So I have a friend that went to prison. For a real long time. He's never been arrested before or been to prison, but he used to be a prison guard so he knew what to expect. His family and kids talk to him sporadically but no one keeps in regular touch with him. I feel bad that he's basically been semi-abandoned by everyone he knew on the outside, so I keep in touch with him, emailing back and forth a couple of times a week.
What he allegedly did is pretty bad, and I don't know if he did it or not. But through this whole experience, I've come to the conclusion that how he's been treated through the whole criminal justice system and now into his prison sentence is terrible. And it's not just him- it's the whole criminal justice system. I'll try to post up a much longer post about that crooked, awful system another time. I just don't have the energy for it.
But here's the deal- humans should be treated like humans. Even people that do bad things (and I'm not saying he did, but that's what he eventually plead to so he could avoid a much longer sentence), are still human beings. This experience has really changed my views on a lot of things. You can look at someone that's accused of drugs, or assault, or even in the worst case of murder and think, "Sucks to be in prison, but you shouldn't have committed your crime, criminal." And for most of my life, it's been easy to think that because we don't think of it as real life. I've had no experience with it or touchstone to relate to, and it's easy to compartmentalize it and watch your "30 Days In" or whatever prison "reality" they show on TV and think, "Wow- that must suck. Glad it's not me!"
And what I've learned is- prison really sucks. And I'm not saying it should be a day spa. I'm not saying prisoners should be provided with luxuries or anything like that. But prisoners are still human beings and need to be treated that way. And they're not. They're treated (at least in Texas) like chattel. When it often gets up to 110 degrees in Texas, most Texas prisons don't have air-conditioning. The oversight is terrible and violence in prison is rampant. From the perspective of the prisoner- fights are an inevitability. And with that ever-present reality comes the real fear of being killed in prison. If the prison has a problem with a certain segment of population smuggling drugs in, then the entire place goes on lockdown, sometimes for weeks, where prisoners aren't allowed out of their cells for any reason, even to shower. Healthcare is essentially non-existent.
I guess my point is that prison serves the purposes of: (1) keeping criminals away from the general populace; (2) potentially rehabilitating the people who are willing and able to be rehabilitated; and (3) deterring people from committing crime. Simply being in prison serves the first purpose. With respect to the other two, it seems that society overwhelmingly focuses on the third point and not the second. And when people say, "Don't give them air conditioning- let them boil!" or "You should fear for your life, that's why you don't want to go to prison!"-- well, that just sounds like we're advocating torturing people, which I think we generally agree (or at least people say they agree) that we shouldn't do that.
While my friend doesn't like to talk about the fights and fear, which he acknowledges are ever-present, the other big thing is the boredom. Most of the time, you literally have nothing to do. If you have access to books, you've read the limited supply numerous times over-- if you're given access to them. If you're not, you basically can either stare at a wall, work out, or find ways to craft games out of what you have.
My friend is a giant D&D nerd, though, and has found a niche as a dungeonmaster for Pathfinder. At first he was just playing it by memory of the rules with a spinner he made to replace the dice (you can't have dice in prison because of gambling prohibitions). Shortly after he got there, I ordered him the pocket-sized core rule books for Pathfinder 1E off of Amazon (Amazon delivers books to prisons) which included the core book, class guide, players guide and the first two bestiaries. Then I found a supersale on Amazon where the entire adventure path for the Curse of the Crimson Throne was in a single paperback for $20, so I sent him that for his birthday. He says they play Pathfinder 20-30 hours a week, and he's created a bit of a protected position for himself as the only guy that can run a game, and has a wait-list for players.
Anyways, this has been long and rambling- but this is what it comes down to: people should always be treated as people. Even bad people. How we treat prisoners and detained people in our country is shameful.
Prison
Re: Prison
All of this being said I want to acknowledge something that I think is really important. I've not been the victim of a violent crime. I live a privileged, very safe life. I acknowledge that people who have been affected by violent crime may have radically different views than I do, and I don't place judgment on that. In fact, if something happened to me or my family, I can see myself doing a 180 on this myself.
Re: Prison
This was an interesting read. We desperately need reform in this whole area of our society. I only know a few people who have been to or worked in a prison but the stories are mind blowing. We have structures in place that could allow diverting people with mental illnesses or non-violent crimes and drug crimes whose offenders need treatment. But we are only using a tiny percentage of the capacity we could be using for this. It's a problem in nearly every state. I'm not well enough informed about it to understand the scope and detail of the problem.