Light gray for minor offenses; yellow for major crimes; pink for lifers, psychos and killers; blues for juvenile delinquents; green for all females, with a colored clip-tab denoting the weight of the offense.
A temporary classification it had to be, Bennington decided, for the weight of the offense in itself never measured the man. How many repeaters, men inevitable to a life of crime, had come here to be handed a light gray card in The Cage, while other, different men, once-upon-a-timers, had come out carrying the yellow or pink?
Could and did happen, the general knew, could and did happen even in his former military life, where consideration of a man's record was a prerequisite to deciding the sentence, with review and review and review automatic not a matter of initiated appeal.
However, here, in the psycho-med building, was what might be called re-judgment, for here, assisted by the latest advances that could trickle down through the long bureaucracy above—and aided by ideas that yeasted up, not down—Dr. Thornberry's staff went back to basics with the question, what is re-claimable, for the man and for us, in this man?
But not the first day ... that was routine.
Strip and change to prison clothes.
Mental memo: What happened to the civilian clothes that the prisoners surrendered? Was there the smell of a small but lucrative racket here?
Then, on the basis of that preliminary in The Cage, through one of two doors. A few went into the room where a massive injection of sedatives made them virtually vegetables. Most of them, however, were sent into the room where Judkins, the new technician who had also arrived only yesterday, would fit the "tank," the big helmet, down over the prisoner's head and conditioned the man with mechanical and oral hypnosis.
The results, from drugging or hypnosis, were the same. From either room the prisoner came with his face a blank.
