Some prisoners at Rikers do a thing called “splashing” where they fling bodily fluids at corrections officers. You know, like Miggs in Silence Of the Lambs.
The Department of Corrections unveiled a proposed budget yesterday that calls for $733,248 for forensic testing to “test department uniforms as a result of splashing incident,” the Observer reports. Splashing guards with bodily fluids is a felony, and getting forensic confirmation of the presence of bodily fluids will allow the DOC to increase the penalty to the inmate.
Apparently it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to determine if something is shit or blood or jizz or whatever. And apparently adding to the sentence the prisoners are already serving is the best way to deal with this disgusting behavior, rather than providing them with mental health treatment. Seems to me like there are better ways to handle this than punitively, since someone who does this is either mentally ill and/or protesting to get attention. But I’ve also never had bodily fluids thrown at me like that. And forensic testing is probably a better option than convincing the splasher to swallow his own tongue.
(Photo: peterkreder)
