think on this.

It’s an old story that the state’s jails are jammed to the point of bursting, and that many of them are falling apart. Tension and trouble often follow overcrowding — that’s well reported, too. But how jailers and corrections officers treat and manage inmates can make a surprising difference. Simple gestures can have surprisingly positive consequences.

 

First there’s the human heat, as Superintendent Scott Brazis explained. “The place was built for 160,” Brazis said. “We have a court order of 200, and as I said, today we’re at 375. As of last Monday we were at 411.” In a building considered beyond repair the elevators often don’t work and the electrical and plumbing systems are bad.

But here’s the worst of it: “There is no air conditioning from the 17th floor going the way up and you will notice that as we start to walk through the facility,” Brazis said.

In the short run, the superintendent has come up with a way to manage the seemingly unmanageable — it’s the gesture of Popsicles. Yes, Popsicles.“I’m worried that people are going to think I’m either naive or being ridiculous, talking about the importance of Popsicles,” I told Brazis.“Well, people think that I was an ultimate liberal,” Brazis said, “but we came up with this idea a number of years ago. We had a staff meeting and it was unbearably hot up here, and besides fans we were thinking, ‘What could we ever do to make sure that the population know that we know how hot it was up there? And what could help?’

“These Popsicles are three cents a piece. We hand them out after lunch and after dinner, and on the really hot days — a couple weeks ago when temperatures got to be 100 — we handed them out again at night at 10 p.m.”