Ignorance is alive and well in the inmate population. Guys will buy any conspiracy theory – join bizarre
prison created “religions” with off the wall theories. I used to find it mildly entertaining. But, like the rapid rise of another group of
conspiracy believers – the Tea Party crew – I’m feeling a great deal of
unease. Prison spurs kooky views. It’s up to the corrections professionals to address
it.
When I was still held at the Henrico Jail I met an early
twenties white kid who was an amazing artist.
He could draw anything – portraits, scenery, cars, you name it. He was also covered in Nazi tattoos. One morning around 5:00 as was my custom, I was
drinking coffee, writing in my journal. The
kid sat down with me with a pained expression on his face.
“Mr. Larry, you’re a nice man. I’m afraid the darks are gonna hurt you when
you get to prison. You need to join the
Aryans.”
I thanked him for worrying about me but politely told him I didn’t
need a white supremist group to keep me safe in prison.
Then I get to prison and I run up on Aryans, Hispanic gangs,
a half dozen black gangs, Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and a host of other
fringe groups who each espouse a philosophy built on a corrupt power elite
beating down on them.
Ask the average inmate to consider the real cost (in
dollars) to taxpayers to keep them locked up and they will tell you prisons
make money. Why do they believe that
when the evidence overwhelmingly shows the financial drain corrections has
become? “If you were right Larry it’d make no sense to keep us locked up
without early release. Only a fool would
run a system like that?” (Are you listening Governor McDonnell?).
Black inmates are suspicious of white inmates. Two groups:
NOI and Five Percenters (anti-white) are recruiting members in
droves. Why? Because they offer simplistic explanations
for the despair that permeates the lives of inmates. It is easier to accept your station in life
believing “white America is a racist country bent on destroying blacks through
prisons and drugs” (and one need only look at the extraordinarily high
percentage of blacks incarcerated to see why this gains traction) than to
engage in an in-depth study of this country’s racial schizophrenia.
As I tutor guys in History, English, Philosophy and the
Social Sciences I am constantly surprised how little these guys know. They have very little knowledge of history
and are unable to synthesize events as they develop across
historical/sociological lines. Every event
can be boiled down to some knee-jerk neo-Marxian theory of power and suppression
of people.
So, what I do is, when asked, I state the truth. I let the facts speak. Does it change some things? Sometimes.
Guys hunger to know why. Prison should
be a place of honest reflection. Instead,
it is a jungle of lies, anger and ignorance.
And the system feeds those three.
Courts aren’t “blind” arbiters of justice; sentences are disparate, even
when crimes are similar; race and money matter in too many convictions and
sentences. Prisons become dumping
grounds with too few programs, too little educational opportunities and
sadistic guards and inmates vying for supremacy.
Men lose hope and without hope there is nothing. In one of the most moving scenes in “The
Shawshank Redemption”, Andy, sorting records in the warden’s office, barricades
himself inside and takes over the prison speakers. He puts on an operatic aria and the prison
suddenly stills as the men listen to two women sing in Italian. He is caught and goes to the hole.
The next scene, he is in chow – thirty days later with his
friends. They sit and stare in amazement
at Andy looking fresh after such a long period in the hole. “How’d you do it?” they asked.
“I listened to Mozart the whole time.”
“You had music back there?”
Andy pauses, “In my mind.
They can physically keep me here, but in my mind I’m free. I still have hope.”
There’s a reason hope lives even in a place as dehumanizing
as prison. Hope is about truth, and
beauty, and love. Too many men in prison
have given up on hope. They look for
simple explanations; they see nothing but time.
Until prisons become places of hope, conspiracy theories will thrive;
anger, despair and hatred will have homes; and fringe groups will flourish.
Hopefully, it will change. 
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