Story Archive

TV Is Bad for You Too

Queensland (Australia) Corrective Services is reviewing its policy allowing prisoners to have TVs in their cells, for which they pay A$2 (US$1.86) per week. The review is happening after the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre had to replace 425 sets and repair another 131 within a year. “Most of the damage is caused by prisoners using the electrics to light cigarettes,” said QCS Commissioner Marlene Morison. “Matches and lighters are banned and smoking in the cells is prohibited.” Prison officials tried banning TVs for those who damaged them, but those prisoners would simply force them away from other prisoners. “They do have a fairly rigid structure within the prison itself. There is a pecking order,” explained James Cook University criminologist Dr. Mark David Chong. Banning TVs altogether also wouldn’t work. “If they don’t ensure that they allow basic human rights it makes it difficult to control the population,” Chong said. “Prisoner movements and rights groups have been quite prominent to make sure they’re not treating them like they’re not human beings.” (MS/Cairns Post) ...Kids, pay attention: your TV is now a “basic human right,” so your parents can’t take it away.
Original Publication Date: 06 October 2013
This story is in True’s book collections, in Volume 20.

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