Last posts on prison

Ben Gibbard Shares My Pain

2008-10-26T14:02:00+01:00

Mood: BroodyMusic: This Place Is a Prison, The Postal ServiceChina has not made it easy to keep up with my usual Pic o' the Week's (last week we had no power, the week before we had no internet), but I have one this time, so I got that going for me. It's a picture of the new bars that were installed on the outside of our windows. Now I know what you're thinking--Chris, we told you not to make fun of Mao and call them Orientals--no, no. The bars were put there with our consent. We had them installed because last week someone broke into our apartment during the wee hours of the night.He (She? It? They?) opened the kitchen window, which is loud and woke Christina up. I (he who sleeps through earthquakes) did not stir. Christina told me that she came out into the living room to see what the noise was but couldn't see anything wrong. It wasn't till the next morning when I went to put the kettle on the stove that I saw our kitchen window--a window we never open because there is no screen--was wide fucking open. I asked Christina if she happened to open it. That's when she told me about the noise that woke her up.So we guess Christina's coming out to the living room scared whoever it was off. I gotta hand it to whoever it was--we live on the second floor and there are some thick wires that would make it hard to get to our window. Robert, the New Zealander, thinks whoever it was thought the apartment was empty. But I ask why, then, would (s)he want to get in?We made the school officials install better locks on the windows and they offered the bars. We reluctantly assented, and so here they are:

I took this one. It was not a fun picture to take. At least we can sleep a little easier, I guess. . . .

Life in These Sacrificial Unites States ?

2008-08-11T14:10:00+02:00

Dark thoughts last week as I was in the shower listening (thanks, showerbug!) to an NPR story about how China expels, arrests, and uses force to keep a lid on dissidents, in order to keep the society stable, and thinking about Girard's contention that the U.S. has managed to keep society stable without hierarchies, through social mobility, the legal and judicial systems, technology, and being part of global free market economic competition, among perhaps other ways he doesn't mention. I thought about how the U.S. maintains its fragile stability and two things come immediately to mind. We don't: the U.S. murder rate is far higher than any European country. According to 2000 data, the U.S. ranked #24 on a list of murders per capita, behind Colombia, South Africa, Venezuela, Russia, Mexico, some other bits of the USSR, and Thailand, but well ahead of India, Azerbaijan, Romania, Hungary, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and all of Europe, which except for Finland (#30) and Portugal (#33) ranked from #40 to #58, out of 62. The 2004 data shows an increase in the murder rate in the U.S. to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people, compared with 2 in Canada, 1.6 in France, 1.4 in the UK, and 1 in Germany and Norway).

To the extent that we do maintain stability in our society, we do it at least partly by incarceration. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country, both in terms of numbers (gigantic China is a distance second) and percentages, so that 2.3 million, or more than 1 in 100 people, are in jail or prison (with more than 7 million on probation or parole), and 1 in 9 young black men are incarcerated. Half of those incarcerated are there for repeat non-violence offences.

Whether someone ends up in prison is determined by a complex matrix of factors, each of which may influence the other: race (both skin colour and psychic and historical wounds, fears, beliefs, perceptions); educational opportunity and resources; environmental factors -- everything from pollution and lead paint to family structure, community support, availability of mentors; income, income potential and family economic wealth; where one can reasonably choose to live; peers; addictions of choice; and so on. Tied in to all this are our laws, which, for instance, restrict but keep legal some addictions (cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription drugs like sleeping pills, e.g. ... and some might add non-nutritious foods, TV, technology, extreme dieting, and so on) and which outlaw others, and which enforce mandatory sentencing guidelines ("three strikes" laws).

Prisons keep our society stable; we can exile those who break the rules, who threaten our security, and we can effectively keep them away from the rest of us. Out of sight and out of mind.

Murder rates, although they have dropped from highs in the early 1990s, show we're not as stable as we think we are, at least in some areas of the country (i.e., usually in the poorest, most urbanized areas).

Who is being sacrificed to keep the U.S. stable? It seems clear to me that young black men are, if we can afford to lose more than 1/10 of them to prison and many more to murder -- in 2005, blacks were the victims of "nearly half the murders committed in the United States despite making up only 13 percent of the population," and slightly more than half of those were "young black men aged between 17 and 29." The children of those men are also being sacrificed.

One could explore sacrifice in America in many ways -- in the economic system of haves and have-nots, in our celebrity and sports idol worship, in nursing homes and geriatric care, in women working and/or not working, our public education system, our health care system, and so on. Another way might involve looking at deaths from motor vehicles accidents (43,300 in 2006), which occur 2.5 times more often than homicide (17,400 murders in 2006) in the U.S. Alcohol-related motor vehicle deaths roughly equal murders, 17,941 in 2006. Obviously, motor vehicle accidents are usually far less intentional than murder, more collateral in nature even for drug-impaired drivers and reckless drivers (it's not generally their intention to kill anyone). Some motor vehicle deaths are completely accidental and perhaps unavoidable, because of poor skills, distractions, road conditions, vehicle fault, and so on; murder is never unintentional, by definition.

I wonder if the number of motor vehicle deaths and accidents could be said to result from our sacrifice to driving as essential to our way of life, or to our sacrifice to the cultural expectation of efficiency and getting things done as fast as possible, or to our societal tolerance for alcohol and/or to the stigma of the alcoholic in our society, or to our acceptance of social mobility as a stabilising mechanism, as Girard suggested. And so on. You get the idea. Granted, if we still rode horses or buggies, or walked long distances to get from place to place, or all took bullet trains, there would still be deaths resulting from these choices. Death happens.

My question is not a cloaked statement that cars and driving are bad, or that we should abolish prisons and laws; my question is, what are we sacrificing in our society, as a society, and for what purpose? And does that sacrifice bring us stability that otherwise we wouldn't have? What are the trade-offs?

Prison

2008-06-13T11:00:14+02:00

Last April, I woke up one morning to be told my cousin had been in a car accident and was lying in hospital, critically injured. The two passengers of the second car had died. My mum was distraught. I felt slightly numb, not knowing what to do in this situation, worrying if he was going to be ok. We shortly found out there was a question as to his alcohol blood level at the time of the crash. My cousin was devastated. He couldn’t believe he’d killed two people, an elderly mother and her daughter. One moment, one evening of stupidity, and two families’ lives had been ruined. He had had three pints over the space of three hours or so. I know it’s inexcusable, but I can’t find it in me to blame him. I think it would have happened whether he’d been drinking or not. Three weeks ago, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, needing to serve at least 2.5 years. He was sent to a category A prison until they found somewhere else for him. Category A is where they hold extreme escape-risk offenders, killers, sex offenders. My cousin, who rightly accepts his sentence, commented on the disgusting, grimy, cockroach-infested state of the prison. I feel I should comment on this, as I was speaking to some people recently, who seem to think prison life is a luxurious and easy one. It is indeed a punishment, if for the disgusting surroundings, the lack of contact with people, being stuck in the same small cell for 22 hours a day. True, there are some unexpected ‘luxuries’, my cousin has a television in his cell and a toilet. Those who think these things as luxury need only to put them in the context of imprisonment and cell confinement. The main thing I’ve learnt from all of this is how much the decisions of one person affect so many others. Not only have the family of the deceased been destroyed by what’s happened, the family of my cousin have crumpled. The day after the sentencing, my elderly Nan said to my mum, ‘I just can’t see the point in getting up and getting dressed’. For someone of her age, who has suffered a lot in the past few years, it’s too much to cope with. I don’t think my cousins parents will ever forgive themselves or him, for this. In the year since it’s happened, they’ve turned from a happy, youthful family, to one burdened with guilt, which is clearly visible on their faces, every time you see them. I still can’t quite comprehend what has happened here, that someone I know has caused this misery. None of us will ever forget, or fully forgive him. I feel for him though. He put himself in this position, but was in a way, unlucky that the result was so extreme. There are so many things that could have been different. I want to write to him in prison, but I don’t just want to send a letter. I thought about writing him a comic strip, so he has something different to occupy his mind, something to keep him alert, to get him away from the monotony of his life. Not that I’m an artist, or have even any vague art skills, but it’s something to do, and it might help both me and him and give us purpose. I need some inspiration. Having recently read ‘Persepolis’, which I found both humourous and informative, I’d like to do something along these lines, but without coming across too preachy. I need a character. I considered doing a strip based on the character ‘Falco’ from the Lindsey Davis novels (roman private eye, with a sharp wit and a mischievious smile). But I’m open to anything.Any ideas?

Visiting Room Beauty

2007-10-09T01:44:59+02:00

Moments of beauty are precious inside the prison walls.

One evening I heard tales of how shocking it was to come into the visiting room for the first time. Each of the two men I was listening to had stories of coming off right out of years of solitary confinement and suddenly finding themselves in the presence of women and children. Neither of then knew what to do; they literally went into shock and had to be helped to take the next steps to find their visiting families.

Tears came to their eyes speaking of the happiness that comes with being present to children, watching them play, laugh and cry. They sighed and spoke softly when telling of how it is to see all of the beautiful women. "Women are all beautiful when you haven’t seen one for years." "The energy is so different in the visiting room, so real, so full of variety."

All I want is to be useful

2007-10-09T01:36:09+02:00

One of the biggest heartaches of being locked up is not being able to contribute. There is a long waiting list for the job of reading books for the blind and only a couple of positions available. Chapel clerk jobs are coveted. Most of the jobs available are full of down time; very few intail what we would call meaningful work.

Finding meaning in your life, having purpose is fundamental; and a fundamental challenge for prisoners. Two conversations recently brought forth examples to share.

One older man, who has always been a tinker and go-to, fix-it kind of guy, is now lost without his workbench. His last job was fixing guitars so others could make music. He knows that he will die here in prison because of some stupid mistakes (he did not elaborate) and he finds it such a waste not to be able to work, not to be able to fix things, not to be able to contribute. “They can keep me here for the rest of my life if they need to,” he said, “just let me do something useful!”

Another recently was privileged to tend the Native American’s garden while they were on lockdown. He was so full of joy and satisfaction when he spoke of the gift of being able to get his hands in the dirt and pull weeds, and to watch as birds came for the water, and the plants grew under his brief time of tending. He was getting hassled by other men and the guards for “going Native,” but found those easy to bear in exchange for the blessings of entering into the cycle of Nature for a tiny period of time.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation used to have a program where 1st and 2nd graders sprouted oak seedlings as a science project; and then the seedlings were cared for my inmates at Folsom until they were big enough to plant out in a park or school. The project was canceled years ago.

The men I come in contact with are hungry for meaning in their lives. There must be a way.

Books of Faith Expunged from Prisons

2007-09-11T15:19:47+02:00

Saw this article, "Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries," in the NYT yesterday and notebooked it to write about later, but Nancy Hitt at Preaching Peace beat me to it and speaks for me as well. Here's a lengthy excerpt from her response:

"If you were wondering how the war of all against all was coming along, I'd say it was on its way. We have reached a new level of desperation when we start purging religious texts from our prisons in order to keep the nation safe. Not that such texts aren't useful for inciting violence; of course they are! After all, religion, like the law that keeps the offenders behind bars, is meant to contain and control human violence. The texts that are used in service of that goal are powerful, used as easily to meet the goal of containing violence as to inciting it. I'm guessing few of these officials have read the Bible, because there was no mention of removing it from the shelves in the NY Times article reporting on this. If they had, it would have to go too; there are way too many ways to encourage violence by manipulating what's within its pages. However, in time honored human tradition, violence is being used to contain violence. ...

"Of course the characteristic American response to all of this is to file a lawsuit. So far, two of them have been filed focusing on First Amendment concerns. So now we have two of the three pillars of culture at war with each other over violence. Is there no way to stop the madness?

"In my frustration, I've been muttering things like: Mimetic Theory should be mandatory! Then I laugh at myself as I realize I've just replicated the same response that I'm scandalized by, that old idea of using law to enforce understanding and contain human violence. ...

"I'm pretty sure that censoring the religious texts available to prisoners will neither reduce violence (it's more likely to increase it) nor protect the nation from further terrorist activity. But I have to admit that those prison officials are on to something. They are right to recognize that religious texts can be used/misused to manipulate violence."