L.A. Prison Using Experimental, Controversial 'Pain Ray' to Keep Inmates in Line

What happens if you hold up a mirror?

"It's" means "it is".

Journalism, your chosen profession... embrace it!

"should bring said bad behavior to a halt"

Kind of like "A Clockwork Orange" thing.

In the future, Police Officers will be armed with high-powered microwave handguns.

Probably just elevate their tempers to a more feverish state of mind and piss em off. Be careful with this kind of thing! Best to just put them to sleep with gas! Laughing gas would be best!

As much as I am for this, I can't help but thinking "UNUSUAL" punishment here. So now we need a Supreme Court that will define "cruel and unusual punishment". Maybe it isn't cruel, but this is new and therefore unusual by definition. But I DO want justice and order in prisons. There has to be a way we can keep peace without breaking laws.

Feels like opening a hot oven, man why not sunbathe in the rays. This new form of sauna doesn't sound that painful its just something that is unexpected so it scares people but once the prisoners get use to it they wont care.

@JohnnyH

"Unusual" punishment doesn't automatically pertain to novel punishment. "Unusual" punishment is like having your car repossesed as punishment for beating up your spouse. No correlation bewteen the crime and the punishment is 'unusual' (or as close as you can get to a blanket definition).

This is arguably less cruel than beating someone into submission, and by no means unusual.

Person is belligerent; Person is provided with pain until necessary, Person gives up.

This is no more unusual than tasers, or a punch to the face, except that it does it with pain from heat, rather than electricity or crushed cells. And no damage to boot. Don't let skepticism of strange devices adulterate your view of what is happening, and what its base components are.

I for one support this fully. So long as oversight against abuse (heat torture is a possibility, and could be kept at virtually forever with no material damage to the victum) is maintained, this has all the benefit of a taser without the mechanical issues of range, and reloading. Simultaniously it keeps good people safe. What more can you ask for, except a lack of people to use it on?

*Sorry, to clairfy my first paragraph:

"Unusual" refers to punishment unusual for the crime, not unusual in general, if that clears things up better. This may be an unusual method, but it's a usual punishment thats been at work since the dawn of social animals. Pain until submission.

yeah sure...prisoners aren't really people...they don't feel pain the way we do...nuke em...but prepare for a rebirth into the insect realm y'all

I think its more desireable than the old fashioned way - beating them into submission with a night stick. . . This new method has several advantages including keeping the officer at a safe distance. 1-the officer doesn't have any involvment in the dispute. 2- the inmates stage a fight to get the officer in the dormatory to cause harm to the officer. . . . This method of dispursment will have the same protections that other use of force methods have. If used there will be reports generated and investigations into wether the force was propper and necessary. Besides there is a hinderance to the use of the ray, all that paperwork will make the officers thing twice about using it.

"it's ray penetrates the skin about 1/64th of an inch over an area about the size of a CD"

So...how does clothing affect this?
Sounds like it would block it...and typically, a prison uniform covers most of an inmates body (minus hands and face).

Once this tech gets out into the public, it will be just a matter of time before people start pointing these at their political opponents, or business competitors, or the neighbor's noisy kids.

when i first heard of this ray for military use the first thing I thought was for prisons to have this. Its taken them long enough

This would be ideal along the border all 2000 miles of it. The closer they get to 'freedom' in America the more in hell they burn!

Gotta love the ad-bots!

@CDales1004: Clothing wouldn't affect it. These are microwaves. They stop at about 1/64 of an inch under the skin because the water in your cells absorbs them. Your clothing, being made of synthetic fabrics and dead animal tissue, does not contain nearly as much water, if any. So the "beam" would pass right through your clothes, hit your skin, which would absorb them, causing heating just at the surface.

I know this says it causes no damage, but I have to wonder about sustained exposure. I'd expect some injury to come from the surface of your skin being microwaved for a long time. Of course, since it's just the surface, it would probably be as simple as a bad sunburn, without the risk of skin cancer (no UV rays :P ).

In that case... bring it on! (Oh, and can I have one? My sister's getting really annoying :P ).

-IMP ;) :)

i think i have heard of this it uses radio waves not microwaves it affects the water molecules in the skin causing a burning feeling like the worst case of sun burn some times its mounted on vehicle to disperse violent crowds.

From the people that brought you Abu Ghraib. Here's video of it in action:

www.thedonkeyedge.com

@IceMetalPunk...
Ok, fair enough...BUT then what if the inmates had soaked their clothes with water, would THAT block the rays from hitting the skin?

Just trying to see if inmates can find ways to block the affect with what's available to them.
They do have sinks and toilets in the cell.

I suppose that the company thought of this already though.

There are so many typos in this article, Clay! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!

@Taking: Close, but they're not radio waves either. I believe the program I saw on this device called them "sub-millimeter waves," which are less penetrating than microwaves.

What makes this so effective is that it doesn't penetrate deeply enough to actually cause damage, but what it does do is activate ALL the pain receptors on the area affected. This causes a compulsory, "get away" reaction, where the subject is instinctively compelled to stop what they're doing and stay away from the beam. It's too intense to get used to, especially because it's only used because of something they're doing, so if they stop, the pain stops.

I thought of the dangers of torture from this device from the get-go, but what's more important is the lives this device will save in the hands of those who use it properly. Many die every year in prison fights and riots, and this could save many of them.

Yes, we've seen the same article months ago. You're next article will be the same technology for controlling agressive dogs?

If two prisoners are fighting and/or stabbing each other, do you really think that minor pain the size of a CD is going to phase them, maby, maby not just a thought.

By minor pain , I mean pain that does not do damage, you need somthing that cuases at least a little damage, like a smack in the head

These covert weapons are being misused.Unfortunately, these pain rays are being openly used in Lahore, Pakistan on innocent civilians. Tonight, once again I got up with pain rays.