obviously fit, and appeared to be in her late 20s. The woman behind the counter, by contrast, had been heavy and looked like she was at least 50 years old. The young woman had a round face and strawberry blonde hair. Her eyebrows matched her hair and became almost invisible against the woman’s golden tan when the light was right. Amanda found her appearance of lacking eyebrows to be strangely disconcerting.

Mrs. Prescott slowed so she could see the young woman without looking over her right shoulder. “Are you ... a police officer?” she hesitatingly asked.

“No,” the woman said as she slowed to remain behind Mrs. Prescott. “Those of us in light blue blouses are corrections officers. We’re trained to handle prisoners in the county jail and ACS participants, not to work out in public and investigate crimes.

“Please face forward and continue walking. We’re on a schedule,” she added.

For the officer, following her training for moving prisoners -- for example keeping the person she knew only as “Number 14” in front of her and away from the weapon on her right side -- was something she did without conscious thought. She carried a stun gun clipped to her belt that could subdue a prisoner with a high voltage electric shock. She also had a “panic button” on her belt next to the stun gun. It was similar to a civilian “screamer” that gave off a piercing, 120 db siren. Her version though, also sent an electronic signal that she was in trouble and gave her location.

No corrections officer had been attacked by an ACS participant in the eleven months it had been running. But, as the officers constantly were reminded by their supervisors, that just meant was that each day was one day closer to the first time.

There had been instances where male and female participants had panicked as their caning became imminent. They would sit down on the floor or grab a door frame and refuse to move. They were treated with compassion – the first time -- and allowed to reschedule or choose to face criminal charges.

The two passed a corridor that branched to their left before coming to a set of swinging double doors.

“Proceed through the doors and down the stairs,” the corrections officer instructed. Ten feet beyond the doors were six steps leading down to a concrete block corridor, painted the same institutional green, that turned left.

Past the turn were shelves mounted securely on the wall. The top shelf held stacks of dark blue, folded cloth. The second shelf held the same but in dark green. The faces of the shelves were labeled with what Mrs. Prescott realized were sizes, from ‘S’ to ‘XXXL’. The bottom two shelves held stacks of rubber shower shoes.

The corrections officer glanced at Mrs. Prescott and took one of the green folded cloths from the stack with an ‘M’ under it.

“Shoe size?” she asked.

“Women’s size nine.”

She took a pair of the shoes from where the shelf was labeled ‘M’ in green and ‘S’ in blue.

“Before you ask,” the corrections officer said, “everything is washed and sanitized between uses using the same standards that hospitals must meet.”

She handed the cloth and the shower shoes to Mrs. Prescott and said, “Proceed down the hall.”

The left-hand wall was blank except for red-and-white signs identifying the direction to the emergency exit. The opposite wall had metal doors, also painted institutional green, with black numbers stenciled on them.

“Stop there,” the offer said, pointing to a spot on the floor beyond a door with a number “5” stenciled on it. The corrections officer pulled the door open and gestured for Mrs. Prescott to precede her. Then she stepped into the room and allowed the door to close behind her. When Mrs. Prescott turned to look at her, her demeanor became even more impersonal.

“Please listen to these instructions carefully and follow them exactly.”

She glanced at another institutional clock, this one mounted so high on the wall that it was touching the ceiling.

“The door will remain unlocked for safety reasons. DO NOT leave this room unaccompanied unless you hear the fire alarm. It’s a very loud klaxon that can’t be mistaken for anything else.”

When Mrs. Prescott looked confused, the officer sighed and tried to imitate the sound. “Eah ... Eah ... Eah ... It sounds like that, but much louder. If you hear that, leave the room and follow the signs to the emergency exit. But if you leave this room unaccompanied for any other reason, your sentence will be doubled automatically.

“The time is now 9:33. A licensed physician will come to examine you at 9:45. The doctor may be male or female, but they are doctors and you will follow their instructions. The examination will consist of a check of your heart, your lungs and your blood pressure. He or she also will examine your buttocks to ensure that the skin is healthy.

“Your caning is scheduled for 10:10. I will return at 10:05 to take you there. If I am late, remain in this room and wait for me.

“Both deputies conducting the caning will be female. They will confirm your name to ensure that you do not receive someone else’s sentence. Those two officers and the officer who checked you in are the only people who will know your name.

“After your identity is confirmed one officer will secure you to a bench so that you cannot move. This is for your safety, to ensure that you are not inadvertently struck where the cane could cause injury. The other officer will administer the strokes.”

Mrs. Prescott could feel herself beginning to tremble. This really was happening to her.

“When I leave you should undress completely and pull the gown on over your head with the ties at your back. Do not undo the ties. The gown is designed to preserve your modesty while allowing your buttocks to be bared for the cane.

“Place all your clothing and possessions in the locker and take the key with you, putting the plastic coil around your arm,” she said, gesturing to single, tall locker standing against the wall opposite the door. A key attached to a neon-green plastic coil was in the lock. “The only things you should take with you are the gown, the shower shoes, the lanyard with your number and the key.

“It is strongly suggested that you try to use the toilet. There have been instances were a participant’s bladder or colon have voided during their caning.

“When your session is completed, the doctor will examine your buttocks to ensure that the skin was not broken. If the skin has been broken, he or she will treat it with antiseptic and a dressing. Then I will return you to this room. You will have 20 minutes to compose yourself before I come to take you to the exit. You may shower if you wish, using the towels hanging beside the shower. The hairbrush on the sink is new and is for you to use. It is strongly suggested that if you shower, you keep the water as cool as you can stand it.

“Everything in this room is sanitized between participants, again using the same standards that hospitals are required to meet, so you don’t need to worry about catching a disease. Before you exit, leave your gown, your shower shoes, the hairbrush and any towels you use on the floor in front of the shower stall.

“After you are dressed in your clothes, put the lanyard with your number around your neck. I will collect it at the exit.

“Do you understand these instructions?” the corrections officer asked.

“Y-y-yes,” Mrs. Prescott stammered.

“Then please get ready. The doctor will be here in...” she glanced again at the clock, “11 minutes.”

The corrections officer turned and left without another word. Once the room’s door closed behind her, she keyed the microphone clipped to the button panel of her uniform shirt and said, “The participant is in Changing Room 5. I’m taking my earlier participant to the exit. I’ll advise when East side is clear.”

She heard the reply in her inconspicuous earpiece, “Copy, East side. When you advise that East side is clear I’ll return my participant to Changing Room 2 after her session.”

The officer, whose name was Gretchen Schneider, responded “Copy, West side. I will advise when East side is clear.”

Gretchen was one of two corrections officers working that morning to move ACS participants from place to place in a choreographed dance that kept participants from seeing each other. Gretchen was working on the “East” side while another corrections officer, Mary Kowalski, was working on the “West” side.

As the Alternative Corrections System was working its way through the courts, dozens of surveys were conducted and reams of research were produced regarding Americans’ attitudes and opinions about corporal punishment for adults.

One finding that caught the notice of people setting up ACS programs was that a significant number – between 23 and 37 percent of people, depending on how the survey question was worded -- said they would prefer to risk a trial and spend time in jail rather than have their friends and co-workers know that that they had been caned “like schoolchildren”. As a result, anonymity for participants became a priority when procedures for the programs were put in place.

In addition to ensuring anonymity inside the County Courthouse Building, the entrances and exits used by participants and staff were identified by prominent signs as “security zones”. Would-be photographers were warned that they risked an up-close-and-personal experience with Alternative Correction if they took pictures or video anywhere near those areas.

The route Officer Schneider had used for Mrs. Prescott led to the “East side” changing rooms, numbered four through six. Turning down the left corridor just before the double doors led to an identical set of double doors. Beyond the doors was another short stairway, shelves containing gowns and shower shoes and the “West side” changing rooms, numbered one through three. Between rooms three and four was a short corridor, as long as the changing rooms were deep, that led to the “Session” room where the canings took place.

The “Session” room and the changing rooms had been constructed in what had been the maintenance area for the sheriff’s department’s vehicles. The department had outgrown the space. While the ACS’s proposed procedures had been making their way through the federal courts, the area was remodeled and a new, larger vehicle maintenance area had been built as part of a new parking structure behind the courthouse building.

Caning “sessions” were scheduled 45 minutes apart, even though they could be completed without hurry in 30 minutes. The extra time was necessary for two correctional officers to deal with four participants at different stages of the procedure while ensuring that no participant ever encountered another participant.

Officer Kowalski would move her participant from the Session room to a changing room as soon as Officer Schneider reported that the participant she knew only as “Number 9”, who currently was “composing herself” in Changing Room 4 following her session at 8:50, had gone through the exit. She’d then return to Changing Room 5 to take “Number 14” to her “session”.

When Officer Schneider reported that participant “Number 14” was in the Session Room Officer Kowalski would take her participant, who’d arrived at 8:40, to the exit and then head toward the check in station. She would collect her 10:00 participant after Officer Schneider returned “Number 14” to her changing room to “compose herself”.

The process reminded Gretchen of a comedy routine from the old “Scooby-Doo” cartoons, where a person emerges from a door on one side of a corridor and races across the hall and through a door on the other side that closes an instant before another person opens a door and rushes across the hall to a different door, again just before yet another door opens. The sequence repeats itself as one character after another races back and forth.

Gretchen knocked on the door for Changing Room 4 and entered. The knock wasn’t necessary, but Gretchen preferred to be courteous. The woman inside appeared to be in her late 20s with straight, shoulder-length brown hair. She was large-framed but not fat and was several inches shorter than Gretchen’s height of five foot, eight inches.

The woman was dressed. Her eyes were red-rimmed eyes and she was moving carefully, but she appeared ready to face the world.

“Ready?” Officer Schneider asked.

The woman nodded.

“Then come this way, please.” Officer Schneider backed out, held the door open and said, “Turn left and we’ll go back up the stairs.”

The woman looked back toward the corridor that led to the “Session” room and shuddered slightly before turning and heading to the short stairway. She struggled on the stairs as the skin of her abused backside stretched when she lifted her leg to the next step and then compressed as she straightened it again. Like most of the participants Officer Schneider had escorted, she needed to use the handrail to pull herself up the six steps.

Past the double doors, Officer Schneider instructed the woman to turn right and go down the corridor that led to the “West Side”. Halfway down the corridor, on the left, was a set of elevator doors painted the same institutional green color as the walls. On the officer’s right wrist was a light blue, silicone bracelet with an imbedded electronic chip. She touched the bracelet against a circular plate and the doors opened immediately.

“Inside, please. All the way to the back,” she ordered.

Officer Schneider moved to place her back against the left-hand wall, so the participant was in her line of sight. She pushed the button on the panel for “2” and the doors closed. When the elevator stopped, the doors opened to a small vestibule that had a door with a push bar on the left wall. Officer Schneider gestured for the woman to proceed her to the door.

“On the other side of this door is a corridor with public restrooms. On the far end of the corridor is a bank of elevators that will take you down to the main entrance. You can blend in with everyone else and no one will know why you were here.

“Your number card, please.”

The woman lifted the lanyard over her head and handed the card to the officer, who nodded. Officer Schneider said nothing else as the woman pushed the bar and passed through the door. Any words of farewell, like “Have a nice day,” or “Thanks for visiting,” would have been completely inappropriate for the situation.

Gretchen put the card and lanyard in her pocket, keyed her microphone, and said, “My participant has exited. East side is clear.”

Officer Kowalski responded, “Copy East side is clear. I’ll retrieve my participant from her session and will advise when West side is clear.”

“Copy,” Gretchen said.

Usually, Gretchen would take the elevator back to the first floor and relax a few minutes in the as-yet-unused Changing Room 6 while a custodian cleaned Changing Room 4. She’d wait there for Officer Kowalski to announce that her second participant of the day had been moved back to her changing room following her session and that her next participant had been brought from the entrance to a changing room.

This morning though, Gretchen had another errand.

Gretchen grew up in a police family, with her father, both grandfathers, an aunt and two uncles “on the job”. But she decided against following in her family’s tradition when she was 12, after she attended the funeral of her mother’s brother. Her uncle had been shot and killed when he intervened in a confrontation between two career criminals.

Gretchen had been an excellent athlete in basketball and track in high school but an average student. As she neared graduation, she had no idea what she wanted to do. It was her aunt who suggested she consider a career as a corrections officer, telling her she could advance in the job with only an associate degree from the local community college.

Her aunt admitted that dealing with prisoners occasionally could be dangerous. But, she pointed out, so was taking the freeway and commuting to an accounting job every day.

Gretchen was hired as a corrections officer for the County Detention Center, which housed prisoners sentenced to less than six months and prisoners awaiting trial who weren’t allowed bail or couldn’t afford it. She began working only a few months before the county decided to institute its own ACS program.

The director and board overseeing the implementation of the ACS program, after negotiations with the unions representing the sheriff’s deputies and the correctional officers, decided that county correctional officers would move the participants and sheriff’s deputies would administer the canings. Working shifts for the ACS would be voluntary. Most of the officers and deputies would work two, five-hour shifts for the ACS program each week, and they would be paid a $12.00 per hour bonus for doing it.

The application process included meticulous examinations of their work records for any kind of misconduct. Applicants with clean records were given psychological screenings to ensure that deputies and officers in the program were beyond reproach -- neither cruel nor corruptible. The screenings also were intended to select for individuals with the emotional stability to remain detached and become neither sympathetic nor hostile to participants.

One requirement that gave many applicants second thoughts was that they, themselves, would have to receive a caning. The correctional officers and the deputy sheriffs administering the canings were required to take the maximum number of strokes – eight for females and ten for males.

Consultants had presented analyses showing that for officers in ACS to be most effective, an abstract understanding of the process was not enough. They had to KNOW -- from direct experience – both how devastating a caning was and also that it caused no lasting harm.

The consultants pointed out that the requirement was the same as requiring officers who carried tasers or pepper spray to experience being tasered and pepper sprayed during their training.

Gretchen and her brother, who was two years younger, had been spanked growing up, but not often. The last, and worst time for Gretchen occurred when she was 16 and came home from a party with bloodshot eyes and smelling of marijuana smoke. That turned out to be a very bad idea for the child of a police officer, something her father emphasized by using his belt on her panty-clad bottom. The redness faded after a few days, but the lesson endured.

But her last spanking was gentle caresses compared to eight strokes from a cane wielded by a trained ACS deputy. Gretchen figured all the pains totaled together that she’d suffered from the rigorous fitness regimen and realistic self-defense training during her seven weeks at the correctional officer’s training academy didn’t match those two and a half minutes strapped to the “session” bench.

During the ASC training 20 female corrections officers spent two mornings taking turns walking each other and the 22 sheriff’s deputies through the entire process, from checking in through exiting, and giving their scripted instructions. Male officers received the same training in the afternoon.

On the second day, the officers acting as “participants” were instructed to resist in various ways. While this was happening the deputies practiced adjusting the correction bench and securing the “participant” in place and then releasing them.

Beginning on the third day, corrections officers and deputies were caned, four women in the morning and four men in the afternoons. Afterward the officers were allowed two days off with pay to recover. It simply wasn’t a good idea to have officers in less-than-optimal condition handling prisoners or working on the street.

Surprisingly, what someone jokingly dubbed “the training canings” turned out to be a bonding experience for the ACS officers. A genuine comaraderie developed from the shared experience they all endured. The corrections officers and deputies even began socializing on evenings after their shifts. That was something that rarely happened before the program.

Gretchen had just completed her errand when she heard in her earpiece, “This is West Side. West side is clear. My next participant is in Changing Room 3. I will take my earlier participant to the exit when you advise that East Side is clear.”

“Copy West Side is clear. I’m taking my participant to the Session room now. I will advise when East Side is clear,” Gretchen responded.

“Copy that,” came the reply.

Amanda Prescott sat facing the door in the white, molded-resin chair beside the locker. She thought it was a piece of tacky, discount-store patio furniture. Though similar in shape to inexpensive outdoor furniture, the chair actually cost $170 and was a custom item designed for prisons. It was lightweight enough that it couldn’t be an effective weapon. But it was virtually unbreakable and could support a 400-pound man.

Amanda was trying very hard to keep from crying at the idea that she was about to be “beaten like some dark-skinned savage.” This SHOULDN’T be happening to someone like her, she kept telling herself.

To her left was a stainless steel sink on a cylindrical stand that, to her horror, had a toilet bowl attached to the side facing the curtainless, walk-in shower.

She looked up at the clock and saw that the red-headed corrections officer would be coming for her at any time.

The doctor had left her five minutes earlier. He had looked like a she expected a doctor to look-- a middle aged white man, with short, greying hair. He even was wearing a white lab coat and had a stethoscope hanging from his neck.

His examination hadn’t been too bad at first. He took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and lungs. He asked whether she was taking any prescription medication and whether she’d had any injuries or surgeries in the previous six months.