Yahoo! News - Doing hard time in monkey jail

Mr. Mooch reports on the Criminal Justice System in Punjab, India:

The thief threatened children with bricks and ripped the buttons off shirts. He
stole tomatoes from one home and snatched bread from another. Down the street,
he briefly fled with a differential equations book and beat a calculator with
his fist.

He was one bad monkey. And last week he was sentenced to life
in prison for his crimes, inmate No. 13 at the country's only known monkey jail,
where very bad monkeys are sent to live out their remaining years.

Notorious' inmates

The monkey jail in Patiala, about 125 miles north of New Delhi in Punjab state, is in a corner of the zoo called Deer Park of Motibagh forest. In this vast country, someone else might have opened a monkey jail, but if so, officials do not know about it.

The Patiala jail is more like a single cell, about 15 feet wide, 15 feet deep and 12 feet high, with bars, chain-link fencing and wire mesh. A sign in front says: "These monkeys have been caught from various cities of Punjab. They are notorious. Going near them is dangerous."

Indeed. Mr. Mooch says you cross a Spider Monkey at your own peril.