Shock horror in yesterday's Guardian about the use of shackles and belt restraints during the deportation of people who should not be here - but who do not want to go and who are going to resist. Hanging on to the bed posts, attacking the removal men and all that sort of thing.
Now I am all for the humane and decent treatment of people in difficult circumstances, but at the end of the day there are going to be people who are not going to go peacefully. What does the Guardian suggest is done instead? Knock out drops in the porridge? Straightjackets?
There seems to be no recognition of the fact that short of letting anyone in who cares to come, which is not a practical proposition, there is going to be unpleasantness at the margins, just as there is and always will be in prisons.
Just as there are always going to be marginal cases at the margins. People who fall very close to the boundary, either one side or the other, of the rules. Which is difficult and often unpleasant, but which might be called a fact of life - or even of mathematics. Rules cannot be written about people which do not have closely approachable boundaries.
What is true, is that if you do it on the cheap - perhaps using unscrupulous contractors - there may well be more unpleasantness than there need be.
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