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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Race...Again

Last Saturday night most TVs in the pod were tuned to CNN as “Breaking News” came in announcing a verdict in the most recent racially charged case out of Florida since the Trayvon Martin murder trial. The new case, involving a white middle class man named Dunn who pulled a gun out while in a “7-11” parking lot and proceeded to empty a clip into a red SUV parked beside him, killing the driver, a seventeen year-old black kid names Jordan Davis and wounding his two black friends. And people immediately compared this shooter (Dunn) to the Martin shooter (Zimmerman); and the case broke on racial lines just like the Martin case; and once again America was treated to the idiocy of Florida’s “stand your ground” law and way too many talking heads on TV inflaming the situation.

            The cases aren’t the same. There were major differences between Zimmerman and Dunn. Zimmerman stayed at the scene, Dunn left after firing. Zimmerman was in his own neighborhood, sober, and “observed” a “suspicious” man walking through. He contacted police who told him to “not interact” with the walker (advice he ignored). He confronted the hooded black teenager; a scuffle ensued and Trayvon Martin lay dead.

            Dunn had been to the wedding of his son from whom he was estranged. He had four rum and cokes at the reception and stopped at the 7-11 on the way home. His girlfriend testified he was in a “not so good mood” and immediately upon parking next to the red SUV with the three black teens in it, stated to her how much he loathed “that f---in loud rap music.” For some unknown reason, Dunn then felt “threatened” by the three teens. He claimed – well after he was tracked down for the shooting – that one of the black teens “brandished” a gun; only after seeing the gun – he claimed – did he pull out his piece and fire in self-defense. Funny thing was, there was no gun in the SUV. Dunn’s girlfriend said there was no gun that she ever saw and she never felt in fear. Not good testimony if you’re trying to build a “self-defense” defense.

            As any reasonable person would expect, Dunn was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder (the two wounded black teens) and the count on brandishing a firearm. However, the jury hung on the first-degree murder count, and that is where the problem with race comes in.

            Guys in here were livid. “M – F—er got away with murderin’ another black kid. It’s open season on young brothers.” CNN’s own anchor fanned the flames with outrageous, anecdotal comments and hyperbole (and yet, Don Lemon remains of the air – go figure.) And I watch it all and realize it is so easy to jump to conclusions and make over-generalized statements especially when it comes to races. America is a unique nation because it enjoys a prosperity and internal peace in abundance all the while being a very heterogeneous population. And yet, the elephant in America’s living room remains race.

            It’s weird really because I always considered myself racially fair (for lack of a better word). I told myself I didn’t judge people by their color (hell, I thought Halle Berry was the most beautiful woman in the world!), but it was easy saying that out there because I lived a racially segregated life. We had no black or Hispanic friends, and no races other than white attended our church. I had black employees; our kids went to school and played sports with black kids; but that was the extent of it. Then I got locked up and I shared cells, and chow hall tables, and my life with men who did not look like me and I realized all the preconceived ideas I had that involved a person’s skin color, National origin, religion, or sexual orientation were unadulterated bullshit.

            Race will continue to torment this country corporately and many of us individual until we overcome those preconceptions. Where is the empathy for the mothers of the two boys gunned down? Shouldn’t any parent be able to feel the loss these women feel? Why should our view of crime, politics, music, anything really be governed by the skin color of those involved?

            Dr. King urged America to judge a person “by the content of their character not the color of their skin.” Sometimes that’s tough. It’s always easier following preconceived notions. But, it isn’t right. Until we come to grips with the fact that a teenager was senselessly gunned down and not worry about his color, we are doomed to repeat the same tale over and over.

            This past week white fraternity members at Ole Miss placed a noose around the statue of James Meredith. The same day, a black Ole Miss student had a drink thrown on her from a passing car as the driver yeller the “N” word. It’s time to stop the ignorance.


The Donation

So classes are going on full bore. And, I stay busy. Right now, I’m the only college aide: 1. With a college degree, and 2. Not enrolled in classes. That means I’m the only T.A. available to assist. That isn’t a bad thing. Time is flying by right now. We’re already two full months into the year, only two weeks away from the end of our first eight-week semester.

            I enjoy working with the college teachers. It takes a unique outlook to willingly agree to come out here and teach. There is a screening process – to make sure the professor doesn’t have a prior criminal record – and then the pat down and search every time they come out for class. Everything they try and bring in – like plastic protractors for math – has to be pre-approved by “operations” before it’s admitted. And “operations,” like every other office here runs on “correction’s time,” which means it isn’t a priority.

            I respect those teachers who are willing to go through all that for guys in here to get a shot at an education. The easy response, the typical response usually is, “the hell with them. They broke the law, why do they deserve a college education?” That’s a tough attitude to fight. This past week the Wall Street Journal reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his plan to use state funds to finance college programs in ten New York prisons. The Governor pointed out that New York taxpayers spend more to house an inmate for one year than it costs to send a student to Harvard that same year (the State will spend $5,000 per inmate/college student for its prison degree program; it costs $60,000 per year to keep an inmate locked up in New York).

            More important to the Governor was the difference a college education means to a released offender. Bard College (the same school partnering with SVCC to operate our college program here) has funded college programs in six New York prisons since 1999. The results are astounding. Since 1999, graduates of the Bard prison college program have a 4% recidivism rate versus the New York State rate of 40%. College breaks the cycle of repeat offenses.

            These teachers, who don’t get much per class to come in here and teach, matter in the long run to these men. The guys – most of them anyway – get it and appreciate it. I do too. I try and do extra to help, take on more in – and outside – the classroom to make the instructor’s job a little easier. Part of that involves grading papers for “street classes.” The teacher gives me an answer key and off I go, knocking out loads of quizzes, tests, homework assignments for kids on the street who probably don’t realize how lucky they are getting the education they do.

            I was in Math class two weeks ago grading sets of pre-calculus exams from three “street classes.” I got to the last set of papers and discovered it was a set of questions on Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities.” Now, Charles Dickens is one of my favorite novelists, so I went through the papers and was really impressed with the range of questions asked. “This is a really good test on the book,” I told the teacher. “I’ll let the English teacher know,” she told me. Then it hit me; I was grading papers for someone else. “I told my friend my TA wouldn’t mind grading these,” she said. And I didn’t. It just struck me funny that a guy behind bars was doing so much for Profs on the outside. “Ask her if she’s teaching on “Bleak House” (a thousand page Dickens novel that is my favorite). If she is I’d love to grade those.”

            Fast forward to yesterday. The principal called me back to the office. There were two boxes of books up front that officers were bringing back to us, class sets of classics: The “Red Badge of Courage,” “Paradise Lost,” “War and Peace,” and others. “They’re a donation from an English professor to thank us for our help. We’ll use these for our college book club.” We now have all these books we can use, books the English teacher’s “street students” weren’t interested in.

            Next month, we’re starting a series of seminars in the dorm with the college guys. If they are successful, they’ll use them in the re-entry dorm. One seminar will focus on health and discuss meditation techniques. Another will focus on financial literacy. A third seminar will deal with time management and soft job skills. Then there will be a book club with both classic literature and contemporary nonfiction such as “Band of Brothers” and memoirs/biographies such as “Job.”

            Everything we’re working on right now is to give our guys exposure to life lessons and knowledge most of us from the “good” side of the street take for granted. “War and Peace” may not stop a guy from using crystal meth when he gets out, or maybe it just might. That’s why what goes on in here matters so much. That’s why a person like the English Professor who donated the books may make the difference for one of these men deciding not to risk coming back here.


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Ralph & Henry

This isn’t a prison blog. Then again, everything I think about, everything I experience, everything I remember is felt through the prism of this place.

            Last week baseball Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner died at the age of 91. Between 1946 and 1952 no ballplayer hit more homeruns than Kiner. Seven straight years he led the National league in homeruns. No other player – not Ruth, Bonds, no one – ever did that. For a time he was the highest paid player in baseball. Then, a back injury (which eventually cut short his career) “weakened” him to only 22 homeruns in 1954. The next season Kiner agreed to sign with the Cleveland Indians only after requiring them to cut his salary 25%. You don’t see many men willing to ask for that.

            Kiner played before my time, but he became the voice of my beloved New York Mets. Every game he’d have the star on after the last out and talk baseball – real baseball, not this talking head clap trap that passes for analysis today – on “Kiner’s Korner.” Most of what I know about this amazing game came from listening to Ralph Kiner.

            Even at 91, after Bell’s palsy and strokes slowed him and slurred his speech he went to the ballpark and talked baseball. He wasn’t as successful at marriage (4; of course, in his prime he dated Elizabeth Taylor and Janet Leigh), but he lived life to the fullest.

            Every time one of these guys leaves here I simply tell them “You have years ahead of you. Lead a beautiful life.” I thought about those words and smiled when I thought of that amazing ballplayer Ralph Kiner.

            And then there is Henry Aaron. A few weeks ago an oil painting of Aaron was dedicated at the National Portrait Gallery. I’m not sure we truly appreciate the likes of the Henry Aarons of the world. He grew up in Alabama at a time when his mother would yell to the children at 4:30 a.m. to “hide under the bed!” because the KKK was marching through. That was America back then. I shudder when I hear people say those were the “good old days.” There was nothing good about the violence and degradation black Americans lived through in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, even into the ‘60s.

            Aaron was one of the five greatest ballplayers in history yet for years wasn’t allowed to stay in certain hotels or eat in certain restaurants with his teammates; countless indignities were piled on this remarkable athlete. Yet, he never faltered. He never surrendered his pride, he never sacrificed the lesson his mother told him when he was a boy, “remember the Golden rule; do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Even when box loads of death threats came in when he was chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record Aaron never changed.

            Young guys in here spend a lot of time trying to emulate rappers; I always tell them they’d be better off being a little bit more like Mr. Aaron. Of course we all would.


A New Model

What is wrong with America’s prison model? Why is the rate of incarceration here higher than anywhere else in the world? Why do one out of three released offenders re-offend within one year of release? What is America really getting for the $80 billion spent this year on criminal justice? Is there a better way?

            The Bible says, “We reap what we sow.” I think of those words often in my current situation. Those words are applicable corporately to this nation’s love fest with “tough on crime” political demagoguery. America created a myth, perpetuated by politicians, that our way of life was unraveling at the hands of lawbreakers, who were almost always poor and minority. It was fed with anecdotal stories of roving gangs of robbers, rapists, and murderers. What it left America with is a two-tiered system of justice that grinds the offender down, damages poor families and their communities, and leaves the victim feeling unfulfilled. Prison – locking men and women up for long periods of time and treating drug use and embezzlement cases the same as predatory murder cases – does not make America safer, nor does it promote obeyance of the law, nor is it cost effective. 
 
            “There is no punishment so effective as punishment that nowhere announces the intention to punish.” America need only look to Scandinavia to see an effective prison model. The rate of incarceration in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) is ten times less than in the U.S. And these nations employed in many cases open-style prisons where offenders move freely between a controlled dormitory-style housing unit and the neighboring towns where they work and shop. It is a modified house-arrest model and it works (with recidivism rates one-half to one-third of those reported here). Why?

            It is a difference in philosophy and operation. Criminal justice policy is not regularly subject to political debate in Scandinavia. Instead of being directed by politicians and career-corrections staff, practices and policies are left to trained professionals, criminologists with expertise in the field.

            And crime is not sensationalized in the media. News broadcasts don’t use crimes or their trials to boost ratings.

            Decades of research verify that there is no fixed relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates. Prison populations are not determined by crime rates but by how states treat crimes – if the public demands “serious time” then an $80 billion industry arises to satisfy that demand.

            While Scandinavian prisons operate with the goal or re-integrating the offender back into society, American prisons can’t do the same because of the segregated nature of the system. Few middle-class white Americans can name anyone they know personally who has been to prison; few blacks in poor neighborhood know anyone who hasn’t. Because so many of the incarcerated in the U.S. come from poor homes, poor neighborhoods with failing schools and lacking employment opportunities, they view prison as just another series of punishments inflicted on them because of the color of their skin or their economic level. And middle-class Americans lack empathy for that visceral feeling. You can’t understand it because you never lived it.

            We send those men and women to prison and they grow bitter. And their bitterness returns with them to the street.

            People “outside” the system fail to grasp the shame associated with conviction. Shame is a powerful tool in corrections. But shame in the American system leads to self-pity, anger, and resentment. Why? Because prison for most offenders – with its dirt, and violence, and poorly-trained staff, and bullshit rules, and sentences that don’t bear any relationship to the crime committed or to the rehabilitation of the offender – is not an effective tool to correct law-breaking.

            As a writer on the American prison system noted: “Inside U.S. Prisons, decades can be filled with labor of simple survival. Reflection upon the decisions that brought anyone to confinement must overcome the bitterness evoked by a system that sustains such an environment.” (Doran Larson, Prof of English, Hamilton College).

            That is the sad fact behind the American prison model. I live it every day. And, I see far too many men for whom this becomes a way of life. That is a tragedy. America has created a system that frequently fails to allow a released offender to return home whole, rehabilitated and restored. It is a system doomed to failure.

            Contrast that to Norway’s prison model which states: “The punishment is the restriction of liberty, no other rights have been removed … During the serving of a sentence, life inside will resemble life outside as much as possible. You need a reason to deny a sentenced offender his rights, not to grant them … the more closed a system is, the harder it will be to return to freedom.”

            That distinction, that fundamental difference in philosophy explains why America wastes $80 billion on its failed criminal justice system. Perhaps it’s time to look to our Scandinavian neighbors.