Bureaucratic Blunder

Here is a story in the UK Daily Mail by Jacqui Goddard about a prison guard in Florida:

Prison officer zaps children with 50,000-volt stun gun 'to show them what a day at work is like'

Walter Schmidt used a stun gun like this one to administer powerful electric shocks to children touring the prison

Prison officer Walter Schmidt wanted to give his colleagues' children a taste of what their mums and dads get up to at work while showing them around a Florida jail.

So to make the youngsters' experience all the more realistic as they toured Franklin Correctional Institution during the lock-up's 'Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day', he decided to zap them with his 50,000-volt stun gun.

The jolt sent at least two of them sprawling to the floor, crying out in pain and clutching at agonising burns on their arms. One child ended up in hospital.

But 37-year-old Schmidt told officials who later fired him that he had only been trying to show the children - whose parents all work at the jail near Tallahassee - what a typical day involves while handling unruly inmates.

'It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational,' he explained to the St Petersburg Times.

'The big shock came when I got fired.'

Go read the whole article to get all the details.