Just A Guy- Prison report: Finally, some truth

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just a guy was recently released from a California state prison. For the past year, he covered the prison system from the inside, and continues to comment on prisons, crime and law-enforcement issues.

Kudos to the Orange County Register for writing a piece not completely marred with negativity toward prisoners and for taking an objective view of the fucking mess in California.

I think it’s refreshing that a more mainstream media outlet has actually put out a piece that doesn’t label every prisoner in California (or the country) as an incorrigible ingrate with no future.

What is it going to take for the rest of the state to pick up pieces like this one? Where are the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union/Tribune? Why is it only small papers or independents and weeklies are telling the truth?

The writers of the OC Register article put the numbers out there for all to see — come on, California spends more than double that of Illinois per inmate. DOUBLE. There is no conclusive proof that this spending is doing shit. Well, it’s definitely doing shit, just not good shit! Lining someone’s pockets somewhere.

Quotes like this in the article crack me up: “Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.”

I guess the guards are all fresh and rosy and don’t have odors, kind of like when they stopped allowing visits because the swine flu outbreak was just occurring — but didn’t stop anything else, as if the only people that could get the swine flu were the inmates and their families.

I suppose the writers had to have a little drama to keep the piece interesting. They certainly make it seem so dangerous to walk past those inmates, like it is such a fearful endeavor, they didn’t mention the amount of assaults that actually happen to co’s each year, especially co’s at level II facilities like the Quentin gym.

One other thing: Has anyone ever considered that the inmates’ lives are also in the hands of bored cops?

Then there are quotes like this: “”We ain’t living good,” agrees Richard Howlan, 43, who was convicted of drug possession and is serving time on a parole violation. Howlan says there’s mold growing on the wall near his bunk. “I’ve been sick as a dog for three weeks.”

Well, I am sure that the public is happy to hear that you “ain’t” living good, Richard, though you ought to be considering that 3 billion more is spent on prisons than higher education!!!

Another thing that just bothers me. The 20% drop in violent crime from 99-08 seems to somehow be attributed to prison spending, but the truth of the matter is from 99-05 the economy kind of rocked and well, everyone was happy and happy people are less violent, right.

Shit, even the refi money trickled into the crappy neighborhoods, it’s no wonder violent crimes went down. Somehow 06-08 got rolled into that, but don’t go around trying to say prison spending is what reduced violent crime. Motherfuckers were just happy ‘cause they had money!

How can Lance Corcoran say this — the most disingenuous statement I have ever heard: The prison union agrees with Petersilia’s conclusions, but says you can’t blame its members for the state’s limited investment in rehabilitation. Bullshit! It’s the union’s members who support Corcoran — and they’re trying to get more money. So they get the blame by proxy just as inmates get the blame by proxy for everything that happens.

Now, I can’t blame the CCPOA’s members for trying to get more money (who wouldn’t), but please don’t give them an out like that; they’ve got plenty of excuses already. And if the real concern were public safety, more would be invested in things that would make it less likely an inmate returned to prison — thereby protecting the public through rehabilitation not incarceration. It’s about bank account safety, not public safety.

Other things like this simply amaze me: Union spokesman Lance Corcoran said that the state needs to offer prison guards competitive salaries and benefits in order to attract good employees. (See chart of how much public safety groups have spent on political lobbying in California).
“We’re in competition with a myriad of different agencies at the state and local level to try to get folks to come to a not very glamorous job,” he said.

Are you kidding me? Not very glamorous, well tough shit. No one is making these co’s become co’s. What percentage of co’s actually have college degrees? Apparently the majority of co’s find being a prison guard more glamorous than going to college and getting a degree that would enable them to have choices beyond working at a prison.

When you have pigeonholed yourself into a career with no real growth potential and no real opportunity outside of that career path you will do everything you possibly can to defend that choice and make sure you have a long solid future because YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ELSE. Fuck, are you seriously going to believe this crap?

The following may be one of the greatest understatements of this year:

Matt Gray, lobbyist and executive director of Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, said the public is uninformed about corrections issues. He said special interest groups, like the prison guard union, rely on the politics of public safety to convince lawmakers and voters into seeing things their way.
Instead of relying on data or studies to back up their positions, public safety groups paint grim pictures of criminals running in the streets. That’s a powerful argument. Nobody supports crimes.
“It’s a culture of fear,” Gray said. You seemingly can kill any prison reform plan by simply calling it soft on crime. … “I equate it to yelling ‘Fire!’ in a theater.”

Everything about what Matt Gray has said is true. If you have been reading my blogs for any amount of time you would know this is true. But the real sad thing about this is that while the politicians and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the CCPOA and law enforcement all cry this fear song, the general public really does nothing to investigate the veracity of what they are being told.

The people just believe it and bury their heads in the sand rather than investigate. Of course, I hold inept journalists to blame for this as well — the journalists that refuse to investigate and report both sides of the issue, the journalists that talk to all those groups above and write articles quoting the cops, da’s, prison guards, politicians etc…, but amazingly don’t quote one inmate or talk to anyone in prison.

Here’s statement the cognoscenti running California may want to consider: “I think there has been a recognition in New York that long prison sentences aren’t the answer for a lot of nonviolent prisoners,” Kriss said. “The (Correctional Services) Commissioner likes to say, ‘We’re keeping the right people in prison.'” But a statement like this in California would be nigh impossible for the majority of this state’s administrators — because it’s an admission of having made mistakes, and that admission, ultimately, could result in the release of people in prison, which would jeopardize jobs and livelihoods and political futures because of the appearance of being soft on crime even if some of the crimes are victimless…

It’s morons like this that California seems to listen to, not reason, not anything resembling sanity, but only these statements that make it possible to let someone else do the thinking for you and absolve you of responsibility:

“Sending thousands and thousands of inmates home in an early release line-up places California families in grave danger,” said Orange County State Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, when the Senate originally approved the prison reform package. “There is no doubt that the state’s prison system is collapsing, but there are more reasonable and responsible ways in which to save money.”

There is no more danger to California families if the people that get out in early releases get out now or when their sentence is completed — they’re all getting out anyway. The danger is that prior to release there has been no rehabilitative effort to make sure the offender actually has something to get out to. The danger is not in the release date but in the lack of hope prison creates.

Source: SFBG