IT’S TIME FOR ME TO VENT

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: 441

Here is a statistic that I have heard and hereby share with you that has continued to haunt me. And that is that the United States of America has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. So why are we so different?. In my view this has resulted almost completely from politics. If politicians are seen by the voters as being “soft on crime” they will probably lose their elections. But if they support harsh Criminal Justice laws and sentencing they will likely win and remain in office. So, for example, why could some people who are 65 or older and been in prison for ten years or more not be considered to be released to home confinement? This would be helpful for everyone, expressly including the taxpayers. These older people’s chances of committing further crimes or harms to society at that age are tiny. Obviously people like Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan or other inherently violent offenders should not be released, but many incarcerated people are simply not that way.

And, as has been written to me consistently by my incarcerated pen pals, the nutrition, study opportunities and medical care at many of our “correctional” facilities are often well below poor. This should/must be investigated and, if found to be true, shame on us all, because this is being done in our names! And the poor-quality healthcare in some of our prisons has been confirmed to me by a good friend of mine who is an experienced physician who has volunteered his services in both a men’s and women’s prison here in California. So, as my doctor friend has seen, some of our incarcerated people are needlessly suffering or even dying due to a lack of reasonable medical care. Outrageous!

So what can be done? First I recommend you obtain and read either or both of the following books: Rethinking Incarceration by Dominique Dubois Gilkliard (InterVarsity Press, 2018) and Locked In by John F. Pfaff (Basic Books, 2017). Then help me spread the word that we simply must tone back our radical policy of incarceration. Close your eyes and imagine that you were going to spend the next ten years of your life in prison. Obviously it will depend upon what the offense was, but 30 years for involvement in selling drugs, or 2o years for possessing a computer which contained child pornography? Certainly accountability is essential in our system, but often these prison sentences are mindlessly long and caused mostly by politics. So these politics must be reigned in by We the People, if only for our own sakes!