Signing
on to the notion that we are all responsible for the air we
breathe, I propose a two-pronged cure that will fall somewhere
between the system as it dysfunctions now and Taliban justice,
where the thief gets his hand chopped off.
Since
rehabilitation is not unconnected to the appreciation of civilized
behaviour (the laws) and respect for the freedom of others,
the ostensible challenge of prison life is to cultivate that
appreciation. So why is confinement, which is synonymous with
the loss of freedom, failing to produce it? Because most prisoners
have access to the same options and choices the average citizen
enjoys on the outside, which means the only significant difference
between the inside and outside is the size of the playing
field where incarceration demonstratively does not prepare
the prisoner for life on the outside -- which begs the point.
The penal system, originally founded to protect society from
its most dangerous individuals, in its modern incarnation
resembles a structure that is close to collapse because it
is constructed on a most precarious premise: that confinement,
as the cause effecting rehabilitation, is synonymous with
loss of freedom.
What
freedom has been denied a drug kingpin or crime boss if each
can run his operation from a prison cell? If violent doers
on the outside are allowed to practice their violence inside,
how are they to develop an appreciation of non-violence, or
respect the inviolability of others? If prisoners are allowed
to partake of the amenities they enjoy in the outside world
(sex, albeit homosexual, companionship, drugs, sports, communication
technology and entertainment) how are they expected to cultivate
a respect and appreciation for these things that haven’t
been denied as a consequence of imprisonment?
What
is wholly lacking in prison reform is a proper understanding
of deprivation. Whether in liberty or serving time, there
is nothing more effective than deprivation to cultivate an
appreciation of whatever it is that has been denied or taken
away. Have me sleep on a hard cold floor for a month and you
can be sure my appreciation of the simplest mattress will
be immeasurably enhanced.1 Deny me companionship
or community for 30 consecutive days and I will be thankful
for the briefest company of even my sworn enemy.
The
most effective and straightforward answer to prison reform
for all crimes, including white collar, is automatic, compulsory,
uninterrupted solitary confinement, where the length of sentence
is a variable determined by the nature of the crime and time
required for rehabilitation, all of which are subject to the
individual’s personal makeup and motivation. For the
length of any sentence, prisoners will not be allowed to socialize
with other prisoners; contact will be restricted to non-criminal
role-models such as educators, therapists, trainers and medical
staff.
In
its present form, solitary confinement is rightfully looked
upon as a form of cruel and unjust punishment, or, in academic
parlance, another wrongdoing that will not produce a right.
Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be queasy over the concept
of punishment, a word that has fallen into major disfavour
among bleeding heart liberals and conservatives. Punishment,
as an adjunct of education, must remain one of the cornerstones
of incarceration, where the latter engages the former to maximize
the odds of rehabilitation, which is always the endgame. Prison,
at a very minimum, should be a ‘memorably’ unpleasant
experience, and solitary, in the format that I’m proposing,
will be just that: constructively enabling such that once
the prisoner has earned the right to reenter society, the
mere thought of returning to the kind of life that resulted
in his incarceration will be a non-starter.
The
Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP), in 1991, constructed the
IMU (Intense Management Unit), a euphemism for ‘solitary.’
Prisoners were indefinitely subjected to solitary confinement
as a means of controlling them, keeping them away from gang
life that is allowed to run amuck in most prisons. But in
recent years, after much petitioning, the
OSP adopted a system that allows prisoners
to earn their way out, following specific programs in respect
to therapy and education. The results have been very promising,
and it is something along these lines that I am proposing.
Since the prisoner would be meeting with his counsellor(s)
on a regular basis, he wouldn’t be subjected to solitary
as it is inhumanely practiced today.
Every
responsible parent, at some point in the life of his or her
child, will exhort that child not to keep company with X because
he’s a bad influence. That keeping company with bad
company is so self-evidently unwise, you would think our most
esteemed penologists would have grasped that basic fact even
prior to working in the field. The first immediate benefit
of compulsory solitary confinement will be the permanent elimination
of gang culture that has become the breeding ground for the
very criminal activity prisons are supposed to cure. From
day one, eggs turned bad will not be allowed to mix and rot
with other bad eggs. Instead, in the protective bubble of
solitary confinement, every prisoner will be individually
evaluated with the purpose of providing for his reintroduction
into society. The prisoner will have access to only those
materials that address his educational needs, deemed the sine
qua non in turning his life around. Progress towards
rehabilitation will be relentlessly monitored and measured;
positive performance incrementally rewarded; education will
be comprised of acquiring both practical and social skills.
In the new prison paradigm there will be more educators and
counsellors and fewer prison guards.
In
recognition of the cause and effect that link the inside with
the outside, as part of every crimininal’s education,
he will be systematically introduced to the notion that he
wasn’t born a criminal, but that X number of consecutive
negative experiences turned him into one, and that the unravelling
of these experiences will equip him not with excuses but the
understanding and self-esteem he needs to help himself work
his way out. Since these negative experiences occurred on
the outside, the system that grows and tolerates these crime
spawning environments will be directly implicated in penal
reform. We know there is enough money, albeit much of it off
shore, to underwrite the rehabilitation of every negative
environment in America, but the will repatriate the equivalent
of Fort Knox is not there because the big picture has been
obscured by interest groups in whose financial self-interest
it is to maintain the status quo.
And
in respect to those prison administrators who are incurably
vulnerable to their infallibility, whose positions would be
directly threatened by admission of failure, they are either
collectively in denial or bureaucratically insulated from
anything that runs counter to their pet behavioural theories.
Quick on the draw, they conveniently assign ‘innate’
or ‘inevitable’ to behaviour patterns that are
merely arbitrary, which makes them flagrantly compliant in
a system that exculpates the cause and blames the result.
Is
there a relationship between the 40 billion in profits realized
by Exxon -- or the provision that allows the rich to deposit
their profits in off-shore tax free havens -- and lack of
funds to provide street kids with the training and education
that would pre-empt their being sucked into a life crime?
What risks are children exposed to when a mother has take
on a job to help her minimum wage earning husband make ends
meet? Divvy up Exxon’s 40 billion dollar profit and
you can deposit a thousand dollars into the pockets of 40
million Americans -- that’s 15 percent of the population.
Multiply these profits by America’s 50 wealthiest corporations
and you have more than what it takes to get every single kid
and criminal off the street and back into school.
When
will our legislators and law makers who devise the tax codes
rise to the occasion of representing Exxon’s profit
for what it is: a crime against humanity? If the benefits
of rehabilitating the criminal are self-evident, aren’t
those same benefits self-evident as it concerns the rehabilitation
of the corporation, which in its present guise operates like
a wild west operation? As long as corporate America is allowed
to write (rite) its own rules, the disparity between the haves
and have-nots will widen, gated communities will become the
rule instead of exception, more and more of our streets will
be designated as danger zones and our prisons shall multiply.
There
was a time, not so long ago, when our neighbour, a milkman,
could afford a simple house and his wife could stay home and
raise their two children. Earlier in that tumultuous century,
people didn’t have to lock up their homes and cars.
And now we have prisons that are bursting at the bars and
failing their mandates because the powers that be refuse to
acknowledge that these developments are merely symptoms of
what ails society at large. If the good ideas chasing prison
reform are to get beyond sounding like some think tank feasibility
study, they will require advocates whose vision is equal to
isolating the root causes and effects of crime and punishment,
and who are sufficiently willing and strong-willed to make
the giving back our lives and liberties, both inside and out,
their essential task.
1.
The impulse that gives rise to paganism is the need to objectify
the expression of appreciation of what is dear and sacred
in life.
