Doug Clark: There’ll be no bustin’ out at this here jail

If the jailing and rejailing of Paris Hilton has taught America anything, it’s that incarceration has never been more chic.

This is nothing new to the fashion-minded folks running the Spokane County Jail.

A few weeks ago, administrators at our handcuff hotel took a major step at making our jail less skanky by instituting a new dress code for visitors. The following four-point edict is intended to put an end to salacious navel gazing, boobish spillover and other forms of southern and northern exposure:

1. Shoes and shirts are required.

2. No bare midriffs.

3. No low-cut or revealing necklines.

4. No miniskirts or similar attire.

True, this is not the first time the term “cover-up” has been linked to the Spokane County Jail. But usually that involves some sort of swept-under-the-rug ugliness.

Yes, it’s high time we had a better-dressed class of visitors setting an example for the jumpsuit-wearing dealers, thieves, grifters, gangbangers, muggers and sex offenders who are cooling their heels inside.

This is all alleged, of course. As any inmate will quickly tell you, nobody in jail is guilty of anything.

“Honest, officer, I don’t know how that body got into the trunk of my car.”

In a side note, the dress code is not the only penal progress going on at the jail. Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has apparently given the joint a new name.

The sign on the door now reads: “Detention Services.”

Q: Can the sheriff do that?

A: Why not? He’s got guns.

I doubt, however, that the name Detention Services will do much to deter crime. I logged a lot of detention time in my high school career and, well, it certainly didn’t rehabilitate me.

I must thank Matthew Harget, a Spokane County public defender, for tipping me off about what our wardrobe wardens were up to.

“Now if any woman shows up wearing a skirt that’s too high or a top that plunges too low, the jail declines her visit,” wrote Harget in an e-mail. “Apparently, the jail doesn’t want anybody busting out.”

Watch it, bub. I’m the guy who gets paid to joke around here.

Harget told me about one jail visitor who lost an argument with the receptionist over the skort she was wearing.

Apparently the receptionist is the final arbiter of what constitutes a garment-worthy visitor. (It’s sort of like the bouncer at an exclusive club who decides who’s cool enough to get in.)

“The receptionist kept calling it a skirt,” Harget recounted, “and the visitor offered to lift it up to show her what was underneath.”

Those jail receptionists need a pay raise.

Anyway, this receptionist “didn’t like the woman’s attitude and wouldn’t let her visit no matter what she was wearing,” said Harget.

On Friday I called the jail to check this out. After being put on hold long enough to sod my lawn, I finally reached Sarah, who claimed to be a “sheriff’s tech assistant one” – whatever that is.

Sarah confirmed the new dress code and answered all my questions except for “what’s your last name?”

I am impressed. Most cops just hang up or reach for a Taser when they hear my name.

“It’s getting hot now,” said Sarah. “We didn’t want people coming in their bikinis and barely-there skirts.”

I wouldn’t touch that line with a forklift.

Sorry to always be the hair in the omelet, but there’s an obvious flaw in the system. As Harget noted: “What’s to keep visitors from wearing their Victorian finest at the front desk only to strip down to their Victoria’s Secret once they get up in the visiting booth?”

Please excuse Harget for being jaded. Ten years of defense work will do that to a man.

Asked about his most memorable case, the lawyer told me about a client who thought it would be hilarious to cover a drinking buddy’s bare butt with chocolate frosting while the guy was sleeping off a bender.

The prank, he said, also involved dogs with a taste for chocolate.

The bottom line was that the victim was not amused.

OK, you could say he was frosted.

Eventually, Harget said, the prosecutor handling the case called and, laughing hysterically, wanted to know if Frosting Man should have “no use or possession of cake decorating tools” written into his court-ordered prohibitions.

The end of civilization is close at hand.

But getting back to the dress code, Harget argues that the jail would actually be better served by a less-is-more rule.

“The less clothes the less chance of smuggling in contraband.”

This makes sense. Although Harget is biased.

“The public defender’s office has a pants-optional policy, quipped the counselor, “so this is definitely a conflict.”