In Response...

           So I’m reading the USA Today Op-ed the other night and I come across a guest op-ed piece by Colorado State Judge Morris Hoffman titled “Emptying Prisons Is No Panacea.” I read his piece with more than just passing intellectual interest. After all, I’m one of the 2.3 million men and women currently behind bars in the United States. I’m a member of the new leper colony – prisoners – who most “decent, law abiding” citizens don’t give much thought too, that is until they come inside for even one day and see the embarrassment, and horror, and waste that America’s love affair with incarceration has created.

            I read Judge Hoffman’s piece, his reliance on “evolutionary” reasons for our love affair with punishment, his reciting of the tired, disrespected, and proven false, theory of deterrence, and thought to myself, how does this guy get a platform to espouse such nonsense? Perhaps, I thought, I could use the honorable jurist’s words to educate people about the reality of prisons and sentencing and America’s criminal justice system in general. College freshman throughout the country learn early on in English composition to distinguish between reasonable and fallacious argument tactics. “Overgeneralizing, false analogies, non sequitor” arguments should be carefully dissected. It seems Judge Hoffman’s piece could be used for a class exercise in false logic 101.

            Hoffman writes:

            “The claim is that incarceration costs much more than its deterrent benefits. Judges should think twice before throwing away the key … it ignores the most important reason we punish wrongdoers … (deterrence) …”

            He then goes into a quick explanation of deterrence: “Specific deterrence” (send a wrong doer to prison deters him from committing another crime), and “general deterrence” (deterring others from committing a crime). He then concludes with this “fairy tale” statement –

            “General deterrence is what makes us a civilized society. It is the glue that holds us together under the rule of law.”

            Judge Hoffman couldn’t be more wrong in his judgments.

            First, specific deterrence does not work. Nationally, almost 40% of those released from prison will recommit an offense leading them back to prison within one year of release. Over two-thirds will recommit within three years. Once, you sentence a person to prison the likelihood is they will return and re-offend over and over. Contrary to what the Judge writes, prison has the exact opposite specific effect on the wrongdoer.

            Think about it for a second. A majority of those behind bars are nonviolent, low custody offenders. A sizeable majority (over 60%) lack even a basic, marketable education level (high school diploma or equivalency degree). They come from lower socio-economic strata; a sizeable number have generational connections to the criminal justice system; they were raised in single-parent homes. The vast majority of those behind bars come from the ranks of America’s untouchable caste – the poor, the undereducated and underemployed, black and brown. For these families, the “American dream” is a cruel hoax.

            You send that man – or woman – to prison and expose them to the violence and degradation that exists behind bars, and then release them to find work, all the while denying them equal access to government programs and benefits or private employment because the scarlet “P” of “prisoner” goes with them; and then you wonder how they can be so stupid to re-offend … No Judge Hoffman, specific deterrence doesn’t exist.

            Then there’s “general deterrence.” People, he argues, don’t break the law because they see what happens to others who get caught. Excuse me while I chuckle. Anticdotally, I never thought I’d get caught or, if I did, that I would face prison time. That is a universal attitude amongst the incarcerated. General deterrence doesn’t exist. No one has ever not killed, not stolen, not driven drunk, because “Hey, that guy got arrested and he’s going to prison.” Crimes occur for a whole host of reasons: impulse, opportunity, psychosis, and the whole gamut of sins of those of us who accept Judeo-Christian tenets understand as the fallen nature of humans.

            If general deterrence really worked, then crime rates would continually decrease to a point of going away completely (but for the psychotic criminal). If general deterrence in the face of harsh sentencing was fact, then the United States would have one of the world’s lowest crime rates. Judge Hoffman throws words around like “civilized” to justify our punitive sentencing system. Meanwhile, look at the “civilized” Scandinavian nations who disavow capital punishment and use community-based probation and short-term sentencing when prison is needed. Their crime rates are drastically lower than here.

            Deterrence is a disrepute theory thrown around by people for whom full prisons mean steady work (like a state judge, for example). Crime, to a large extent, is a reflection of socio-economic problems in the nation. And, those problems aren’t helped by sending tens of thousands to the purgatory that is prison. The billions this country wastes on tired notions like “tough sentencing deters crime” could be better used in education, and infrastructure rebuilding, and job development. But, we don’t do it because we fall for the easy lie, the lie perpetuated by Judge Hoffman and men like him.

            USA Today gives men like Hoffman a forum; always remember, just because you read it doesn’t make it true. Prisons do more harm – to society and the wrongdoer – than good. As a nation, we are made “civilized” not by our punishment code, but by mercy. It’s not “tough sentencing” that makes us a “shining city on a hill.” No, it’s our attempt, even with the lepers of the land, to do as Jesus outlined in His Beatitudes and His parable of the division of sheep and goats: “for I was hungry and you fed Me, thirsty and you gave Me drink, in prison and you visited Me …”

Plantation Life

           The Virginia Department of Corrections is the commonwealth’s largest state agency, employing over 15,000 at a cost of over $1.2 billion a year.  It is led by a director of public safety. The DOC director, I’m guessing, provides his boss with a department “tree” detailing his own department heads and regional directors and all the prisons which fall underneath. You look at the organizational chart and you think the department is centrally run. Consistency, you tell yourself, matters. And, you’d be wrong.

            DOC operates like the antebellum South. Each prison is its own plantation; all depends on who is the warden and who is the security chief. Prison operation is a bloated business. First, it’s labor intensive. You have to have a significant number of officers to man every housing unit booth and floor. You have to have officers in the towers and in the trucks circling the perimeter. Then, there are officers on duty at vocational and treatment, and in medical and the factory. You have to have “floating” C.O.s to relieve on-duty officers twice during their twelve-hour shift. That’s just line COs. Add a layer of sergeants, “Lts” (lieutenants), two captains, and your security chief and you have a huge officer staff twenty-four, seven.

            Modern technology? Yeah, they have electronically controlled doors for the buildings, but everything else is done with keys. Every classroom door, every cabinet, every drawer, has a lock. There’s one officer whose sole job is to walk around the compound and verify that the correct key goes with the correct lock. Everything is written down; paper is everything in here.

            All that waste of money and manpower would, theoretically, be worth it if (1) society was safer; and (2) going to prison stopped a person from reoffending. Neither statement is true. In fact, just the opposite happens. There is no correlation between “tough on crime” high incarceration rates and crime rates. Want to reduce crime? Have better schools. Make sure lower income workers have a chance to reach the “American Dream” with well-paying employment opportunities and access to both health care and decent housing.

            And, going to prison doesn’t stop recidivism. It’s just the opposite. You send a low risk, non-violent offender into a prison and there’s better than a one out of three chance when they get out, they’ll break the law again. That’s prison. Even at low levels. They are zoos (perhaps zoo isn’t a fair word; zoos are much nicer). Drug use – heroin, pills, weed, you name it – is rampant. Violence is commonplace. There are health crises that brew like a toxic stew; Hep C, HIV, diabetes, not to mention staff infections (MRSA), rotten teeth, rotten skin, rotten psyches. The officers – not all, but a fair number – are corrupt. They are low-skilled, poorly paid minders who use their job to “get a little more.”

            All this goes on under the watchful eye of the warden and the chief of security, the facility major. They run the facility as they see fit, the hell with department policies or procedures. For example, DOC has specific regulations concerning facility operation. “DOPs” (department operating procedures) spell out everything from mail to visitation. And yet every facility enforces those procedures differently. Even going from one level “2” re-entry facility to another is like night and day. It all comes down to the whims and wills of the security chief. Most of the decisions that the major makes are petty and address neither safety, nor security.

            You learn which officers are straight-shooters and which ones are dirty. You watch as they create additional levels of bureaucracy which contribute nothing to the Department’s defined mission of successful re-entry of released inmates to society. Here, we have counselors who don’t counsel; they report to unit managers who worry more about the waxy shine on twenty year-old floor tiles than health and safety in the building. The three unit managers report to an  “evidence based program” manager, a fancy word for a man who should be pushing re-entry programs that matter (like real job training and drug and alcohol treatment), but instead has grown men sitting in a room every morning getting “the word of the day.”

            They have a grievance procedure in place. By law, a prison has to have a system in place that allows the incarcerated to challenge charges and arbitrary enforcement of rules (passed during the Clinton Administration to reduce the number of § 1983 Civil Rights suits flooding the federal courts by inmates). Here, the system is rigged. Due process is ignored. Officers – as uneducated as the offender population (you only need a GED to be a C.O.) – fail to meet minimum standards of evidence and fail to even correctly write charges. Still, the hearing officer almost never finds for the offender.

            All these circumstances breed a sense of victimization and contempt for the judicial system within the offender ranks. When you are in danger of being shook down or sent to the hole based on someone dropping a “note” on you; when most investigations are initiated by information provided by snitches who themselves are dirty (but their dirt is overlooked by the security apparatus), when officers are bringing in drugs and having sex with inmates and – when caught – are just “walked off” without facing prosecution, then you know it’s a rigged game. You are, to quote Bob Dylan, “workin’ on Maggie’s farm.”

            All that goes on here. And you know what – Richmond knows … they just don’t care. How else do you explain that wardens aren’t held accountable for the drug use, fights, deaths, and re-offending of those in their charge? How else do you explain majors getting inmates to wash their cars and playing favorites with snitches while limiting access to education programs?

            This isn’t a well-run department; this isn’t merely a poorly run department. This is a decentralized mismanaged rat hole where each prison runs as its own little fiefdom, its own plantation. It’s all that and it isn’t corrections. And, it doesn’t do a damn bit of good for anyone. Everyone pays for this failed antebellum plantation system: tax-payers, victims, and the families of the offenders. It is time to move corrections into the 21^st century. It’s time to clean up the prisons.

            

I Met a Guy in Here …

I met a guy in here named Gary from Southside Virginia. He’s in his thirties and has a high school diploma. Problem is, he can’t read, write, do simple math, or tell time. Some school district around here decided it was easier to pass Gary on than try and educate him. Now, he gets a guy he trusts to read him letters his mom writes and then write her back.

            

School isn’t an option. Spaces are limited. He has a diploma so he’s ineligible. If he was the only man I met in here who’d been mishandled in school I’d be concerned, but he’s not. He’s one of dozens of Jaspers, and Juniors, and Rickys, guys who come from families who generationally lack basic education skills and who likewise generationally know all about prison. That makes me angry. They are the outcasts. It isn’t a racial issue. All the names I just wrote are white guys.

            

I wondered, as I finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs – a guy who though caustic and intense saw a massive failure in America’s education system – how we expect people like Gary to buy into the “American Dream” myth when they are so far removed from it. There’s a whole lot of Garys out there, outcasts, and lepers, who are left out and they will eventually overwhelm the system. The answer isn’t to ignore them or shun them or worse, send them to prison. Am I my brother’s keeper? The answer seems obvious.

            

I met a guy in here named Dipper. That’s not his real name. It’s what the guys call him. Dipper stuck because he was known to take a dip of any drug. Crack or powder cocaine; heroin; PCP; crystal meth; embalming fluid laced joints. Dipper used them all. Don’t think that drugs have an effect on you? Talk to Dipper. He’s the embodiment of “this is your brain on drugs.” You know the old public service announcement where a guy put a frying pan on the stove and said, “This is your brain,” then cracked an egg in the pan and said, “This is your brain on drugs.” Dipper’s elevator doesn’t go to the top floor. He told me the other day, “I’m a frigment of my own imagination.” That’s right, a “frigment.”

            

It’d be hilarious except nothing in his prison experience makes him want – or need – to change. He is an addict and he will remain an addict. He’ll leave here in sixteen months and get high his first day out. And, he’ll stay high until he’s arrested again or worse, kills himself. If it was just Dipper you could say, “O well, lose one every now or then.” But Dipper is like most of the drug users in here. They just can’t stop.

           

I used to think (you know “BA” – before arrest) that drug addiction was just a matter of will power. Then, I spent three days watching a young man – a boy really, just eighteen – go through heroin withdrawal. His body craved the drug even as he convulsed and poured sweat; even as his bowels released and suffered from dry heaves. I realized it wasn’t will power. Will power is one of those self-righteous words we use when everything’s going right. Then, the storms of life hit and we come face to face with all our foibles and failures. Dipper’s an addict. Sending him to prison won’t change that. I don’t know what will, but it’s not this place.

            

I met a man in prison named Thomas. He’s a decent guy, the same age as my older son. The world didn’t deal him a fair hand. His father, a chemical engineer – was abusive. He told Thomas he wasn’t worth a damn. “You’re not bright. You're not motivated. You’ll never amount to anything.” It was worse for his younger sister. She was sexually abused. And no one paid attention. After all, they were a nice middle-class family.

            

Thomas became depressed and withdrawn. He started using way too many drugs. He started acting reckless, wanting to die. His sister quit eating and ran away more than once. Thomas landed in prison; his sister was given over to a loving aunt and uncle in Oklahoma.

            

Thomas’s time in prison wasn’t always easy. A young, skinny white kid makes a prime target for the predators. He fought a lot. But, he never lost hope; he never gave up. And his sister? She graduated high school and won a scholarship to a college in Oklahoma. Thomas leaves in thirty days. He told me he wanted to write me when he got out. I’m more of a father to him than his own dad, he said. I found that ironic. Thomas needed me in here to talk to as he struggled with his anger and hurt of his dad. My own sons go on without me.

           

“Get out and you lead a beautiful life. Be the man you know deep down you are.” I’ve told that to Thomas a dozen times. I’ve said it to other guys to get them to see they aren’t this place. Those are words I wrote to myself early on when life was crashing in on me in here. “Be the man you know you are.”

            

I have met hundreds of Garys, and Dippers, and Thomases in the past five years. Each of them has a story. I’ve met dozens of men who I don’t like, who have no remorse, take no responsibility for themselves or their actions, who have behaved in such violent, inhuman ways to warrant separation from society.

            

And then I’ve met others, those on the outside looking in. For them, prison isn’t the answer. It certainly won’t solve the problems that led most of them to end up in here.

            

I met a man in here … They’ve made an impression on me: their failures and their successes; their humanity. They shouldn’t be forgotten. They are the fathers, brothers, and sons of this nation.