By S.R. Lavin,
aka Sholom Fact:
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Factoid:
Prisons, rather than serving as sites for rehabilitation, create an
economy of oppression. … and provide an excellent setting for hour-long
TV shows. This insane merry-go-round of prison
culture must end. Activist
Angela Davis has spoken before thousands of eager listeners about the
abolishment of prisons. Davis is an icon of the sixties and a dynamic
personality with an activist reputation (which we do acknowledge and
regard with high esteem). But, her topic, "the abolishment of prisons"
is a sophomoric mix of wrong conclusions and very slanted use of
statistics and facts. For example, she challengedthe "language" of "incarceration" and
equated felony conviction with
"civil death." I find this term culturally unusable, and since I am not
intelligent enough to understand what she is really saying, I have come
to my own conclusion without meaning to.
Conclusion: The prison system must be
flooded with as many new inmates as possible. The
use of prisons is a wrongful way to "punish" social malcontents, and
egregious falsifying of evidence or misrepresenting evidence or simply
withholding evidence that would acquit indicted suspects, has sent
innocent people to prison. Not to mention the high cost of banned drugs
for use behind bars. So
let's take the bull by the horns and create a new approach; let's find
ways to get arrested, get thrown in prisons, and thus bring the whole
nasty system to a screeching halt. Let's
turn the prisons into giant, corporate hotels with a whole range of
economic opportunities for those who want to be prisoner-citizens. We
can commercialize the experience by issuing a whole new "line" of
prison fashions, prison literature, prisoner on-line
dating, "cuisine for lifers," and sit-coms and
reality
shows all broadcast from the big house. And
then, when we look at the prisons themselves, where predators are
loosed on younger people (behind bars), to rape and beat down those who
should be getting relief from their social ills, not punished for being
poor or poorly educated… perhaps we see where Davis gets her incentive
to go around America preaching about the horrors of prisons. Maybe
we should change the laws and allow convicts and citizens with a
"record" to vote. Thus, they would be re-categorized as having "civil
life" and could've voted George Bush out of office in the last
election (as Florida would have voted Democratic). Out with the crooks...in with the
thieves! Now there's a bumper sticker I intend to copy right and make
my fortune on... Davis
argued that prisons are socially engineered warehouses to punish young
black men, who, for the most part, she mused, were swept up by
"surveillance," and were not in prison because of their criminal deeds.
Someone in the audience asked her to cite which criminals might be kept
in prison because of their behavior... but Davis waved off the answer
to that question and spoke instead about non-violent "offenders" who
should be "let out" or "set free." And she even invoked our memory of
slavery as an institution (as if it were possible to see imprisonment
as merely a continuation of that immoral economic and social condition,
which all of us have no memory of). But,
to release violent predators, or career marauders, or someone who has
done things like Hannibal Lector, is to ask ordinary, sane people to
expect that real criminals are supposed to have rights we don't have
either. Instead, let's really render prisons useless by stuffing them
beyond their capacity…this can be accomplished quite simply and quickly
by massive "lock-ins"…like the smoke-in protests where thousands of
non-violent offenders would become willing fodder as convicts in the
jailhouse rock. (Just as Elvis glamorized incarceration in his movie.)
For
hundreds of years, criminologists and shrinks and
others who study deviant behaviors and character disorders, have never
really cracked the mind of a "criminal" or conclusively shown why some
people like to do bad things to other people or rob banks or steal
welfare checks from old ladies. There's really nothing very
funny about criminal behavior or abolishing prisons…which is exactly my
point. I say, why let so-called non-violent offenders out of prison
when a massive influx of prisoners (those who are serving time for drug
use, or other relatively low threshold "crimes" against "society")
would create a whole new class of citizens in the slammer, namely,
educated, alternative life-stylers, and peacenicks. We could
also mobilize people to write bad checks, wreck hotel rooms, steal
cars, and shop lift. When arrested, you could plead guilty and demand
the maximum sentence allowed under the law. Yes, we can agree
with Davis that the prisons are heinous institutions... but I don't
imagine any of us want to live with sociopaths on the loose, or
allowing rapists and child-molesters and stalkers to go free... Still,
we can ask ourselves, what would our world be like if we didn't have
prisons? But first, let's see what it would be like if we all had some
firsthand experience of what being in prison is really like. Lock downs and strip searches would
become state of the art entertainment…
Copyright 2007. All content on this site is original to Bosworth
Magazine unless otherwise indicated. All rights
reserved.
Special thanks to Robin Stephen for web design
consultation, and for
drawing much of the artwork seen on the site.
By S.R. Lavin, 