Press the play button:

Awful sound, isn’t it? Sorry to subject you (if it autoplayed in your browser), but I’m making a point.

This racket was blasting when Bob and I visited the Gare de Lyon police station in Paris. It was created by two young women, one in a cell, the other handcuffed to a wooden bench, where she posed in every ridiculous posture she could contort herself into (not sure why). They both bellowed and sang at the top of their lungs as long as we were there—perhaps half an hour—possibly much longer.

It’s their habit. They make themselves severely unwanted guests, so the police think twice about hauling them in again and again. We never found out what they were arrested for, but their tactic was arresting.

The yelling and wailing in jail is one of the cat-and-mouse games the criminals learn to play to get an advantage, even a momentary tiny one, over the system. You know some of their other strategies: they employ children too young to arrest; they carry an infant, because the mother of an infant won’t be jailed; they cut themselves, because a bleeding arrestee must be taken to the hospital, which takes much paperwork that a tired cop may prefer to avoid, especially one near the end of his shift.

A pickpocket in Lima told us, “If the police catch you, you cut yourself and they release you. They don’t want you if you’re cut and bleeding.”