Stagnation in Prisons
by After prisoners vegetate for decades, society will be shocked over and over by actions that will demonstrate how ill prepared they were for release. Furthermore, the system is designed to educate inmates for an economy that no longer exists.
Recently, my social worker wanted to send me to medium since I have done almost nineteen years. I turned it down because whatever childish privileges I might receive would not outweigh the loss of my single cell. Having been double-celled, I assure you that the distraction of a cellmate is not conducive to the type of introspection that is needed if you really want to do any deep thinking. Since most cells in medium are double-cells, we have a system designed to make prisoners do less thinking the closer they get to the streets. Yet, because of the elimination of the carrot of parole, the focus on these trivial privileges to distract the inmates is a rational strategy by the Department of Corrections. Their responsibility is to keep order in prisons. If the legislature passes laws that devalue the programs, Corrections can do nothing about the inevitable consequences of promoting a stagnation of the mind.
After prisoners vegetate for decades, society will be shocked over and over by actions that will demonstrate how ill prepared they were for release. Furthermore, the system is designed to educate inmates for an economy that no longer exists. As America’s economy has changed, there has been no real change in the way prisoners are prepared to enter America’s workforce. Not only has the carrot of parole been eliminated, but the skills offered are usually obsolete, or will be by the time they are released.
Still, I would encourage prisoners to learn everything they can, if for no other reason than to avoid stagnation. Even if the way welding is done ten years from now is completely different, at least your brain will be better able to absorb the new way by knowing the old way. When doing sentences as lengthy as those handed out today, there is no designed system that will keep an inmate from giving up on themselves, when it seems the whole world has given up on them. Americans need to understand why no other country sentences people the way we do. Nor is there any long term plan to deal with America’s prison population.
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