A new view of prison life
Getting a bit stir crazy, are we? Stuck at home? Having a hard time getting our favorite foods, thanks to the stripping of supermarket shelves? Not able to go to our favorite restaurant or theater or sporting event or family gathering or, God forbid, church? All the time having to worry about being exposed to the coronoavirus?
Welcome to the world inside prison walls. And here we’re not just talking about two or three months but years, sometimes life without any chance of parole, or in some cases the ultimate: death row. Everybody in close quarters, the perfect breeding ground for the virus. To say nothing of the brutality built into that system. Little wonder that the suicide rate in prison is four times what it is in the general population.
Before you say, well, serves them right, you need to consider a few realities of the criminal justice system. Like, for instance, folks who did something stupid in their teens, maybe for street cred, and having to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. (Anybody who has raised teenagers knows what lousy judgment they are capable of.) Or people who are innocent but, unlike some of those celebrities accused of sexual harassment and worse, lack the funds for an effective legal defense, or are sitting in prison because they couldn’t come up with the exorbitant bail money. Or simply caught up in the gettough-on-crime atmosphere of recent years, which has multiplied the numbers in U.S. prisons to a point where the rate is more than five times greater than most of the countries in the world.
Here in Delaware County, as in so many other places around the country, they’ve turned prison management over to a for-profit company. Plenty of incentive to build more prisons and keep them filled. In the case of the GEO Group, which runs the county’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton, they made $83 million in profits just in the first half of 2019.
I’m also thinking of the two teenagers who admitted to taking part in an armed robbery using toy guns and were held as adults in the county prison for the better part of a year awaiting trial, before the younger one was redefined as a juvenile offender. Not that the juvenile justice system is a piece of cake by any means, witness the scandal that forced the closing of the Glen Mills Schools.
Then there are persons convicted merely on the basis of fabrications by a jail house snitch who is adept at using it as a means of getting a lighter sentence.
Bryan Stevenson, in his celebrated book, “Just Mercy,” lays out in excruciating detail how unjust and racist the so-called criminal “justice” system in this country is; especially in the Deep South, but not exclusively there by any means. He was able to free an innocent man on death row, despite efforts by the prosecution to hide exculpatory evidence.
This is not a plea to do away with prisons, despite the fact that they may increase rather than decrease the likelihood of recidivism. They are necessary in some cases to protect potential victims and sometimes alleged perpetrators as well. Instead, I urge that we level the playing field, so to speak. That along with trying to make prison a less brutal place.
Having gotten a small taste, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns, etc., of what prison inmates have been dealing with for decades, people may be ready to think anew about the need to reform prisons and the criminal justice system of which they are part. Persons interested in getting involved may want to contact Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit organization founded by Bryan Stevenson. Easily accessible via the web.
“Welcome to the world inside prison walls. And here we’re not just talking about two or three months but years.”
— Will Richan