Prisoners often wear orange prison uniforms. These archetypical uniforms are sold freely to the general public over the internet. As far as I know, you aren’t breaking any law if you’re wearing one of these and are not actually a prisoner.
So what would happen if you wear a orange prison uniform in town? Would you be stopped by a cop on every street corner? Would concerned citizens call 911 to report an escaped prisoner? Would you be denied service at Starbucks, McDonalds or at the post office? Could you be sitting leisurely on a bench in the park adjacent to the court house, reading a newspaper?
After all, a prison uniform is not by any means indecent.
Let’s assume this is not during Halloween or in connection to some kind of political protest.
I would suspect you’d attract attention from passing police officers, at least, and it’s possible (especially if you’re in a city/town near a prison) that citizens would be alarmed enough to be calling you in.
Definitely. And there would be an obligation to dispatch a police officer to check it out. Hopefully an officer would discuss the clothing choice with the person and advise them of the fine line between freedom of expression and disorderly conduct.
You might hit it big with a police brutality lawsuit or unlawful arrest lawsuit though!
Or you could just face a lot of pointless harassment from ultimately well meaning citizens and cops.
Other ideas for testing boundaries are going through customs with condoms full of flour(this one already paid off for one woman!) or perhaps IVing sterile saline on a park bench and then feigning stupor. Walking around handcuffed while exercising free speech to ask for a bolt cutter is another.
I routinely do it on Halloween. I always put on a fake nametag of a celebrity (OJ, Bernie Madoff) so it’s obvious to any cop what’s up. never had any problem.
That would be valuable advice for somebody who actually is a prisoner who has just escaped and who is still wearing his orange jump suit: Put a Bernie Madoff or an O J Simpson name tag on.
This would keep a cop guessing: “Is this a funny guy or is this the prisoner who escaped from the court house ten minutes ago?”
Yes.
Happens from time to time here. 99% of the time it’s someone that got released from the county jail and got their orange out with their other property. Or, they didn’t have a shirt, pants, or both when booked and the CO’s working in the jail release office let them out with orange rather than being naked. The Sheriff has boxes of donated clothes, but if they’re out or none fit sometimes orange it is. I can tell you the CO’s get bitched at and written up when they do it, but it still happens.
Then our dispatchers get calls about an escaped inmate. It never is. The first thing an escaped inmate would do is ditch that orange. I know because every former inmate I’ve F.I.'d after a call tells me that.
The 1% of the time it’s not a former inmate it’s some guy who got himself orange inmate clothes just to be a dink.
One small Wisconsin town has 3 different state prisons in it. A large chunk of the townfolk work in one or other of the prisons. Even on halloween, it wouldn’t be a good idea to dress up like an inmate in this town. Do it any other day, and it could result in serious bodily harm.
I’ve been a convenience store clerk. That is CRUEL.
One of my regular customers actually did that to me once. Cold morning, he was headed out for a day of hunting, simply hadn’t dawned on him how I was going to react. As soon as he noticed, off came the mask and out poured apologies. I was willing to let it go once my pulse came back down, since this was a very nice guy and it had basically been an accidental scare.
I once lived near Phoenix and Scottsdale tourist junk marketing. I’ve always wondered why these places do not sell pink under pants for men stamped Sheriffs Dept. or some such. Perhaps they do and it don’t make the news.
I’d probably file that under “legal, but a huge hassle for no really good reason.” Though I can see a statute prohibiting the wearing of prison uniforms by people not required to wear them standing up in court (possibly).
A couple of weeks ago I did in fact see someone promoting a book wearing a* prison uniform in the park in front of the courthouse.
Some time after High School a group of guys who went to the tech school, where they had to wear blue coveralls, decided to put prison markings on on them.
First they were thrown out of a restaurant, and the restaurant also called the police on them.
They were late getting back to their classes only to find they owed the school $55.00 per coveralls. They had used permanent markers.
The police made it abundantly clear they would not wear them out in public ever, unless they wanted orange ones for real.
