Prisons

Prisons: I read the California Gov’s wife is trying to follow the First Lady’s example and plant a garden at the state capital. That’s good and I applaud both efforts. I would submit that allowing prisoners to have gardens or even a tomato plant in their cell would also be a step forward. Contrary to what the movies show and what people may think, prisons in California rarely grow their own food. Oh, other is one dairy and a chicken farm, but that’s only two prisons out of 34! Most of the time we spend locked up in our tiny cells. Do you know that inmates don’t even cut the grass on the prison yard? Yup, a big rider mower comes in and does it. That’s crazy! Here is all this “Free” labor just sitting, or laying, around and it’s not being used. The problem is the staff is so conditioned to having us locked down that they don’t ever want us to be out. I watched a CO (correctional officer) sit at the buildings central podium, while we were locked down, and read a magazine-for over an hour. And that CO is making about $60-$80K per year! Look, it’s just all too common for California inmates to be locked down for even the slightest reason. And due to the 180% overcrowding there are very few jobs. So most inmates just do nothing. That’s why simply letting some inmates out of their cells to tend gardens would be a very positive thing. Yes, this is my opinion and it has not been empirically tested but the way I see it, learning how to live when free can’t be learned living in a cage. That cage needs to be opened so the prisoners can learn how to build things and to develop socially. It’s just so easy to sit in my cell and start hating. After a very short time of only having my cellie to talk to, I can get very hate filled. But I try to channel those thoughts into positive and productive things. Can you picture a 20 year old gang member with little or no education being locked up with nothing to do. Can people really believe that young man or woman will be better off when he/she paroles? Common sense would tell any rational person that NO! of course that young person is going to be much more fucked up. That’s why there are so many parole violations-well, that’s one of the reasons. I’ll go into parole later. Give the prisoner a chance to self-rehabilitate. Allow gardens and more books. One very positive thing is the joint college program going on. An inmate can earn an AA degree, but they have to buy all the books. It’s a step in the right direction. So to Gov. Schwarzenegger and his wife, I say: Why don’t you come and plant some gardens in the prisons. You never know how those seeds will grow and maybe, just maybe, some very positive things may sprout. Politics- As most of America has, I just sat back stunned at the losses in the banks and brokerages. I’m not an economist so I had no idea what happened or what was the right course for the fed gov’t to take. As we all have now learned, TARP was and is a fucking disaster. With no real oversight it was a free for all at taxpayer expense. And as far as I can see, nothing happened. Toxic assets removed and credit would not budge. Now with the new bailout, the market seems to like it and there appears to be more credit. So my question is, did the market self correct or has the TARP and stimulus plan corrected the markets? Did TARP & President Obama’s stimulus quicken the correction? I don’t know. And I have a feeling that no one else really knows. Just a thought. Veritas 5509

Prisons-I was reading in the 4-6-09 USA Today in the section with blurbs on each state and I was reading about Vermont and how their corrections dept. has come up with a new rules on the use of “Nutraloaf” for misbehaving prisoners. What Nutraloaf is, is a tasteless blob. In LA county jail, it’s known as a Juteball. It’s a bunch of vegetables, grains and other stuff all blended together, then pressed together to form a food blob-that I wouldn’t give to a dog. I knew that this goes on in various jails and prisons but what shocked me is-it’s Vermont. Yes, the same Vermont hat made same sex marriage law. The same Vermont that has a socialist for a US Senator. I have always looked to Vermont for good progressive values and governance. How shocked I am to know that Vermont allows its corrections dept. to use food as a punishment. If prisoners are “misbehaving”, there are a whole range of sanctions that prison staff can use. I would first ask: Why is the prisoner acting out? Is it a mental health issue? What has made the inmate change his/her behavior? In my experience when an inmate is to the point where prison staff need to mess with the food, the inmate is already in a segregated housing. That means that the inmate more than likely is spending 24 hours a day in a small cell, with very little in there. I’ve been in segregated housing and it’s hard to even get a book. It took a week to get a stamped envelope. It’s a prison within a prison. So, in Vermont they put a man or woman in a cell with nothing. Then to their surprise, that person acts out. Are you kidding me! It would be abnormal not to freak out. Does the corrections staff in Vermont believe that treating a human being like an animal is a legitimate use of the states power? Come on, what happened to that progressive spirit? I call on the political leaders in Vermont to do away with the use of Nutraloaf. Criminal Justice- Also in USA Today on 4-6-09, there was a pro/con op ed piece about crime labs. The jist is maybe, just maybe the State of Texas executed an innocent man. This was due to faulty crime lab evidence. Well that’s just not good enough. My god and innocent man was put to death. I’m outraged. Although I’m not surprised. I’m surprised that the state of Texas hive a half admission to the possibility that an innocent man was put to death. So why isn’t there a bigger out cry about this? Where’s the news networks. I’ll tell you why, I believe, no one wants to admit that the criminal justice system is broken. Not even the media. Hell, that’s where their best stories come from. A rational person would also question the actions of the federal prosecutors in the former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens case. The new AG (Attorney General) threw the case out due to the corruption on the feds side. Where is the outrage? An innocent man was killed in the name of justice-in our name. The Peoples. We are all guilty. The government is just doing what it wants and saying “It’s the will of the people”. Bullshit! Killing innocent people and cheating in federal legal proceedings. That’s not America. We need to demand a complete overhaul of the way the American Criminal Justice System does business. Because that’s what it has become, just a business. The blind justice and compassion is gone for the sake of expedience. I’ve seen firsthand how the “justice” system can destroy lives. When I was a kid I remember uncle of mine telling me that “Better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished”. I don’t know where he got it, but it’s a known saying- and it’s true by my understanding of how a justice system works: Better 100 innocent men gt punished, less one guilty man go free. Please demand better of the judges; Prosecutors; defense lawyers, lawmakers. OR, you may end up in a situation where you are innocent but the whole weight of the state is out to prove you guilty. Like something out of a Kafka story. Wake up. With Respect, Veritas 5509

Prison- I’ve been watching and reading about all the print newspapers going into bankruptcy (The Tribune Corp) and newspapers that are just shutting down. Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Int, et al. As a prisoner we get the bulk of our news via the printed media. In California we get local channels on the TV, so there is some news from there. We do not get cable or any internet. My point is what would happen if a few more big newspapers-SF Chronicle is operating at a $50 million loss and the NY Times won’t pay a dividend again this quarter-shut down? How would we, prisoners, get out news and information? I submit that technology has advanced enough to put in the proper filters and safeguards that we , prisoners, should be allowed selected internet access. This may come as a shock, but approximately 95% of all people who are sent to prison get out. Yes, they parole, and they parole all over the state. I further believe that the prison system has an obligation to do its best to reform a prisoner and get a prisoner ready to return to free society. Everyone has watched a movie where a person is sent 20 years into the future and how much that person stumbles around trying to fit in. Well, there are 1000’s of prisoners who parole after 20 or 30 years and are just lost. There’s a guy a few cells down who has never used or seen a real cell phone. He doesn’t know what the internet is! And yes, he’s going to parole. One way to better prepare a prisoner for release is to get him/her more familiar with what’s going on in the world. Today everyone, it seems, is plugged into the net. People get their news, talk to friends, and do business on the internet. And with print media going the way of horse drawn carriage, it is time to take a serious look at allowing prisoners limited access to the internet. My basic idea is this: 1) Each inmate would have n email address. The information coming in and going out could be screened by a program that could look for key words, codes, anything the prison wished to collect. Since almost everyone can find time to email (It seems letter writing is almost a lost art) this would keep the prisoner connected to the outside. Upon a prisoner’s parole hearing, positive connections with people on the outside greatly increase the odds of not returning to prison. 2) Each inmate can go to pre-approved news sites, blogs, or other sites that provide education or news. For example: If I wished to take college courses, I would get on the internet, log on at the college and do my course work (of course college courses are at a prisoners expense). 3) All social networking sites would not be accessible via the prison internet service. All email would notify a person receiving that email originated from a state prison. This is just the most basic framework. I’m trying to get the conversation started. Technology is quickly changing how news and information are delivered. If people want prisoners to be successful upon parole, changes need to be made in how prisoners can receive their news and how a prisoner is prepared for release. Being on parole is hard enough. Maybe society can help that ex-prisoner fit in better. It costs $48,000 a year to house an inmate in a California prison. Please try to do everything to ensure a person who is paroled does not return. I believe that controlled internet access is a step in the right direction. With Respect, Veritas 5509

Prisons- As a prisoner I’m subjected to all types of extra legal punishments. Things like being talked down to; called “fucking asshole” a lot; being threatened; and all this is done by the prison staff. People who have never been in prison think, “Hey, you get what you deserve.” But that’s not true. I can be walking across the yard and just get singled out. Why? Because they (the staff) can. The Staff become abusive because of the closed nature of a prison. Most prisons are very insular and the staff work long-Boring-hours. So to spice things up they like to mess with the inmates. Let’s say an inmate is out of toilet paper and he asks a staff member for more. The common response is, “Oh, well. Cut a sheet up and use that.” For more fun, some correctional officers will make the inmate do “Naked Donkey Kicks.” Yup, an inmate must pull his pants down, get on the floor in a push up position and kick his legs back like a donkey kick—the whole time braying like a donkey. That’s how one might get some TP. Then people wonder why these men get out and reoffend. They have been treated like animals, not people. And they were, for the most part, on the margins of society with regard to economic status & education—what do you expect? The key should be education during incarceration. The State, California, may say they do “try” to offer GED and vocational programs. And to a degree they do work. But, gibing a man an education in Auto Detailing—car washing—is that really an honest effort by the state to ensure a person can get a job upon release? Hell, why doesn’t the state just vice every parolee a squeegee? That’s just as good! Right now the focus should be on jobs that will be in demand. Green jobs. Such as solar, wind, geo-thermal. I think that teaching inmates the maintenance and installation of alt-energy devices would bring huge benefits. First) Greenvision. These men and women can get out and get jobs in one of the fastest growing sector of our (USA’s) economy. Second) While still in prison—solar and wind can be installed on prison grounds to power the prison and provide practical training for the inmates. Third) Over time the amount of green energy produced at each prison can exceed what’s needed for just the prison’s needs, thus making each prison a net energy producer. This can work. Not every prison is suited for wind; but solar panels can be put on almost every prison roof to provide energy and hot water. Lots of California prisons are in isolated areas and would be ideal for wind production. I would suggest studies to be done to figure out the most viable prisons for wind. Off the top of my head, I think High Desert State Prison and Susanville in Lassen County would be fantastic. The wind seems to always blow and the prisons are isolated. My hope is that prisons become places of hope and education and don’t remain places where a person has to do naked donkey kicks anymore. Let’s send positive , productive men and women out, not bitter, ignorant people that are destined to reoffend. With Respect, Veritas 5509