Word: stun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...inmate. "Society has to take a real good look at this aging prison population and what's going to happen to them," says Fredric Rosemeyer, superintendent of Laurel Highlands, one of a new crop of prisons with geriatric wings equipped with oxygen generators and wheelchairs instead of handcuffs and stun guns...
Cruel? A belt that delivers a 50,000-volt shock (and a likely pool of urine in a crowded courtroom) probably fits that definition. Unusual? Maybe no more so than exploding neck collars or magnetic boots for prisoners -- but those devices were Hollywood inventions. Stun belts are real and in use today, and now Amnesty International, in a report released Tuesday, is saying the devices are a human rights violation that puts the criminal justice system of the United States right down there with Singapore...
...jails by prison guards, the possibilities for abuse are practically endless. The U.S. loves to lecture countries such as China and Malaysia on their human rights records, yet unlike most other Western countries it still has the death penalty. Is there a disconnect there? Maybe, maybe not. Stun belts, too, have their justifications, but the image -- the wave of the judge's hand, the bailiff and his remote control, the instantly prostrate, urinating defendant -- is enough to give any supposedly civilized democracy a bit of a p.r. problem...
...fault, whereas in my aunt's case, accountability for death was spread all over the meat-packing plant. There, one person herded the hogs into the hall; one person led them into the holding pen; one person pushed them up the plank; one person knocked them unconscious with a stun gun. Someone else pushed them onto the conveyor belt and yet another person operated the belt that processed the animals. "You know, I didn't really kill them," my aunt said...
From the start one expects something impressive: written by a Romanian-born poet, essayist and English professor whose last novel,The Blood Countess,was a national bestseller, Messiah promises to stun the reader. The dust jacket insists that "mordant social commentary and incandescent characters" lie within. A short plot summary instantly intrigues. And so one has every reason to expect a marvel between the covers of Messiah. Unfortunately, one has just as many reasons to be disappointed...