Prison Time
About 15 years ago, someone I knew personally was convicted as a sexual offender. His crime was that his cousin had been arrested on a drug charge and cut a deal with the police to assist them in rounding up other miscreants. This cousin took a DVD the police gave him that purportedly contained child pornography. He gave it to the person I knew, asking if he could burn a copy of it. The person I knew was not told what was on the DVD, nor did he ask. He only knew that within a few days, a fully armed SWAT team showed up to take him to jail.
I have followed this man's journey through the legal system with a lot of interest. He was initially to be penalized by two years house arrest followed by two years parole. This expanded to more than ten years. He recently became somewhat "free", although his identity remains current as a sex offender and this means he can not live within a certain radius of schools, ever have children, or work in a number of occupations. Occasionally we see legislation introduced that would mean all sex offenders have driver's licenses that are immediately recognizable, because they'd be a different color.
I could recount my father's issues with the law, or my own, but they tell the same story. I have no faith whatsoever in prosecution. When the neighbor's son molested mine, I went through the legal process so as to prove I was a good parent and doing all I could for my son. I had no expectation that anyone would be convicted. After all, my neighbors are white and wealthy, just like me (more or less). Nothing ever happened to them. Their boy is not classed as a sex offender. He has no mandatory counseling. His driver's license will never be stained; nor will his housing options be limited.
When I was in college, I got to know a couple, Dale and Marie. Dale was a prison guard. Marie was going to college. They joined our gaming group for a couple months. Dale recounted with glee the sorts of things that were tolerated in dealing with prisoners. He repeatedly told us how it was a 'different world' with 'different standards' and that you had to understand that the prisoners had no protection or outlet. Why would he tell us that? He told us of body cavity searches that were standard after all visits. He told us that if they didn't like the prisoner in question, they were rough during it. He talked about the amazing capacity of the human rectum and the sorts of things prisoners would try to smuggle back inside. I was freaked out at how mundane and inoffensive these things were - shampoo, music, books, pencils. Drugs were very rare; weapons - never. He talked about how the guards were allowed to inflict body cavity searches on inmates whenever they liked. Just in case, you know.
He said the most feared punishment was the five point restraint and how underestimated that was in the public. You could tie someone down and leave them there for hours or days (yes, DAYS) and he said people would be bonkers by the end of it. We asked him if the inmates were dangerous, if he feared retaliation. He said no, because most of the criminals were just normal people in for stupid reasons and the guards tended to stay away from the hard cases. After all, the guards knew the records. We argued with him, a lot. He became incensed at our moral judgment. The final straw was his abusive relationship with his wife. They left our circle, but his freely given testimony has lived on in my mind for more than a decade and a half.
Today I read this article. Our imprisonment-minded society really upsets me. Think of all the statistics you have seen on women being raped, and now realize that if we include rapes in prison, that men are raped more frequently and more often than women are. Think about how staggering that is. Some quotes from that article:
- "From 1980 to 2007, the number of prisoners held in the United States quadrupled to 2.3 million, with an additional 5 million on probation or parole."
- "even on the rare occasions when juvenile complaints [about sexual assault by guards] are taken seriously and allegations are substantiated, only half of confirmed abusers are referred for prosecution, only a quarter are arrested, and only 3 percent end up getting charged with a crime."
- "216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women."
- "one in three black baby boys can expect to spend part of his life in prison."
There is an enormous racist angle to all of this. There is also a broken cycle, a vicious one, that once someone is convicted, they are barred from a vast array of jobs. When I worked at 3M, I eviscerated the contract language for our bottled water supply, making it possible for convicted felons to deliver water to our corporate location. What floored me was that the previous language, which was quite standard, made it impossible for ex-cons to even deliver bottled water to our docks. It was ridiculous! These people should be allowed to get jobs!
People get convicted, serve their time under horrific conditions, and then upon release, their parole usually depends on them finding a reliable job. However, not only do they face all the usual difficulties in getting a job, but the majority of jobs are barred to them based on their status. Every single one of the more than 200 jobs I have applied for in the past five years has depended on me not only having never been convicted, but also on me never having been arrested. It is a standard, ingrained feature of the upper levels of our hiring system. Conviction or arrest for robbery, drug possession, or even a sex offense is entirely irrelevant to my job. But they ask anyway.
Is it any wonder that ex-cons re-offend or otherwise are returned to the prison system (usually due to parole violations, like being unable to find employment)? It's not to me.
I am bothered and shaken by how many people feel this is a just way to treat people. It's not. It's horrific. It's evil. And it's largely invisible because people choose not to see.