considering criminal confinement

A blog about conditions in prisons and the treatment of prisoners, now and in the future

by me, Georgelle Hirliman, author of
THE HATE FACTORY
a first-person account of the 1980 uprising at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe
as told to me by an inmate participant

E MAIL your prison complaints, opinions or reports to me, they will be posted here. Please put in the subject line "crime"
121

4/4/05 -- The prisoners at Camp Bucca in Baghdad are throwing rocks and tantrums asserting their rights, according to today's Associated Press report in the New York Times. Remember, this camp is part of the prison system in Iraq that was set up by ex US Corrections Officers who were up on charges of prisoner abuse in America at the time they were sent over to Iraq.

March 22 -- PEDOPHILE TREATMENT, Couey et al
One time and you're out. No second chance. You rape a child and society will not allow you in again.

In my developing remake of the prison system in
America, when it comes to pedophiles, they all stay together. The murderers among them are in solitary for the rest of their lives. The kidnappers and rapists are together, private sleep rooms, but during the day they co-mingle. They are there for life, no chance of parole.

There are no guards on the physical premises. All monitoring is done electronically, with video and audio and whatever other devices are to come. Watchers/guards would monitor these devices elsewhere, safely. Any disturbance would be quelled by those watchers button-pushing a response such as teargas, etc.

The bars on the cell doors and throughout today's prisons I would have removed and walls and doors replacing them. Being in absolutely for life is an extreme punishment that merits a humane environment which allows thoughts to be focused on self knowledge and work.

Work would be as required as the life sentence was inexorable. Basic but good nourishment would be shipped in. Anything extra would have to be grown or paid for by the inmate. Work for companies in the outside world would be solicited by the Institution, later perhaps also by the prisoners, and the prisoners would be paid a fair wage, certainly minimum, more if merited. The inmate would never see that money, however. Half would go toward defraying the cost of their stay in the institution, the other half to their victim's family. I think this work would have to be in great part via computer. These can all be in one space, or in the case of the murderers in solitary, in the cell. All computers of course would be monitored and secured in the up to date technologies available.

This is my solution for prison in general. Only the worst go into these penal communities. With this cost-effective and humane, love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself kind of penal institution, we can afford to give stricter sentences to the worst of criminals, like violent murderers and pedophiles for instance. In part, remembering that penal colony is a term that described real penal communities on distant islands; where those convicted of crimes were sent to totally fend for themselves, I thought of the above reformations. Those men in the colonies had to get busy farming if they wanted to eat, and building if they wanted shelter. Such commitment to survival civilized the majority of them.

The other inspiration for these beginning thoughts on reforming our penal institutions is an article I read in the archives of The New York Times on the unusually respectful and successful penal system in Finland. I paid the archives to read it, but couldn't get it free for you to read, so I typed it into a link from here.

I've asked for your ideas for doing away with prison as we now know it -- just scroll down a bit for the e mail link and actual question. I'd love to read your ideas.

March 17 -- PETERSON & BLAKE: No evidence, different decisions
What a difference personality can make. Robert Blake, accused of murdering his wife Bonnie Blakely, gets acquitted when everyone thought he was and would be found guilty. Scott Peterson, accused of murdering his pregnant wife and their unborn child, is found guilty and sentenced to death when everyone thought he'd be acquitted. In both cases, no physical evidence placed a murder weapon in the defendants' hands.

Did Blake's jury feel sympathy with him because of his frail demeanor, or/and did the celebrity and the law enforcement role as Baretta seep into the jurors' consciousness surreptitiously?

It's clear that Peterson's jury grew to despise him. The red-headed, feather ear ringed, single mother of several juror nicknamed Strawberry Shortcake made that clear at Peterson's death sentence hearing Wednesday. She sent an outraged message to Peterson at the press conference after the hearing. "You look someone in the face when they speak to you," she scolded Peterson thru the camera. "San Quentin's your new home." As she turned from the camera, she added, "Asshole."

It seems to me that such fury in a jury would be grounds for mistrial. It wasn't only she who was actually angry, many of the vocal jurors were. All of them were serious about seeing their verdict of death delivered. They all showed up for Peterson's death sentencing, tho they were not required to, explaining to reporters later that they came because they wanted "closure."

What the jurors, and everyone else associated with the prosecution of Peterson, couldn't stomach about him was his nonreactive demeanor. He came in the court laughing, he never showed remorse, or tears, the jurors said. One juror said he would have voted for life, not death, if Peterson had taken the stand and spoken for himself. Catherine Crier, a reporter on Court TV, has just published a book -- A Deadly Game -- about the inside info no one has seen in the Peterson case. She has decided Peterson is a sociopath based on his nonreactive demeanor.

They were certainly circumspect, and unemotional in reaching their verdict. The jurors said they did not vote Blake Innocent, they voted him Not Guilty because the evidence presented by the prosecution didn't put the murder weapon in his hands: no facts, no guilt. That's how it should be.

I've been thinking lately that it's time we rethink justice being blind as a fine thing. Blindness is a handicap. It's proven to be so when it comes to justice, because the only things justice is now blind to are facts and fairness. She's become quite emotional.

March 15, 2005, 9:30 PM - Brian Nichols aka Courthouse Killer
Ashley Smith's remarkable seven hours with Brian Nichols has humanized him. This rubbed law enforcement the wrong way. A murderer was being presented as a tortured human with a conscience, albeit after it was needed. The majority of the law enforcement community prefers to see murder in strictly black and white terms.

Ashley was so intimidated by this attitude that she called a second press conference Monday evening to tearfully say that she was but a small part of this story, that the real heroes were law enforcement officials who caught him, as well as the families of the slain.

Brian Nichols has captured our attention because he was one of us. He lived rather well, held an intelligence-needing job, and had a strong belief in God. Does this mean that each of us, upstanding though we be, might have the potential to snap and ragefully kill?

This is exactly what we don't want to look at. This is why we have prisons, throw away the key and forget about who we put in there. This is why the president and his followers call terrorists evil. You cannot negotiate a peace with evil because negotiation and peace requires an understanding of the other's point of view.

We prefer to keep our murderers -- our collective shadow -- inexorably excommunicated, in the world and in our psyche.

Look at where that's gotten us.

If there is a higher purpose for Brian Nichols, I think it is to make us see at least this murderer as part of the same humanity we all belong to, as in there, but for grace, go I.

March 15, 2005, 2:00 AM - Brian Nichols
I suggest it was greatly the condition of prison not just the specter of life behind bars, that made Nichols desperate to escape. And the disgusting food. How he reveled in the "real food" served him by his captive Ashley Smith, and was awed to have "real butter."

What fascinates me is: what made him snap? At what point in his life and why did his rage get out of his control? Because for the first quarter of his life, it he controlled it.

A CNN late-night anchor doing the all-weekend coverage of Nichols at large showed the greater attitude of Americans to people who commit crimes. She was speaking to Nichols' lawyer about his family. He said Nichols' mother was incredibly perplexed, embarrassed and saddened by her son's actions. The anchor interrupted him with: "Well, all due respect to her, but people are more concerned with how the victims' families are saddened."

All wise thinkers have told us that we are no better than the worst of us, what is in the heart of the murderer is in everyone's heart: civilization is the tempering of these base passions that come with our animal biology. But we humans can't look terror in the eye even if it's our own.

When Mr. Nichols had achieved his escape and it was clear he was on the run, I thought to him: Hey dude, you've killed your life so while you've got this slim window of freedom, give yourself the beauty of life you need so it can sustain you in the hell you'll be in for the rest of your days. A friend whose husband is in law enforcement told me some of that hell. He killed a police officer, my friend said. He's in for a baaad beating before he ever sees a judge, it's payback for killing a cop.

It was grace that Brian Nichols found Ashley Smith, his last captive. She seems to have incorporated thoroughly the compassion and lovingness of her religious beliefs, and she was able to use them to calm a very turbulent human being. Brava to her. Oh if all religionists would digest and become the teachings of their faith.

QUESTION: Given that prison has proven to be an institution that turns out more and better criminals rather than law-abiding, psychologically healthy citizens -- WHAT'S YOUR IDEA FOR A NEW PENALTY TO REPLACE PRISONS?
e-mail your answer to me; put "considering" in the subject line.

**ANSWERS & COMMENTS**
3/15...I always said, "If I had the answer to replacing prisons, I'd have a PhD." They really do turn out better criminals. It's why we call it "criminal college." J.S. 3/16...I have an idea about local memorials to the falsely imprisoned, maybe a bench and a pool, or whatever Not just (and not mainly) the ones in prison who are falsely imprisoned, but those who are found to have been innocent and get out and are only reluctantly given their freedom after 10 or 20 years or whatever, and no restitution that I've ever heard about, often no prosecution for cases of prosecutory malfeasance when involved. . . . Like the starvation and suffering in the world that we don't acknowledge, pay attention to, or do much about, the injustice in prison, closer to home, I believe eats away at our collective soul. J.T.

An excerpt from The Prophet that has been shaping my thoughts on the subject for fifty years:

Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, Speak to us of Crime and Punishment.
And he answered, saying:
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.

Like the ocean is your god-self;
It remains forever undefiled,
And like the ether it lifts but the winged.
Even like the sun is your god-self;
It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self dwells not alone in your being.
Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime.

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.

And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
. . . .
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden bearer fore the guiltless and unblamed.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.

If any of you would bring to judgment the unfaithful wife,
Let him also weigh the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.
And let him who would lash the offender look unto the spirit of the offended.
And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness and lay the ax unto the evil tree, let him see to its roots;
And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad, the fruitful and the fruitless, all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth.
And you judges who would be just,
What judgment pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?
What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit?
And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and an oppressor,
Yet who also is aggrieved and outraged?

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?
Is not remorse the justice which is administered by that very law which you would fain serve?
Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty.
Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake an gaze upon themselves.
And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,
And that the cornerstone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, Alfred A. Knopf 1923 and still in print