Mark Twain once said, “It’s not that I resent god for fools, its lightning isn’t distributed evenly.”  We’ve all felt this way in one shape or form, one time or another.  From the belligerent jerk at the mall to that crazy driver, we’ve all wished people away, or that they would just change somehow. 

It’s different with the law. If you break it, you go away for a while.  It is generally the hope that you come back a better person having learned from your experience.  Yet the reality of it is something entirely different. Prisons are stuffed beyond capacity with every spectrum of humanity, tucked away into dark concrete corners surrounded by electrified fences, razor wire and gun towers.  The problem may be out of sight, but it is not out of mind.  America’s incarcerated conundrum is at a tipping point as we are forced to deal with a situation that is nearly out of hand.

A measurement of society’s greatness isn’t only tallied by its success and wealth but by how it uses its money and power throughout its citizenry, especially amongst its lowest members.  When we structure and build with the lowest rung in mind, everyone can take a step up.  Take our correctional institutions, for instance. Lengthy sentences have not deterred crime, as evidenced by the growth of our incarcerated populations. As a reaction to that trend, in recent years we have moved beyond punitive and toward correctional.  Time and time again it has been proven that correction comes from equal parts education and cognitive treatment.  Pragmatically speaking, formerly incarcerated members of society become taxpaying consumers with active roles in their communities. Even if only on a base level, they become part of a solution in building a better future versus being a dependent ward of the state.

However, as we have given power to prison authorities, less transparency has been returned.  Compound this fact with the industrialization of our prisons into commercial enterprises and we tread a dangerous line aside a slippery slope.  We must hold to account not only those who break our laws, but those who administer the sentences.  Correctional administrators are beholden to a bottom dollar and an investor when they should be accountable to the taxpaying citizens who comprise our society.  As corporate America moves in on our correctional institutions they alter and shape our very laws.  Evidence of this can be seen as soon as January 1^st, 2019 when Virginia changes Powhatan (correctional) Receiving to State Farm Enterprise Unit.  This subtle change of title was provided by state legislature with funding to match.  Then take into account that Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE) manages the state’s license plate production, textiles, printing and dairy at Powhatan.  These industries provide the state with millions of dollars or revenue, made largely off of the backs of inmate labor.  Those workers are then paid pennies on the dollar and told it is privilege to be so fortunate.  It need not be like this if we take the courageous, constructive steps towards positive lasting change.  I believe we can do just that.

Penitentiaries have previously had all sorts of notoriety.  From their violence to corruption, prisons have a tangled history fraught with every type of failure.  I have noticed that there is a cycle that they typically follow.  It starts with issues that have run so long as to become commonplace.  When a problem is recognized an outcry builds until its collective voice cannot be ignored.  The people’s voice is heard as their ideas are turned into law, passed to appease a disgruntled populace.  Over time complacency builds contempt, and the cycle starts anew.  As I start my fifteenth year of incarceration, I recognize the shift of policy as one does a swinging pendulum.   I believe we can break this cycle and cut the pendulum’s cable.  My unique set of experiences has given me a rare opportunity to observe from opposite ends of the spectrum, as I have lived on both sides of a prison fence.

I attended High School in Fairfax Virginia during the mid to late nineties.  During my junior and senior years politicians came to visit our school.  They knew we were the next voting voices and they wanted our support. I remember Mark Warner made the biggest impact.  Warner worked our crowd with the cool confidence of an old pro and riled us up to a near frenzy.  Warner had wrapped us around his little finger as he tied the crowd into a tight pent-up knot, then cut it loose no different than a football rally.  It was my first active introduction to charged politics.  He charmed and enthralled us as we practically marched to his tune.  Warner’s tough stance on crime had me nodding enthusiastically to his every word.  I applauded loudly when he mentioned eliminating parole and shouted,

“Yeeah ! F#@k those guys, let’em rot!”

I had seen people I cared about hurt and/or killed by gang violence.  Despite never having joined a gang myself, I had been beaten for being associated with a group’s rival.  That criminal element was palpable, the wounds still raw.  Warner provided a solution to a very real problem.  He gave me a target for my rage and helped me to vent it. 

Now I see that there is no limit to fate’s collection of ironies as it has rebounded my anger upon me.  In 2004 I made a series of poor choices that led me to the night of a tragic crime.  For a few brief hours, I became what I despised and as a result, perpetuated a cycle of injury and pain.  I had inadvertently passed my scars on to an innocent man and his family.  I stole into a stranger’s home, robbed his family of peace, and took him from their safety.  It is only fair that the same has been given back to me in kind.  There were many unjust and outright illegal acts during the course of my hearings. However, their justice may just lie in the injustice I received.

Entering prison couldn’t have been a harsher drop into colder waters.  To say it was a shock that robbed me of sense and wind would be an understatement.  I didn’t know how to move, what to say or who to call out to.  I am fortunate that harder lessons did not befall me for my inexperience.  Then again, I am built of large stock, like the lost link between man and ape.  The short of it was that there was easier prey about.  I didn’t have to be the toughest, just tough enough not to be worth the effort.  I had heard the nightmare tales of prison rattled off to me like an alphabet of anarchy.  A, is for admittance to the system.  B is to be on your guard.  C, careful for the conmen, and D do not be duped.  I eventually finished my own alphabet.  R for rape made me the most paranoid and set me to ball up my fists on more than one occasion.  I was (and am) determined to leave prison a virgin of sorts.  Nothing has ever happened, thank goodness.  I don’t know if it is my size, my stance or the fact that I’m as hairy as a Yeti with mange.  Maybe I’m losing my sex appeal.  Who would have ever thought I’d be grateful for that?

I was always on edge, reacting to every perceived slight and offense.  I didn’t make many friends in the beginning as I kept everyone in front of me and at a safe distance.  It just seemed safer that way.  Officers on the mountain made it abundantly clear what I was to them, and where I ranked.  Shotguns and stun grenades echoed as their thunderous power ricocheted around my pod.  Barking dogs and belligerent officers jumped in my face as a means to an end.  What overpriced and limited items we were allowed were taken or tossed with disdain upon every shakedown. We were fed the worst sort of food and told to enjoy it.  Adjusting to a life lived in a concrete and steel bathroom with another man took its toll as well.  At times it was as if gang members, bullies that never left the third grade, and treacherous predators circled me like monsters in the dark.  I felt besieged on all sides.  How could this be correction? How could any of this make me anything but a better criminal or a better monster?

Those first few years were the toughest.  I suppose everyone has their own time in the furnace.  While we might not have a choice as to when we get thrown in, we can, in effect, shape what we are when we came out.  I made myself a promise not to be like the racist next door.  I swore not to pursue violence, but end it.  I decided to be the change I wanted to see.  After all, I had done plenty to inflict pain and now it was time to balance the scales a little bit.  It has proven to be the most challenging and most rewarding choice I have made to this day.  Yet I did not make that choice overnight, or without influence or inspiration.  It was a gradual process, like being refined by fire.

Eventually, I was transferred from my mountain prison to a lower level institution.  It wasn’t so much of an upgrade as it was a tradeoff.  The gung-ho in your face attitudes of officers was traded for indifference, disdain, and apathy.  My new housing was so large that I had become just another number, one among over three thousand.  Many of my standoffish ways I’m sure came off like I was a good dog gone slightly feral.  A kind and generous librarian saw this, and gave me another way.  She truly believed in evidence practices.  Her example and encouragement helped me to find and see a different path.  She encouraged me to write.  The process became like therapy, a catharsis of sorts.  I was forced to sit down and articulate my thoughts in such a way as to not be abrasive, yet concise and full of meaning.  While those letters will never be sent, their message to me was clear and their benefit felt to this day.  Seeing as I barely graduated High School, and never saw a day of college, I consider the effort and reward treasures well earned.  I was inspired to find another way through subtle means.  I believe there was magic in her small gestures. Otherwise how do you explain their power?

My new found energy and focus became infectious to some, a turnoff for others.  I started to see change not just in myself but reflected in some as well.  I was making a difference in the most unlikely of places, with the cards stacked largely against me.  Despite it all and in spite of it all I grew, my thoughts evolved.  As a welcome consequence, this affected others around me in various and sundry ways.  It was then that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that in the darkest places good things could still grow. Even the least of our actions can be like pebbles in a pond.  It’s in the spirit of that lesson which I write,  It is with that inspiration that I have ideas that continue to progress with hope that others may be affected. In kind, after all, if it worked for me, it might work for someone else. 

One would think that my good intentions would be well met.  You could guess that the administration and the powers that be would welcome someone with the will to make things better, to improve not just oneself but those around and our system therein.  You could make that assumption, and be dead wrong.  I believe it was Churchill who said something like,

“If you ever want to make people angry, try to change something.”

I have never before seen such vehement resistance to change.  It is simply mind boggling to think that there are people out there that want things to stay as broken as they are.  That is why it has never been more important for voices like ours to be heard.  It is by the sum of my experiences, some of which I have shared here, that I approach you with hopeful idealism. Even if each of our efforts were as a grain of sand, together we could build sandy shores where beauty could be found, and the hope of a new day seen.

My lesson, actually one among many, is about accountability.  If society as a whole expects offenders of the law to be held accountable then why not the same with those who administer sentencing. To fail to do just that would be an audacious hypocrisy and a failure of justice. 

The change that I am suggesting wouldn’t be expensive, but it would be bold.  It would take a vote in legislation guaranteeing that prisons be non-profit.  Doing this ensures that there is not a conflict of interest in corrections.  Making prisons non-profit guarantees that prisoners are there for correction and not a banker’s bottom line.  All profits from correctional enterprises should go to one of several public interests.  Victim advocacy organizations should be at the top of that list.  Public education should also benefit because if we start there, prisons become less necessary. Those who come to prison should have the chance to get an education.  I believe that learning gives purpose.  When one gains purpose, they gain direction.  When one gains direction the benefits multiply and affect us all.  Incentives for GED and additional schooling alongside trades should be paramount in the rehabilitative process.  There is just something about learning that leaves an indelible mark upon you.  It shapes you in subtle yet profound ways.  Taking what one has learned to a profession is the next step, as we can use the tax incentives already in place for business hiring offenders to a fuller potential.  Our prisons are an untapped resource filled with people of tremendous creative insight, talent and ambition.  The potentiality of wealth from such a supply could be motivating factor, sure.

However, as a moral society, I believe we owe ourselves more than material wealth.  I believe that each of our lives affects the other in such a way that when we make things better for those fortunate it benefits us all.  It is as the old parable goes:

“One hand washes the other.”

Ever since I was able to safely push a lawnmower, I’ve had a job.  Throughout the years the most successful businesses have all had one thing in common.  Each of them empowered their employees in some way or fashion.  Those hard working people were able to invest in their work through mutual financial interest, experience, education and or pride.  They were given title over their work and it was better for it, because they owned a piece of it.  They could stand back in reflection of what they had accomplished and look on in confidence that something positive had been completed.  I’ve met people from all walks of life, and this is something I believe we all have on one level or another.  If someone feels included in the process, if they sense that what they do has value then naturally they will be more involved because it benefits them to do so.  The power isn’t in alienation but inclusion. 

I believe this philosophy can be applied from prison to society as well.   If a person of sound mind is incarcerated, they should be able to earn the right to vote during their incarceration.  By allowing someone who was once separated from society, who was alienated yet now included, you help reestablish societal bonds by giving then ownership.  Through the right to vote you empower the person.  Earning this right could be accomplished through the completion of an American Civics class, taught through already existing GED and secondary education classes in prison institutions.  This in effect would cost the taxpayer no additional money, yet pay out dividends as it provides accountability, civic inclusion and responsibility.

The final accountability in corrections I suggest has little to do with offenders, and everything to do with administration.  In the decade and a half I have spent incarcerated I have witnessed such a wide and varied failure of leadership that I wonder how our problems aren’t even greater.  I have seen little in the way of departmental cooperation.  Actually, rivalry is a more apt description.  Evidence-based practices and healing environments should be an ongoing process during an incarcerated individual’s time and not merely a reporting point in a file.  We need to hold our officials to their word, to their work and its end result.  It is in that spirit that I recommend that the Director of the Department of Corrections be an elected official.  If our local sheriffs are elected officials, then it isn’t unreasonable to have elections for the other side of law.  It would open up competition in a stagnant field and truly become transparent to the public eye.  Like many Americans, I am tired of politics and the muck that gets slung.  However the feudal power that the Director of the Department of Corrections holds needs to come to an end.  If people have a voice and a choice, change will happen naturally at the ballot box.  Accountability will hold it’s due.