Recently Martin Horn, famous for his Horny Suit, the patient in charge of the DOC, published a new set of visiting rules (DC-ADM 812). It goes on for 22 pages. Two thirds of the directive is obsessed with sex. And that's just one in a barrage of sexually manic policies from the present prison administration.

Certainly one of the most irrational of the new pseudo-religious rules is Administrative Directive DC-ADM 008, entitled Sexual Harassment/Sexual Abuse of Inmates. The sane intention of the directive was to revoke the guards' license to rape and sexually exploit prisoners. But, like so many things from an insane department, the directive goes ballistic!

The directive has many draconian twists. One of the neatest provisions is that the prisoner who is the victim of sexual abuse and has the nerve to complain about it, is summarily slapped into the hole! (Section VI,B,8)

We all agree that guards shouldn't be allowed to use their positions of power to take advantage of prisoners, sexually or otherwise. We all also agree that prisoners shouldn't be the victims of harassment and retaliation - universal norms in the Pennsylvania prison system. However, this directive is, to put it mildly, silly.

Sexual harassment is defined as any verbal, visual or physical conduct of a sexual nature, sexually offensive comments or gestures! It's pure mythology. In reality, guards routinely go into a man's cell and order him to strip naked. He is required to expose himself, lift his penis and scrotum, bend over and spread his buttocks. Such strip searches are daily occurrences. All of that would seem to openly violate the new directive.

Typical, working class male banter includes all sorts of sexual epithets. The new rules make all of that violations of the code. Remarks like "pussy," or "bitch," and "blow me!" are now punishable crimes. Prison is populated by the poorest and lowest classes in ours society. Indeed the reason most persons are in prison is because of their class and color. In that culture sexual remarks comprise a huge part of ordinary speech.

What is a sexually offensive gesture? Grinding the hips? Giving someone the finger? Gestures like language are protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment...except in Pennsylvania's prisons.

Like sexual harassment, sexual abuse has a very broad, vague definition. For example, it outlaws "any acts...which involve...intimate relationships." The visitor who kisses her prisoner husband violates the rules!

Clearly, the DOC officials are in never-nerver-land with this directive. Efforts to get it clarified were ignored by DOC officials. Still, some sane persons at the Department, if he can catch Martin Horn in a lucid moment, should try to get this nonsense revised.