Dear Editor
LETTER
Dear Editor French Sexiness (Cont'd.) Please assure Cornelius Davenport ("Dear Editor," NL, June 11) that (1) I am a much more assiduous student of French women than of French movie marquees, and...
...Within the past several years three prisoners of local jails have committed suicide in their cells...
...Mar-golis contends that "if we invade a man's privacy on the grounds that he is a prisoner and therefore less a man, we instantly invite the next step-Invading a man's privacy because he is a potential prisoner...
...I am unable to discern from his article whether he considers the practice unsavory on its own merits or rather because it is pursued in secret...
...Does Margolis feel that surveillance of them is better accomplished by on-the-spot personnel as opposed to electronic devices...
...For example, every person placed in a cell is searched for weapons and guarded to prevent escape...
...Iowa City, Iowa David G. Epstein Dirctor of Public Safety Richard J. Margolis replies: I have no quarrel with David G. Epstein: indeed, I wish he were directing public safety in my town (Wilton, Connecticut...
...They are, I admit, quite out in the open...
...Davenport should, perhaps, beware of generalization...
...We house an average of one detainee a day for an average of seven hours...
...July 23) suffused with a spirit of libertarian "delusion" quile alien to the work of Edmund Burke which he quotes...
...I do not tap phones, wire homes, bug cars, or invade bedrooms and offices...
...Nor can I justify hiring at $1.60 an hour untrained observers whose understanding of social and psychological problems (which many of our detainees exhibit) is marginal at best...
...We do not seek to ensnare every criminal...
...I too run a police department (62 employes) and I too have my cell block (four cells) wired for sight and sound...
...Though a detainee does retain basic constitutional rights, the problems presented by many people apprehended by the police obviously make impossible the allowance of full rights of privacy...
...Most French women are, unfortunately, as naive about "fashion" as their American and English sisters...
...I do also...
...But most prisoners want rigorous discipline and overseeing to be maintained...
...Or does he see me in my role as policeman the personification of half-well-meant callousness and dangerous banality...
...Margolis is continuing the necessary debate between the individual and the state that has been going on for over 3,000 years...
...While I have no intention of reading into his presentation a paranoia born of certain recent political escapades, I cannot help but feel that perhaps these events have affected his view of anything with a wire connected to it...
...During my own admittedly brief periods in jail, the last thing I worried about was the possibility of an invasion of privacy by the police...
...Please assure Cornelius Davenport ("Dear Editor," NL, June 11) that (1) I am a much more assiduous student of French women than of French movie marquees, and (2) I would not dream of measuring sensuality in terms of public prurience...
...Try AUTHOR AID ASSOCIATES, Dept...
...Fundamental to my piece (the title of which was not mine) was my belief that pornography and sexual swear-words are accouterments not of the liberated but of the repressed, impotent and immature...
...As far as I was concerned, the more surveillance by guards the better...
...The sex-lives of many French couples were dismally unsatisfactory until the relaxation of the ban on contraception...
...Does he understand my problems, intentions and ideas...
...New York City Richard Watson "The New 'Standard Police Practice' *' unfortunately fails to display the calm perception and understanding of public issues that I have come to expect from Richard J. Margolis...
...I submit that this does not follow automatically, or even probably...
...We do not spy en them to learn what their lawyers say to them...
...his fine reportorial skills on the practice of recording conversations with lawyers, a real abuse of civil liberties, rather than on "standard police practices" which may well be desirable...
...Several times that many have attempted to injure themselves, escape, vandalize their cells, or all three...
...The effect of on-the-spot and remote surveillance is the same: The detainees are watched to prevent damage to themselves and the premises...
...I like to think that I am one of the "new breed" of police administrators (i.e., graduate degrees and liberal inclinations), but I did spend $2,000 for cell-block surveillance devices...
...To repeat, I monitor my cells...
...I suspect that American women dress more tastefully in a recession than during a boom...
...We do not seek to gain total efficiency at the expense of public peace of mind...
...the latter is probably illegal and certainly immoral...
...Margolis describes the electronic surveillance practice he is familiar with as "secret and unsavory...
...Thus, let me try to do what his sources evidently could not do, that is, explain the practice to his satisfaction...
...But it might be misleading to generalize...
...conspicuous signs proclaim their presence...
...An equal number have escaped...
...It is a general penological principle that when guards are uninformed or ineffectual, the power is usurped by aggressive inmates-panthers, sexual predators, Mafiosi, etc.-turning the jail into a Hobbesian nightmare...
...But we do seek to accomplish those things that save lives and protect the public well-being without trampling on the basic protection our Constitution guarantees...
...Based on a five-day detainee week (assuming two or three occasionally come in together), the cost would amount to $7,800 a year, and frankly, I cannot justify that to the City Council when I can come close to the same result with a one-time expenditure of $2,000...
...His surveillance devices are "quite out in the open...
...As ex-convicis will tell you, the chief threat in prisons comes from other inmates...
...If you are the kind of prisoner who imagines he can lead political movements from his cell and dominate other prisoners, or who is assigned to one of those pastoral centers for white collar offenders, you do not want to be bugged...
...That the French verb baiser has not been devalued like Us sad English equivalent may also be significant...
...However, at $4.60 an hour (a rough average of my police officers' pay) I would have to spend approximately $32 a day for watching detainees...
...The conflict isn't between good and evil, but rather between well-meaning differences of approach and opinion, yet I do not see evidence in Mar-golis' article that he accepts this fact...
...The former may be necessary...
...10022...
...Iseo, Italy Ray Alan Police Practice At a time of daily revelations of various police-state practices-abuse of CIA, FBI and IRS powers-I found Richard J. Margolis' article on "The New "Standard Police Practice* " (NL...
...I hope he doesn't feel he has cornered the last word on the subject...
...They are saved from the worst excesses of the fashion-mobsters mainly by the fact that they can't afford to spend as much on clothes as American women: They adapt, improvise and consult the little dressmaker on the fifth floor?and common sense, fear of ridicule and, of course, an instinctive desire to attract do the rest...
...One does not follow the other, and I think I and my men have the sense and ethical grounding to discern the difference...
...The fact chat the French appear to need pornography less than many other Westerners may indicate that they are more mature-at least in the sexual sphere...
...This is seldom an either/or matter, and I damn well try to prevent that thought pattern in my men...
...We are "men of zeal" yet I feel we are "men of understanding" as well...
...ours, if the Police Commission has its way, will be carefully concealed, and no signs will proclaim their presence...
...Margolis would have done better to focus WRITERS: "UNSALABLE" MANUSCRIPT...
...and our policy precludes their use during detainee interviews with lawyers, clergymen, doctors, or any other privileged communicants...
...340 East 52nd Street, N.Y.C...
...The difference between Iowa City's and Wilton's surveillance policies is the difference between listening in and eavesdropping...
Vol. 56 • September 1973 • No. 18
