The other day I was in my living room with my mother, and asked her what she thought about an article I read in the New York Times (For those interested, the article is titled Prisons Purge Books on Faith from Libraries. Sept. 10, 2007 No.54063.) Her response alarmed me and made me think at the same time.
“Good, those [ Naughty Words Here] don't even deserve heat!” My mother doesn't swear often.
Now, for those of you who pride themselves on being good old Americans, one might agree with my mother. For a while I certainly nodded my head in agreement. After all, both my mother and I were victims of a violent crimes and felt a deep loathing for the people who would commit such things. As the day went by I started to wonder if in that pretty big picture of rolling fields of grain, this was a burning dumpster. It made me ask myself if this was the best thing for our society on a whole.
A quick overview of the article mentioned. The Bureau of Prisons banned all religious materials, except on those on a list, from prison libraries. The rational behind this was to prevent religious militants from recruiting out of American prisons. Some people don't care, and those who think that this is a good policy ought to stop reading this article right now.
Let's just use our imaginations.
So, we take a prisoner that has done something horrible. Lets make one up called Mister Fluffykins. Mister Fluffykins committed burglary and is sentenced to 20 years in jail without parole (I'm just making this up for the sake of argument.) Mister Fluffykins is put in a concrete box for 20 years. Lets assume, that he only has a bed, toilet and sink in his box. He's allowed outside his box for x amount of hours in order to eat, shower and exercise, but other than that, he is confined to his box. Now, after 20 years of tension in the shower room when Mister Fluffykins' rival Jimbo Mc Feely was giving him a rather sultry look. He gets let out. Great, he's free. What has changed other than a new fear of public showers? Well now he is barred from most honest jobs, and he can't vote. Other than that, I would assume, not much.
Alright, so our prison system, as we all should know does very little other than to be a holding pen for people we (taxpaying citizens) don't like. Why? Why does our system have such a high recidivism (prisoner re-entry) rate? Here's my thoughts.
Because as a society, we think in terms of retribution, not rehabilitation.
Let's take a step back in time, to post-revolutionary war. The Quakers believed that the traditional corporal punishment was barbaric, and that the best way to deal with deviants was through hard labor and religious guidance. This type of thinking brought the rise to the Walnut Street Jail in 1790, and later the New York state's Auburn Prison. This was a beacon of humanitarianism compared to the pillory, gallows, mutilation and all things gore that used to be the fate of criminals. Even though people still suffered sever bodily harm inside the prisons or, in the case of Walnut St where prisoners were in solitary confinement for years, insanity, this was considered far better for society than public floggings.
It appears that over time, slave-labor, poor health treatment and vindictive sentencing has obscured the original reason prisons had been established. Rehabilitation programs such as schooling, trade skill training, religion and exposure to productive skills for our societies deviants should be the focus of our prisons, not punishment. Why? Why should we spend our tax dollars on education for these [noun in the form of explicit language]? Why should we care and what does that have to do with books in libraries?
Simple, at one point or another, most of them will come back into societies. If we continue to reduce our convicts into paranoid, pennyless, stigmatized smelly people, what avenues are left to them? If he cannot find a decent job, won't he simply fall back on the ways he already knows and become a repeating offender?
I know that it is hard for people not to feel some vicious satisfaction when we hear that one who has done us extreme harm is being punished. Revenge is sweet, after all. However, I beg of the reader and our future society to take a step back and look at things in a logical way. Petty revenge does not insure a better future for everybody else. We, as a society, must learn to be more mature than the assailants and robbers. We, as a society, must learn to recognize that some of these assailants are mentally ill, or ill educated and that the robbers may only be stealing because honest work is closed to him. By no means is this the key to utopia, we all know that doesn't exist. Nor, will this solve the thousands of complex problems that are involved with our crime problem (For that, there is no simple answer.) It is, however, a step towards thinking in a way that benefits our communities.
And what does that have to do with the Bureau of Prison reducing the prison libraries to practically nothing? Reading is therapeutic, especially spiritual literature. How many people, in times of great need turn to the bible to see what Jesus did? Won't spiritual literature help those?
“But they still have some literature” says Mom.
But they're being denied more kinds or moral guidance that one book or two books might not have to offer. To add to that, according to the New York Times, some prison libraries have been completely gutted because they do not have the books on said list. The Bureau also will not provide the books on the list.
Now let me leave you with something else to think about. This is a turbulent time, when so many civil liberties and constitutional rights are being violated with things like the patriot act. Things like bloody wars and rendition (exporting suspected terrorists so they can be beaten up for confessions without having to worry about silly things like due process.) We are allowing the government to act on a fear-inspired, ignorance induced rational like religious militants in concrete boxes and violate the rights of what most Americans would consider second class citizens. What if dear old uncle Sam decides that you, who has access to things like fertilizer, pipes, pointy things and guns, are more of a threat to the war on terror and takes away the books from public libraries in case you get any ideas?
