@Leanne1986 Are you asking if I would think twice about breaking the law again after being to prison? Of course not!
I’ve been partying off and on since 1966 and never gave the law much of a thought at all. If you are white, educated and respectable looking, your chances of getting caught and sent to prison are slim to none. In my case, a Mexican-American friend of mine got pulled over for the Nth time, and he made a deal with cops and the DA to set me up instead. If you are poor and white and live out in a trailer park, or if you are simply black or Hispanic, going to prison is a normal and accepted part of everyday life—something you are more likely to do if you grow up in that neighborhood than, say, go to college.
After seeing the cops lie under oath, and how people are pressured to accept bad plea bargain (because they throw the book at you if you insist on a jury trial), and the utter contempt with which the cops treat people who haven’t been found guilty, I must say that my former respect for the law is now one of deep contempt.
Moreover, I am not the least deterred. I am, of course, mindful of the big fist that passes for “justice” but I am not terrorized into submission. One thing I learned in prison is that they can’t watch you every minute, and that even when strip search you and toss your cell, pretty much the only time they find what you’re hiding is when you are careless or somebody rats you out. The reason I follow the law is not out of fear of punishment but because I am a kind and compassionate person. When you start abusing that, you don’t get a more law-abiding person but less.
When I was in a 300-man dorm I conducted a survey of the other white guys there. I was thinking of how the government pays farmers not to grow crops, and how every man has his price. What would it take to simply pay prisoners not to take dope? Out of about 60 guys, only two even offered a figure. One said he would straighten out if the state paid for his college education; the other said $5,000 (but I know he was lying). All the rest said that no amount of money would even tempt them to quit drugs. Indeed, several told me that on the day they paroled, they had made arrangements to have a needle in their arm before they even got off the prison parking lot. So why would you think these folks would “think twice” about anything?
Let me tell you a simple but terrible truth: people can get used to anything, and in a surprisingly short amount of time too. After a short while prison, punishment simply doesn’t scare you anymore. You can lock people up in solitary confinement for months on end, and reduce their human contact to having a feeding tray shoved through a slot in the door; in fact, you can even torture them and they will still resist you. Punishment only makes you compliant when it is being applied; otherwise it makes you fearless, defiant and ready to punch someone out at the slightest insult. If you think prisons and punishment makes you safer, or anyone more law abiding, then you’re a fucking idiot and a fitting target for revenge.
If some guy with tattoos on his neck comes up to you in a parking lot and asks for a dollar, you’d best hand it over. If you say “Get a job!” those might be the last words you ever utter (besides, Oh No! Please! Stop!) Ninety-five percent of the people who go to prison eventually get out; and every one of them is a ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, it is their families that suffer their explosions. And don’t think that this is by accident.
This is the dominant white “respectable” classes waging war against the lower classes, knocking the poor and people of color out of society and out of the political process. They even call it a ”war against drugs” or a ”war against crime.” Every time you send a black or Hispanic person to prison, you are, in effect, sending them to the back of the line. Everyone else moves up a space. It is affirmative action in reverse.
Its blindingly obvious to people in the ghetto that the only people who go to prison on drug charges are relatively low level dealers and users. The politically connected people who fly the stuff in using military and CIA planes; the people who launder the money; the banks and middlemen which so handsomely profit from billions in unaccounted for cash never, ever, ever get caught, much less go to prison. Do you think they think twice about breaking the law? After Reagan left, they even found e-mails on the White House computer showing how Oliver North was running plane loads of cocaine out of the basement of the White House and nothing was done about it. Manuel Noriega sent tons of drugs to the US with the blessing of Bush Sr. and the CIA—and that’s not even the half of it
Before I went to prison I never thought about hurting anyone. But, afterward… Let’s just say that if certain people fell into my hands, and I thought I could get away with it, I would cheerfully torture them to death, or at least be sorely tempted. Do you get what I am saying? Are you, perhaps, sensing just a wee bit of anger here?
After prison I hardly think about of anything but revenge. Fortunately, I am an educated and patient man, and the revenge I am going to take will be in the form of a book (or two) which blows the lid off this whole corrupt mess. But don’t expect me to work as a scientist again, or lift a finger to make a “positive” contribution to society. When I hear the people above calmly talking about how they are in favor of “monitering, ReHab, Therapy, medication, even Chemical Castration” I just want to shove a dull, rusty screwdriver in the side of their neck. Why? Because that is their level of human regard for me.
When they are talking about Therapy, they aren’t talking about healing the humiliation and brutalization that has been done to me in prison or in life; they are talking about turning me into a docile automaton, with rudimentary job skills, who accepts the fact that from now on he is a second-class citizen, who will stuff down his rage (which is not recognized as legitimate) and obey his “betters.”
Therapy is just another fist in the face, only it requires you to bare your soul to the judgement of imbeciles, who armed with a smattering of psychological pseudoscience, think that just because they have the power, they have a right to pick over your every human fault. Indeed, if you fail to show the proper servile deferential “attitude,” or worse, you show the slightest whiff of defiance, this too now becomes a pretext to deny your freedom and dignity.
@JLeslie Thank you. As I said I do plan to write a few books. You can see some of the early draft chapters at my blog on Justice and my Prison Diary .
@MissAnthrope The system is beyond fucked up. Punishment, whether it is spanking a child or the far more serious the things that are done to prisoners always, always, always turns the punished person against the punisher and only makes the punished person harder to manage. Children who have been subjected to corporal punishment almost invariably fantasize about committing violence to those who abuse them. Imagine how much stronger those impulses are when you strip people bare of their normal defenses (like being able to walk away) and you humiliate and degrade them for years on end.
The people in power are not going to “wake up.” They are the ones perpetrating this fraud. Law and order politicians get and stay elected by cynically manipulating people’s racial fears and hatreds by framing it in terms of “crime.” So, as long as there is racism in our society, there will be a drug war, and it won’t help anyone get off drugs because, in reality, it is little more than an ethnic cleansing program with a $50 billion budget.
You don’t have to punish to correct. If you want people to stop taking drugs, at least grant them the dignity of making the choice for themselves. Small fines or a modest tax would do the job nicely. Where other countries have decriminalized drugs, about 5% of the addict population quits all on their own and stays quit—all at minimal trauma and expense.
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