CHAPTER 8

GUARANTEE EXECUTION

During a dangerous and chaotic prison siege in St. Martin

Parish, Louisiana, a few years ago, a group of inmates
armed with makeshift knives took the warden and some of
his staff hostage. The situation was especially nervy because
the prisoners were both tense and disorganized, a worrisome
mix that meant anything could happen.
The negotiators sensed that, beneath the bluster, the
prisoners didn’t really want to hurt the staff. They knew that
they felt backed into a corner and, more than anything, they
wanted the situation to end.
But there was a stumbling block: the inmates were afraid
that the prisoners who gave up after taking correctional
officers hostage, not to mention the warden, would end up
beaten, and badly.
So the negotiators delivered a pair of walkie-talkies to
the inmates and designed this elaborate surrender ritual to
get the hostage-takers to end the siege. The idea was
elegantly simple:
The inmates would send out one of their guys with a
walkie-talkie, and he’d walk past the three perimeters of
combined multiagency law enforcement that were stationed