Inmates cooked to death in Texas prisons

[markpkessinger]

147. I've never understood the mentality that says we have to treat convicted criminals like animals...

We Americans have a horribly punitive streak in us that leads us to believe that it isn't enough to separate a convicted criminal from his loved ones, from his possessions, from his friends, from everything he holds dear, from his dreams and aspirations, from almost every last vestige of his humanity, often for a period of many years. No, that isn't enough for us. On top of all of that, we also seem to find it necessary to place our collective foot on his head and grind his face into the dirt.

We tell ourselves things like, "Prison isn't supposed to be a picnic," and then proceed to turn a blind eye to the systematic destruction of human souls that occurs within prison walls. We convince ourselves that if only we punish convicts brutally enough, that brutality will somehow serve as a deterrent to others, or, failing that, will at least give the convict "what he deserves." And as we tell ourselves these things, the image of convict we conjure in our minds is an amalgam of all the very worst violent criminals we can remember having heard about -- some hybrid of, say, a Manson or a Bundy or a Dahmer -- meanwhile completely ignoring the fact that the largest number of incarcerated persons are nonviolent offenders. And many of our prisoners wind up spending weeks, months or even years of their confinement in inhumanly cruel solitary confinement, sometimes for things as trivial as infractions of minor prison rules. But we shield our eyes from those realities, and instead take comfort in the thought that the last violent criminal to make sensational headlines is suffering.

Yet our long-cherished notions about the effects of our brutal punishment never seem to pan out. Excessive, brutal punishment does not deter crime. (Indeed, do we really think most extremely violent offenders undertake a rational, carefully considered cost-benefit analysis before committing their crimes?)

Years ago I had an uncle (by marriage) who was a prison guard in Pennsylvania. He had a Bachelor's in secondary education (history, I believe), so in addition to functioning as a guard, he also often taught classes. I remember back in the early '80s, when every elected politician was all about "getting tough on crime," and there was a lot of talk around the country about eliminating various "luxuries" from prisons. One of the "luxuries" that got a lot of focus was the availability of weights/exercise equipment in many prisons. (Televisions and libraries were also targeted.) People didn't like the fact that prisoners were bulking up while on the inside. My uncle, however, based on his long experience as a guard, took a different view. He pointed out that one of the biggest problems in managing prison populations, of keeping both guards and prisoners safe, was the long hours of boredom and idleness. He said the last thing he wanted to deal with, as a guard, was several thousand inmates -- many of them potentially very dangerous -- who had too much time on their hands with nothing to do and with few physical outlets. Working out, in my uncle's experience, served as a relief valve for prisoners, and thus made it easier for them to deal with the stresses of prison life.

So we convict people of crimes (not always correctly), and we then put them into the worst possible hellhole we can create for them. If they weren't animals when they arrived, many of them will be by the time they leave. They have to become as bad as the worst they encounter, merely to survive. And then when they finally get out, we offer next to no real support to them for reintegrating into society. In fact, we make it almost impossible for many of them. And then we scratch our heads when these folks return to a life of crime in order to survive. We have earnest discussions about "recidivism" and about the root causes of crime.

There are other countries that seem to do a better job in all of this. But we're too busy being "exceptional" to be bothered learning from anyone else.