For some people, preparing for a train journey is either fun,
part of their job or sheer hard work. But very few could have
worked as painstakingly as Wang Qing did last week.
Wang is head of a Beijing prison guard team. He was to lead 24
prison guards to escort 88 prisoners back to their places of birth
in central China's Hubei and Hunan provinces, according to a report in the
Beijing Times.
Fourty-six were to be handed over to police at Wuhan railway
station, and the rest at Changsha Railway Station, to serve out
their sentences in the provinces where they were born.
Though Wang had been leading such tours for four years, he had
to do his homework meticulously.
Police take a roll call
in Changsha before shifting the prisoners to jails in Hunan
Province.
After the usual meeting with the other guards, he fell back on
the computer for the minutest details of seating arrangements,
treating the prisoners separately according to the nature of the
crimes, how best to guard them, etc.
Here's what the computer diagram helped him accomplish:
The 46 prisoners to be handed over to police in Wuhan were
seated closer to the exit because they would get off first.
The women, 12 in total, in each group were seated separately.
Then the accomplices and relatives, two each, were separated from
among the more dangerous prisoners.
Doors were unhinged from the toilets to prevent any prisoner
from locking himself up and trying to escape by breaking the
window.
Two prisoners were handcuffed together, and the dangerous ones
were made to wear shackles. (The shackles, by the way, were 500
grams lighter than the usual ones to allow more freedom to the
prisoners, Wang said.)
The handcuffs and shackles were then sterilized, police batons,
walkie-talikies and searchlights tested and sleeping bags and food
prepared.
Wang and his fellow guards relied on the computer to decide on
the best time and way to serve food to the prisoners.
After the detailed and foolproof planning, the 88 prisoners
boarded train No K157 around 9:10 PM on January 10.
But before that, one small thing had to be fixed. The guards
shifted the fire axe and extinguisher from their original places in
the compartment.
Though the journey was still tense, it definitely was a little
less risky than the previous ones Wang had taken.
The first batch of prisoners was handed over to Wuhan police on
January 11. Later that night, Changsha police took charge of the
rest.
(China Daily January 16, 2007)
