Matt the Vet

I saw Matt arrive a few months ago from another prison. He’s a vet – Post 9/11 – and served two tours in Afghanistan on the Hindu-Kush Range, the mountainous region dividing Afghanistan from Pakistan. I recognized Matt when he walked in; he and I had been at the jail together. He sat there awaiting sentencing – and DOC transfer – for bank robbery. He used a shotgun and robbed two banks in the greater Richmond area of a little over $50,000. “When I mustered out, I couldn’t find a decent job,” he told me back then. For those two robberies Matt received 9 years each – two sentences to be run “consecutively,” i.e. one after the other. Eighteen years, a PTSD rating, a purple heart (shrapnel wound to the leg) … “Thank you for your service to your country.”

            When I first met Matt he was very angry and bitter. He had enlisted after 9/11 to defend his country. Then, he climbed to the ranks of Sargent and did multiple deployments while people at home waved flags, put bumper stickers on new cars that said “we support our troops” – yet less than 1% of the population had anyone in uniform – and the country knew nothing of the places their sons and daughters were sent to fight and die. They cared even less about the ramifications of America’s political decisions being made which effected lives of those troops. Benjamin Franklin said, “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel flees.” Old Ben understood modern America.

            This generation of vets – the post 9/11 young men and women – are no different than the Vietnam vets. America talks a good game about service, but the political consensus, the political will is “fuck them.” Harsh? Yes. But 9/11 vets have higher PTSD rates, higher homelessness, unemployment, suicides, and incarceration rates than other returning vets … and still no one seems to care.

            Matt’s not the bitter, angry young man he was when I met him in 2009. And he’s here to take advantage of his VA education benefits, earn his degree and move on with his life. Matt mellowed – prison will do that to you. You see how screwed up this place is; you realize how much worse off others have it; and you find your faith. For Matt, that was converting to Islam. For me, it was believing that Sunday school song “Jesus loves me, yes I know …”

            In the weeks to come I’m going to profile Matt and the other vets. I want people to see there is more to some of the felons in here than we might assume. There are fourteen young men in here who served their country after 9/11. For eight of them, they were in harm’s way, saw combat multiple times. Does that excuse their crimes? No. But, there is more to the men in here than just their criminal records.

In the News - July 2013

As I write this blog, over 12,000 inmates in the California prison system are on a hunger strike. They strike for more humane treatment and decent living conditions, better food, eased overcrowding, improved medical care.

            Two years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that California’s prison system violated the constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, California’s prisons were at 157% of capacity. On average, two inmates were dying each week. It was a corrections system devoid of correction making a mockery of the state’s justice system.

            The court ordered California to reduce the prison population by approximately 30,000 inmates within eighteen months. Since then, California has thumbed their noses at the court, transferring thousands of state inmates to local jail control rather than releasing them. California DOC has crippled local law enforcement who are now burdened with caring for too many incarcerated state inmates.

            The state of California daily violates the constitutional rights of its incarcerated. What, I ask, does that say about our respect for the “rule of law?” And, what does it say about the men behind bars who continue to press their case for lawful incarceration conditions?

            Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said you should judge a man when things are at their worst. Dr. King would be proud of the hunger strikers.

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            At Guantanamo Bay, a number of Muslim prisoners, also on a hunger strike, are being force fed on instruction of the Obama Justice Department. More disturbing, these force feedings are occurring during the Ramadan fast period.

            A Federal Judge has skewered the force feeding policy. It is important to remember none of the men currently being held at Guantanamo have been convicted of any crime. The United States Government has lost two major Supreme Court actions involving detention of “enemy combatants.”

            Benjamin Franklin reminded his founding father brethren that “surrendering your liberty in the name of security leaves you with neither.” I wonder what old Ben would say about the power of the federal government to hold a foreign national for more than ten years without charge and trial?