California prison officials have decreed that no prisoner may have long hair or a beard on the grounds that short hair prevents disguise in case of escape. In fact, cosmetic coercion has long been the first resort of petty tyrants when dealing with intractable subjects. PNS editor Joe Loya is a California writer currently writing an autobiography.

Scalping season has begun. The California Department of Corrections (CDC) is battling crime by taking a prisoner's metaphorical scalp. A kinder, gentler sort of head-hunting.

Last week the CDC announced that all prisoners must wear their hair short and shave off their beards. Seems a hairy-headed inmate recently escaped and eluded capture by shaving his beard and long hair so he wouldn't resemble his prison I.D.

Shave a head of hair to prevent escape? The CDC's reasoning could have come straight out of the Brothers Grimm. Remember how the evil witch-jailer cut off the long golden hair of Rapunzel to keep her from escaping her dungeon tower?

Such cropped-cut coercion has plenty of parallels in real history.

St. Paul early espoused that long hair was a shame unto man. Ten centuries later, when everything from baths to sugar to enjoying sex were denounced by the Church, the Pope decreed that men with long hair were to be excommunicated from the Church and not to be prayed for when they died.

Hair length and beard fashion were also state issues during the English civil wars of the 17th century. England was divided -- by hair style as well as politics--into two major parties: "Roundheads" and "Cavaliers." The Puritans believed that any number of evils lurked in long tresses. So they kept their hair monastically short. Their cropped skulls earned them the disparaging nickname "Roundheads." The other party in turn earned their nickname because of their cavalier contempt for the Roundheads' piety on hair.

When imprisoned men are stripped of everything, their bodies become the only domain they can control. Which is why prison regulations all around the country are so classically feeble at keeping prisoners from using drugs or tattooing themselves. When these forbidden activities occur right under their noses, spiteful prison officials opt for maximum intrusion. Certainly, there can be no more visible way to prove they have extracted obedience from a refractory inmate population than cosmetic regulation.

If an inmate doesn't voluntarily accommodate to the procedure, he will be forced to submit while pinned down by five or six burly guards -- as he would be if he resisted any body cavity search. Samson may have received gentle kisses and more before giving up his locks, but the modern-day Delilah is a hairy armed CDC barber who prefers to apply his scissors with brute force.

I guess the CDC is to be commended for one reason. They could have followed the example of Peter the Great and taxed prisoners for the privilege of wearing long hair and a beard.

In reality, most prisoners already choose to keep their hair short. Not only is monkishly short hair fashionable these days -- walk by any high school -- but the austere haircut is conducive to the Spartan conditions of incarceration. Short hair is a convenience when shampoo is a scarce commodity. I kept my own head practically bald in prison because bad soap, hard water, and three showers a week gave me a severe case of embarrassing industrial size dandruff.

Some prisoners keep their hair cut short for martial reasons. Long hair can be a disadvantage during prison combat. Alexander the Great understood that long hair could be gripped like a handle by the enemy, especially preparatory to lopping off a soldier's head. So he made his army sport the butch look.

Not all rulers made their subjects trim their hair. Some went the other way. When the Normans conquered England, they forced the vanquished to grow their hair long, making a defeated people live in violation of their religious beliefs.

In California prisons, long hair or long beards are worn mostly by Native Americans, Muslims and bikers. Like the Normans, the CDC has stated, categorically, that they don't care if forcing a prisoner to cut his hair makes him violate a legitimate religious creed.

There are other problems -- for example, Aryan prison gangs are already identified by their skinheads -- but the deeper irony will always be lost on the Department of Corrections. Despite the efforts of monarchs, popes and every petty tyrant in history to try to control the length of a man's mane, human hair, like fingernails, continues to grow, almost in jest, after we are dead.