Prologue

 

Insight into:

Growth of the Home Incarceration Program

(and sex slavery)

 

The single most significant factor in the growth and development of the program was the public acceptance of it. Widespread public acceptance of the program enabled other drivers to gain traction and in combination, they all helped the program flourish. Some of the other factors that had a material influence included the law of supply and demand; greed, and its lesser cousin, entrepreneurial spirit. Then, of course, there was basic human nature.

Human nature was, perhaps, the most insidious of the factors propelling the success of the program. It is innate in human nature to crave power. Everyone has it to greater and lesser degree and in one form or another. But everyone has it, however it manifests itself. The old adage was never more true; Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People with power will almost always, abuse it. That's human nature. Examples of abuse of power can be found in every period of history. As a case in point, the framers of The US Constitution realized how easily it could happen and worked to limit its corrosive influence. Basically they trusted no one. That was why they created three equally powerful centers of power, each with the power to check the powers of the other two. They even enshrined a mechanism to remove the one individual who was the greatest at risk of becoming too powerful. They made it difficult to accomplish, but the possibility of impeachment and removal from office was very real.

All that, however, did nothing to prevent jailers from using and abusing their power over their prisoners. Those jailers who were inclined to do so, found that there were many avenues available to them to achieve their desires.

In the case of the home incarceration program, mere mortals were given enormous power over others. Jailers had considerable power over prisoners with virtually no oversight on them. Some, of course, abused that power. In theory, any prisoner could decline participation in the program to begin with, or withdraw that permission even after they had entered the program and had stayed in it for any length of time. They had an absolute right to pull the plug and go back to prison. But prison is a fearful and pretty nasty place, so willingly walking back into that hellhole required being in a much worse hellhole to make the former appear preferable. Very few prisoners exercised the option.

After the program had been running for a while, one pattern became very evident. There was a decided gender preference in the prisoners being selected. Female prisoners were being accepted into private homes at a rate of eight to one over males. The fact that over ninety percent of the females accepted the 'on call' aspect was not incidental to their being selected.

The female prisoners understood that their agreement to being 'on call' meant that they would provide sex to their jailer. Virtually every prisoner weighed the choice of providing an occasional bout of sex in a clean home with good food against the possibility of being raped by guards or other inmates while living in a hellish environment. It was not surprising that many chose to serve their time in a private home.

As a result, sex slavery became somewhat rampant in Blugh Bayou.

It might have been rampant, but it was not openly discussed and was vehemently denied by everyone who was asked about it, including the slaves themselves. They had accepted the reality of the situation. Simply put, it was nothing more than a trade-off between providing heterosexual sex and maybe enduring occasional punishment in return for a safe environment along with more freedom of movement than they could ever hope to have in any prison. Since they faced a substantial risk of rape, forced lesbian sex, and punishment in prison anyway, providing occasional sex to their jailer was seen as an acceptable tradeoff. That meant the other advantages of the program were a clear bonus. Many prisoners, if not most of them, had a private bedroom, comfortable bed and a shower, along with a television and a computer.

For the most part, females were accepted based on their appearance and their willingness to be on call. While some females were taken because of a skill or talent, the males who were accepted into a home almost always had a skill or talent that the jailer desired, and the prisoner was accepted for that specific reason. The concept of males being used as a sex slave or for stud service was mostly a fantasy on their part. Even the reality of that happening was far less than they might have wished for, although on a very few occasions that fantasy did come true.

Whatever else could be said about the program, one factor was strikingly clear: it was working. It was working so well that eight other states had proposed legislation to replicate what Blugh Bayou had done. All eight were actively going through their legislative process to make it happen. However, with Blugh Bayou being the only game in town at the moment, all states, including Louisiana, were anxious to ship prisoners out of their jail system into the Bayou. The motivation for doing so was self-evident. It reduced their costs for housing a prisoner. Regardless of the reason for shipping as many prisoners off as fast as they could, the result was the same: female sex slavery was alive and well... flourishing... in one little corner of America.

It's a fact of life in a capitalistic economy that if a new business concept becomes successful, its success will spawn the establishment of support services or ancillary businesses somehow aligned with the core business. The home incarceration program was no different in this regard and many fortunes were made as a direct result.

It took a while and many political and legislative gyrations, but it eventually became clear that Blugh Bayou was going to be the only municipality in the country that, at least for a while, other states could send prisoners to. The Bayou leadership and business community saw the economic monopoly they were being handed and capitalized on it. The town government substantially raised the fee they were charging for accepting a prisoner. In the very early days in the program's operation, they had been charging a relatively low annual fee for each prisoner accepted. After the success of the program was evident, it was raised to a considerably higher amount. The fee was imposed despite the fact that running to program cost the Bayou almost nothing. This was so because all prisoner's expenses were borne by the jailer holding her. Based on the fee the Bayou charged, Cliff's idea for the program, originally seen as providing some minor budgetary help, had turned into a major revenue stream. Evan at that, it was still less costly for states, including Louisiana, to send prisoners to the Bayou.

The flourishing enterprise of home incarceration brought along both newly created businesses, and existing ones that adapted their operations to capitalize on the program. They were essentially piggybacking on its success. A prime example of a new business is found in the one that was created to address a difficulty faced by prisons. It was a persistent problem to the prisons wanting to take advantage or the program. The difficulty was that home jailers were adamant in their insistence that they meet with and interview a prisoner face-to-face before accepting them into their home.

The prison had to first send a file on all prisoners they proposed sending to an upcoming auction. Potential jailers were able to review the files and select those that they would consider bidding on. Only after that preliminary step was concluded, was the prison holding the prisoner allowed to send the prisoner for an interview. It was also clearly understood by the prisons that the need to physically send prisoners to be interviewed only created the possibility that they might be accepted by a jailer. Video chats were not sufficient and a potential jailer visiting the prison was not accepted by either the jailers or the Bayou. Both of those forms of an interview undercut the concept of multiple jailers bidding on a prisoner and thereby raising her price. Since the price of a prisoner was paid to the Bayou, that was counted as part of the revenue stream received by the town. Because potential jailers also insisted on this two step process, the requirement was not relaxed for prisons out of the state. With the very real possibly that the prisoners could be sent back, that created a logistic problem for prisons outside of Louisiana. The further away they were, the worse the problem was.

For states that required more than a day's travel to get a prisoner or two to Blugh Bayou, transporting so few prisoners was a questionable expense. Because despite the high female acceptance rate, a prisoner could still be refused and she would have to be transported back to wherever she had come from. Prison officials faced with that difficult choice were increasingly opting to not send one or two, in the hope that by waiting they could get more prisoners to volunteer and they could get a bus load to transport. Exacerbating that problem was the knowledge that by delaying, had they not done so, the prisoner might have been accepted, but would no longer be accepted because the jailer might have met his needs with a prisoner from another state. That was precisely where one enterprising entrepreneur saw a solution and moved into the niche.

The individual sent a business proposal to Amanda in her capacity as mayor, the essence of which was that if Blugh Bayou deputized him for the sole purpose of transporting prisoners from out of state, and awarded him an exclusive five year contract to transport prospective prisoners, he would ferry prisoners to the interview, and if necessary, back to their prison. He would bill the prison sending the prisoner not the Bayou;. It would cost the Bayou nothing. Amanda was aware of faraway prison's reluctance to send one or two prisoners, because the officials who objected to the need to send the prisoners had called to complain and request a waiver. A request for a waiver was never approved.

Equipped with an official deputy status and an exclusive contract, the entrepreneur contacted every state in the lower forty-eight offering his service at a far lower cost than the state would pay if they did the transporting themselves. At the outset he would do only one prison at a time and he did the driving himself. However, it didn't take too long before he hired a retired Blugh Bayou deputy to take an occasional trip for him. His business grew quickly and within eighteen months he employed three retirees on a part-time basis and one on a full-time basis. His business was flourishing.

Other, wider-ranging events were afoot, and those were having a much greater impact on far more people.

As had been expected, the federal government took up the fight to stop Blugh Bayou's program. Before they went public with proposed legislation, they conducted an unofficial public relations campaign to discredit the idea of housing prisoners in private homes. Members of the House of Representatives were anxious to be seen as speaking up against what many were calling 'an offense before God'. The PR campaign was followed up by the proposed legislation to bring an end to Blugh Bayou's Home Incarceration Program. Further, the goal of the legislation was to prevent another town in the state of Louisiana from replicating the Bayou's program, and further, to bar every state, including Louisiana, from introducing legislation empowering a similar or remotely similar program. They were bound and determined to shut it down once and for all. The states however, had a different idea.

Led by Wallace Thurston, the governor of Arizona, eleven states... the eight with active legislation in the works and three others... joined together in a united front to stop the federal government's plans.

Lawyers for the federal side positioned it as being a Constitutional fight. The essence of their argument was that prisoner's rights were being violated. They somehow conveniently lost sight of the fact that every prisoner in the program had volunteered to be in it. Or maybe in federal hierarchy's opinion, volunteering for something didn't count any more.

Lawyers for the opposition made sure that the fed's attempt ran into a veritable buzz saw of opposition, not only from the states that were actively considering establishing a similar program, but from other states as well. The attempt was branded as a clear example of federal overreach and state governments rallied under the banner of states' rights. They conveniently lost sight of the myriad rumors alleging the existence of a rampant sex slavery program disguised as a Home Incarceration Program. Plus, they had the simple truth that for all the rumors... and there were hundreds of them... not one had been documented and validated. Or maybe they simply decided that rumors wouldn't survive in a courtroom anyway.

The very high probability of a lengthy court fight with an uncertain outcome gave both sides of the argument pause to wonder if a negotiated settlement might not be the better solution. Both sides could control to some extent what a settlement looked like. Both sides would get something that way. A court fight would be winner take all and both sides feared losing since the outcome of a court battle is never certain.

For all the ferocity of the argument when it was conducted in public, once the behind-closed-doors sessions began, the states' position eroded fairly rapidly. In short, it was seen as a major loss for the states. The loss, if it really was that, could be laid at Cliff Pendleton's feet. It was he, after all, who had suggested the strategy to Marty Quellon, the highly placed aide to the governor of Louisiana, Abe Lanmire,

When the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing was concluded, Louisiana emerged as the only state permitted to conduct such a program, and Blugh Bayou as the only municipality in the state permitted to do so. In return for that exclusivity, the Bayou agreed to share some of the proceeds of the program with the state. Even at that, the fine print permitted the program to continue only so long as Blugh Bayou continued it without a break. Even only a one-day hiatus would kill the program forever. That resolution was seen as a clear victory for the federal government but as it turned out, it was very much a Pyrrhic one.

Businesses that were morphing or expanding to provide services to the prisoner and jailer population were numerous. Two of the most notable and possibly the most financially successful were Jarett the jeweler and Bethina the seamstress.

Bethina was well known and very respected in town before the program began. The bulk of her business was focused on creating original designs for wealthy women and doing custom alterations to off-the-rack clothing that went way beyond just simple fittings, for the merely well-to-do wives. Her services for the wealthy clientele also included whatever they needed to dress their live-in maids.

In contrast to popular belief, the concept of having a maid in Blugh Bayou was not a result of the home incarceration program. The wealthy... in Blugh Bayou and everywhere else... have always had maids and probably always will. The home incarceration program only made maids affordable to a much wider spectrum of people.

The women who were maids before the program came into being were purely servants; nothing more. Because some of her clients had complained about the poor quality of the maid's uniforms that were typically available, Bethina had developed a semi ready-to-wear line of maid's uniforms of very good quality which appealed to her clientele. It was never a very profitable sideline, but neither did she see reason to discontinue it because it did bring some money in and it pleased her clients.

With the increased demand for uniforms created by the program, she was able to expand her line of ready-to-wear maid's uniforms and do so at a much higher quality at an almost competitive price to the online stores. The online products were generally flimsy and not well made. Bethina's products would last for years. She found her true success however, in her custom fitted line. Whether using an off-the-shelf uniform as the starting point, or starting from scratch, she produced tailored, well-fitting uniforms at a reasonable price.

She was able to expand her array of off-the-shelf choices by finding two talented prisoners who knew how to sew and used their abilities in her business. She accepted them into her home and made it crystal clear that she would throw then out in an instant if they betrayed her trust. Bethina interviewed many before she found the two she selected. Because Bethina had spent a long time interviewing each one before accepting them, they knew that they had found something worth holding on to. Both women wanted what she was offering and were aware that they would be replaced if they screwed up. Additionally, she was teaching both of them the art of tailoring and that was going well. As icing on the cake, she was looking for a prisoner with an imagination and true design skills, but that was more of a pipe dream than anything else. Still, she was hopeful and it didn't hurt to look.

Then there was Jarett.

 

End of Prologue.

 

 

Chapter One

 

Jarett Foresythe IV was a fourth generation jeweler in Blugh Bayou. The family business had been reasonably successful under the stewardship of the preceding three generations and was doing notably better under Jarett's guiding hand. Jarett had a good business sense, a solid education in business and economics, was a very adept craftsman, and what was really the fount of the increasing success, he had a true artistic talent. He created images for beautiful jewelry in his mind and produced them in jewels, gold, and silver in his shop.

Jarett's talent and business sense would have caused the business to grow even without the added impetus of the home incarceration program, but the two factors together created a proverbial perfect storm. When he meshed the two together his business took off.

Jarett's creations ranged from pretty, affordable pieces, to stunning and extravagant works of art. His more expensive pieces would have found few if any buyers in Blugh Bayou because they were very costly and well beyond the reach of the vast majority of the denizens of the Bayou. However, with the advent of the home incarceration program, that program prompted other events to occur and those changed the complexion of his customer base.

Because of the program, new people, some with crates of money, were coming into town and those new money folks could afford everything that he was selling. The new money folks also traveled in wider social circles, mostly among equally deep-pocketed friends and acquaintances who had daughters, wives, girlfriends and mistresses, all of whom had an appetite for what Jarett could create. He was no longer limited to the foot traffic of buyers in his three storefronts; his creations were being worn in major metropolitan areas, state capitols, and in international playgrounds. Then a serendipitous event opened up a whole new product line for him.

One day he was out shopping for clothing. He was in a large clothing store in the mall and noticed a couple walking toward him. She was quite attractive, made more so by her stylish good taste in clothing, despite her choices being a somewhat sedate manner of dressing. She wasn't showing an excessive amount of skin but she was still being sexily displayed. Of and by itself that was pretty normal, because many women enjoyed dressing sexily when going out with their man. Her clothing was of very good quality yet it didn't appear to be expensive, as best he could tell that from the distance he was seeing it. She had given careful attention to selecting her wardrobe, that much was clearly evident. She and her man walked casually and she lagged a step or two behind him as her head swiveled from side to side looking at something or just taking in the sights.

As they walked toward him, Jarett watched her as she saw something that caught her eye. She wanted to go to whatever it was, so in an apparent effort to tell her companion that, she gently put her hand on his arm. He shook it off without turning to look at her, instead he kept walking straight ahead, and concentrated on the phone call he was on. Simple politeness dictated her decision and also rather than risk incurring his wrath, she stopped trying to attract his attention and just turned down the aisle to check out the item of her interest. She was out of sight in a matter of seconds.

Her companion continued walking, talking, and was totally oblivious to the fact that she was not with him any longer. He concluded the call and perhaps sensing that he was alone, turned to where he expected to find her. Jarett couldn't see his face but his sudden tensing and frantic looking around was a clear indication that he was in a minor panic. After looking in every direction for a few seconds he bellowed her name. His voice had a tinge of fear in it. She must have heard the fear in his voice because she reappeared at the end of the aisle almost as soon as he had called. She was slightly out of breath, making it obvious that she had run in response to his call for her. She showed her exasperation by saying, "Jesus, I'm right here, don't have a heart attack."

Evidently shaken by her momentary disappearance he answered sternly, "I told you to never get out of my sight. Do I have to put the leash on you?"

Abashed, she spoke softly in a tone of resignation and repentance. "No, please don't do that. I won't go off again, I promise. I promised I wouldn't try to run away and I meant it. I'm sorry I gave you a scare."

Slightly mollified, he toned down his own voice and asked what had attracted her so strongly. She brightened considerably, now pleased that he wasn't upset with her and was interested in what she had found. She tugged on his arm and pulled him back in the direction she had come from, saying animatedly, "Come see. I think you're going to love it."

Jarett had been initially attracted by her appearance and had noted a surprising lack of jewelry on her. Intrigued by that somewhat unusual oversight on her part, given her otherwise evident sense of style and good taste, demonstrated by how well she was dressed, he reflexively studied her more closely as he decided what jewelry he would accessorize her with if she were his woman. He decided a string of pearls around her neck would perfectly set off the dress she was wearing. That, and an assortment of five or six thin bracelets on her left wrist. However, when he heard the verbal exchange between them it became obvious that she was a prisoner and he was her jailer. That was fine for the most part, but Jarett also took note of the fact that she wasn't restrained in any way and that was definitely not normal. As a jailer, the man was treating his prisoner very well.

Given his new understanding of the circumstances pertaining to the couple, Jarett revised his thinking of moments ago. It took a moment or two before a flash of inspiration struck which launched a new product line for his business. He had an idea about how to address the jailer's fear of his prisoner being out of his sight, and do so in fashionable jewelry. In this specific instance, the prisoner's string of pearls would be replaced by a choker necklace. He had some rough first ideas about what it would look like and he thought about a matching bracelet. Then he continued with his shopping, knowing that by the time he got home his subconscious would have refined his ideas and probably would have created more.

When he got home he did some quick web surfing looking for GPS transmitters intended to be worn by a child or a pet. He also looked at the ones intended to track an automobile, but despite their providing a greater tracking range, those were larger than he was interested in using. He found several that looked like they would be suitable for his purpose so he ordered one of each of the child-size units for his use in testing.

There were two critical elements he had to make work to bring his idea to fruition. Whatever design he came up with, first and foremost, it had to be attractive. It had to look like fashionable jewelry. The second point, almost equally important, was that it had to be irremovable by the prisoner, although that was the easier of the two goals to achieve. He was also concerned that by placing the transmitter in a locked container, however pretty it looked, he couldn't afford to have the transmitter's usable range severely degraded. Encasing the transmitter in metal could do that, which was why he needed samples of each to conduct tests with.

After placing his orders he settled down to sketch possible ideas. His subconscious had done its job and ideas flowed from his pencil onto his sketchpad almost faster than he could draw them. A snug, lockable, bracelet for her wrist and the matching choker collar were easy. He realized he could make very elegant versions for customers who were in the market for true jewelry. Customers like the governor and some of the rich citizens of the Bayou would be interested in those. But he could also make much more utilitarian versions of each that would be just as functional and would look good at the same time, with the added benefit that they would be much less expensive. Beyond just those, he put over two dozen other ideas on his sketchpad. His favorite design turned out to be a pendant.

Following up on his pendant idea, he knew he could enclose the GPS unit in a wide variety of enclosures, some looking like a large gemstone, or a filigreed cage of metal. The pendant would hang at about breast height on an attractive chain. A shorter strand of the chain would be nestled close to her throat and that would be what made the necklace irremovable. Based on the customer's preference and the depth of their pockets, additional chains of varying length could be added to create a series of loops between the short neck chain and the longest one holding the pendant, or even truly long chains that would drape below the pendant.

He created a wide variety of designs before quitting that effort. He selected a few among the simpler less expensive designs to create immediately, just to test the market. If they proved to be as popular as he thought they would, then he would expand the number of products he had on display in his stores. Made-to-order versions would always be offered.