That's why most correctional facilities in this country did away with stripes by the 1940's and 50's, substituting nondescript denims or the familiar Day-Glo jumpsuits. Should uniforms be the wrong size or an unusual color for the sake of putting your foot on somebody's neck? No, I think that's being a bully.'' ''Yes, and I think schoolchildren should wear uniforms, too. Friel, a professor at the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex. ''Should prisoners be uniformed?'' said Charles M.
''The public loves them,'' he said of stripes. At his next election, he won by 5,000 votes, though he spent only $15,000 to his opponent's $100,000. One sheriff, Gerald Hege of Davidson County, N.C., noted that in 1994 he won election by 227 votes. It shows the sheriff is tough on crime.''
#STATE PROPERTY CLOTHING THAT LOOKS LIKE PRISONERS CLOTHING TV#
''They call in the TV cameras and they make a big to-do about it. ''It's a media event for the local sheriff's department,'' said Bob Barker, president of the Bob Barker Company of Fuquay Varina, N.C., the nation's leading prison-supplies firm. It turns the public into one heck of an eye for us.''īut another, more controversial, function of stripes is to send a powerful message when an arrest is made. ''The likelihood of recovering someone in stripes is 100 percent better than if they're not. ''I've been in the department for 27 years and I've seen a whole lot of escapes,'' said Duane Kaley, sheriff of Portage County, Ohio, which brought back stripes about three years ago. If felons who wear such uniforms escape, citizens may mistake them for sanitation, utility or highway workers. The most frequently cited reason is that the bright, solid-colored jumpsuits that have been an industry standard for decades can cause confusion. The zebra look has even arrived in juvenile detention centers in Massachusetts and Missouri. The Mississippi Department of Corrections has been using striped trousers for more than five years (green-on-white for minimum-security convicts, black for medium, and red for maximum). Yet those distinctive outfits, a staple of Jimmy Cagney movies and Halloween parties, are actually relics of a time that had vanished with the ball and chain.ĭozens of county sheriffs, in states as diverse as Texas, Indiana, Nebraska, Florida and Maine, are putting their inmates back in stripes. THINK of jail, and a vivid image comes to mind of surly convicts clad in black-and-white striped uniforms.