![]() Common sense dictates that the procedure is plausible in the case of an arrestee known to be dangerous. We can see it over and over again in episodes of “Law and Order” and other television crime portrayals-an individual’s arrest is solemnly announced, the handcuffs are put on, and the Miranda rights are read. Again, this is a distinctively American standard operating procedure. Then there is the routine use of handcuffs, usually fastened in the back of the arrested individual. A faint parallel may be the “dock” in British courtrooms, also suggesting that the “prisoner in the dock” is guilty, but it does not have the humiliation and helplessness inflicted on the accused. I know of no similar practice in any other democratic country (though it has been common in China). It is an egregious offence against the presumption of innocence. Its only purpose is to humiliate and to show the helplessness of the “perp”. It serves no legitimate purpose whatever. The “perp walk” is what the sociologist Harold Garfinkel called a degradation ceremony. Beyond serving to enhance relations between the police and the press, the practice is also supposed to express democratic egalitarianism-look, we can do this to anybody-corollary: watch out, we could do it to you. The police like to use it especially with high-status defendants, who would be particularly embarrassed by such public exposure. The “perp walk”, as far as I know, is a peculiar American institution. Or perhaps, unhinged by all that was happening to him, Strauss-Kahn might jump up and bite the judge, who was lecturing him on the conditions of his bail in tones suitable for a five-year old guilty of having raided the cookie jar. I suppose they were to make sure that the “perp” did not try to run away in order to seek sanctuary at the French consulate or the United Nations. But no fewer than three policemen stood close behind him, handcuffs visibly ready on their belts. ![]() At least Strauss-Kahn had now had the opportunity to shave, and he seemed more controlled. The third photo was taken at the bail hearing. ![]() The second photo showed him at his arraignment. His jacket has fallen off his left shoulder. He was handcuffed, with his hands secured behind his back. The first photo showed two policemen marching Strauss-Kahn through the so-called “perp walk”, when an alleged perpetrator is paraded publicly so that the press can take pictures. Be this as it may, three photos accompanying newspaper accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest have greatly disturbed me. I admit that I have paranoid tendencies, but I have a lurking fantasy that, if ever accused of a crime in the state of New York, my prosecutor will be Eliot Spitzer. Tom Wolfe’s novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, gives a credible picture of the delight they must feel if they can get their hands on an upper-class character, so much more exciting than the riffraff they must usually deal with. I have equally little affection for American prosecutors. I have no particular affection for members of the French elite. I have no idea whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn is guilty of the offenses he has been charged with. Still, I don’t think I would want to reside in a Norwegian prison or a Swedish nursing home. The Scandinavian democracies have often been cited, justly so, as exemplars of good governance and respect for human rights. But it is a duty of citizenship to be critical of the dark underside of one’s country. I felt at home from the moment I arrived here when barely aged eighteen, and it was with a sense of great privilege that I became a citizen a few years later. I am going to say uncomplimentary things about some American realities.
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