“But those two young Americans are innocent”, you
respond. We’ll come back to that
later. Let me tell you about Frank and
Sam.
Frank and Sam are two new students assigned to me in the
adult basic ed class I tutor. Frank was
born in 1945. He is a soft spoken 66
year old black man with a slight stammer.
He reads at the 2nd grade level. Sam is a 61 year old black man confined to a
wheelchair. He suffers from
diabetes. His left leg was amputated
slightly above the knee from complications with the disease. Where his leg was, he now ties his
state-issued jeans in a knot. He has
sparkling bright eyes and an impish smile.
He reads at the 3rd grade level.
The law in Virginia is that every “offender” at least be
enrolled in adult basic ed with the goal of receiving a state-issued GED. The law in Virginia is that “offenders” earn
a maximum of 4.5 early release credit days for time served per month. Offenders – in Virginia at least – must serve
at a minimum 85% of their sentence. As
Charles Dickens so aptly put it, “the law my dear sir is a ass”.
Frank and Sam will never earn their GEDs. For the vast majority of their lives they
have been treated as the refuse of a fast-paced economy that values technology
but disrespects the integrity of simple labor.
Both men have meandered through life as unskilled laborers, barely making
enough to support and sustain their families.
So every day these two guys, Frank and Sam, hauled bricks,
cleaned toilets and picked up the trash from those of us fortunate enough to
come from families with money. And their
kids? They saw the same ads for all the “must
haves”. Only they couldn’t have.
So both men over their lives strayed from “the law”. They broke into houses, sold “hot” property,
and sold drugs. They are part of the
vast “criminal” underclass in this country:
men and women who were discarded by the public schools and society years
ago, illiterate, forgotten, unable to provide for themselves and their
families.
What does Virginia do?
The glorious Commonwealth returns them to prison in their sixties for “probation”
violations at a cost, estimated by the Richmond Times Dispatch in an article on
elderly inmates in December 2010, of $70,000 per year. These men are lied to everyday. “We’re going to retrain you and prepare you
for a successful return to society.”
Excuse my language, but that dear readers is a load of shit.
These two older convicts are functionally illiterate men who
have been ignored and treated unfairly their entire adult lives. They have been run in and out of the “corrections”
system for three and four year bids at a time. DOC is doing nothing to change
their lives. They will do their bids and
return home to no money, no jobs, no nothing.
What good is prison doing Frank and Sam and the thousands
and thousands of other inmates just languishing away in these corrections
cesspools?
Which leads me back to our two “hero hikers” who accidentally
crossed the Iranian border while hiking, “seeing the world”. They violate Iran’s territorial integrity and
are prosecuted under Iranian law. We
react with a great big “how dare you”.
Is Iranian law and trial procedures and sentencing somehow less worthy
of support than American or Virginia law and criminal procedure? And why is it we expect, no demand, Iran
release these two “lawbreakers” while we applaud “lock em up and throw away the
key” justice in America?
“But they’re innocent”, you remind me.
Nine chief witnesses recanted in Troy Davis’s case and the
State of Georgia still gave him the needle this week. Perhaps we are no better than Iran. Perhaps we’re nothing but hypocrites. Explain the difference to Frank and Sam.
No comments:
Post a Comment