The Animals of Society

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.