/& 7& T / r w By Allen Leigh, Inmate — Monroe Reformatory « Collage by August Encolada [ f s easier not to acknowledge the peril in which we live, or not to admit that some action needs to be taken. Most o f us are content to support the status quo until it adversely affects us, at which time we may not be in a position to protest. You can't protest a 158-grain copper-jacketed projectile traveling at 1500 feet per second toward your head when i f s coming your way. I f s too late to protest a rapist’s gnarled hands squeezing your life out as they bury themselves in neck. Crime will continue to increase until our conceptions and manner of dealing with it change. In our confusion, some of us have warmed to the hardliners who call for more prisons and more police, oblivious to the fact that, historically, these solutions have never worked to reduce crime. For the past ten years we have seen an expansion of both police and prison populations unprecedented in this century. Already third in the world in the proportion of its citizenry it imprisons, the United States has current plans at the state and federal levels that project boosting the prison population to half a million, thereby making us the world leader for incarceration. It has and does cost Americans $4 billion per year to maintain this growing failure, and it will cost an additional $8-$l0 billion to build the new prisons the hardliners want. Prison debilitates, wreaks havoc you the tender flesh of your young will eventually pay for. Serving time annihilates still present virtues. As a man is digested by the system, he floats subtly through personality changes. Changes so gradual he doesn’t notice without long periods of introspection. Trust, valor, honesty and benevolence are attacked and overwhelmed. Trust becomes a word on Federal Reserve Notes. A man sleeps with his head 18 inches from an open toilet so somebody he slighted can’t reach through the bars in the front of the cell and slash his throat with a razor blade while he dreams. If he takes off his Nikes and puts them by the foot of the bed before retiring, they are gone in the morning. Cons stop at his cell and he watches their eyes inventory the contents. He will know where to go when something turns up missing. Valor is the mark of a fool. A con walks into the school bathroom; five cons are putting the boots to a sixth. His inclination is to help the man being beaten, but he knows he will be next if he does. He turns around and leaves the bathroom, telling himself, “probably a rat, or a baby raper.” He sees a pretty, young con giving up a couple cartons of smokes — a protection payment. In the gym he watches a man with an upraised baseball bat creeping up on another whose back is turned. Does he warn him? Hell no, he’s no fool — that baseball bat would be aimed at the back of his head next time. Constant conditioning makes the transition; he notices changes in himself, regards every introduction as a potential investment, and runs through a mental checklist. What have I that he covets? What will this friendship cost in dollars and cents — and how big a piece of my life does he want? How can I use this person? What are his resources? Who does he know that I can use, and what are their resources? Truth is forsaken more often than not — it becomes detrimental when its price is pieces of his life. Even the prison administration honors only their signed commitments — and not all of those. An act of kindness is mistaken for weakness. A man borrows a little instant coffee, only to return later and demand more. Consequently, one learns to loan or give nothing — not even his time in the performance of simple favors. These changes in personality and perspective are not good for him or society. You may ask, “Why should I care?” Because you will have to live with those you helped to change. Over 95 percent of them are going to get out. You are understandably concerned about the possibility of being a victim, but you may not know the real probability. It is higher than the probability of winning the lottery. In 1982, Washington State had a Crime Index of 61.1. That means 61.1 felonies were committed for every thousand persons in the state. You have a 6.1 percent chance of being the victim of a felony if you live in Washington State. Yet you think it won’t happen to you. In 1980 alone, there were 3,759,193 burglaries in the United States. Nearly one-third of all the nation’s households were touched by crime in some way. Something has to be done. Why does a young man turn to crime? That is a very complex and baffling question. Judge David L. Bazelon, Senior Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., told a gathering of criminologists, “They are born into families struggling to survive, if they have families. They are raised in deteriorating, overcrowded housing. They lack nutrition and health care. They are subjected to prejudice and are educated in unresponsive schools. They are denied a sense of order, purpose and self-esteem that makes law-abiding citizens.” He points out, pragmatically, that since vengeful deterrence has failed miserably, we have no choice except to examine the underlying conditions that produce criminal rage. Leonard Weinglass, the noted criminal defense attorney, called for a systematic program to deal with crime. “We have the perception, on the part of the poor, that the rich are getting richer by far, and have never had it so well. Orange County, California, has more Rolls Royces than there are in Great Britain.” Paul Takagi, former associate dean of the Criminology School at the University of California at Berkeley, maintains, “An individual becomes aware of his class by means of the future it makes possible for him. For the underprivileged class, the future in terms of social possibilities is almost'totally barred.” Some people must be imprisoned: the ones who have lost their essential sense of humanity. Yet even the most conservative law-and-order advocates readily acknowledge prison only further erodes whatever humanity is left in those whose futures are not yet fixed. For that reason alone, it is in our interest to look toward a vision that sustains rather than diminishes the human impulse. In prison a man becomes embittered and learns the complex machinations of the criminal mind firsthand, from the masters. He may be in prison only two years, costing 36,000 tax dollars, and yet, the system will be paroling a fully qualified criminal who still has no worthy goals, job skills, or relief from his revulsion for reality. The vicious circle can be broken. However bad violent crime may be, it is equally criminal to lock people up in brutal, vicious cages where a man almost always comes out worse, more violent, than he went in. A seven-year study of criminals has enabled me to form some conclusions and, consequently, prompts me to pass along some alternative solutions. Longterm solutions that offer no panacea for the complex problem of crime, but which, if implemented soon, could substantially reduce crime by the end of the decade with no increase of tax dollars addressed to the problem. Education is one key, and not the brand offered in prison. We must stop building prisons and begin funding the colleges that are closing down all over the country. We must subsidize the education of first-time offenders, in real colleges, and keep them to hell away from prison. Providing appropriate fields of study and encouraging individuals motivated toward failure will be no easy task. It simply promises more hope, and much different results, than our present system. Who will pay for all this? You will, of course, but far less than you are paying with the present cost per inmate averaging $18,000 per man per year. The current recidivism rate is over 80 percent. Once you send a man to prison, you might as well figure on supporting that man for at least half of the rest of his life; the other half he will be out on the paroles he earns every couple years, plundering your property. At $18,000 a year, calculating on one-third of a 60- year life span, more than a third of a million tax dollars will be spent on one man. And that doesn't count the irreparable damage he may do to you or your family while out on one of his many paroles. On the other hand, a four-year college education, figured at $10,000 per year, would only come to $40,000; and it is unlikely you or your family would suffer at a college graduate’s hands at some future date. In fact, his paying taxes would lessen your own burden. Another promising venue is the decentralization of the police force, which has helped decrease criminal activity by 30 percent in Detroit since 1977. The Detroit project involved parallel integration and reorganization of the police into some fifty “ministations” located in basements and public halls scattered across the city. Fred Williams, 25-year police veteran, ^OU may ask, “Why should I care?”Because you will have to live with those you helped to change. Over 95 percent o f them are going to get out. says, “Once the racial make-up of the police force reflected the reality of the population, nearly everybody had a friend or relative in law enforcement. It wasn’t ‘them’ anymore; it was ‘us.’ ” Probably more important than decentralizing the police force, however, has been the development of block clubs in which at least 50 percent of each block’s residents are encouraged to participate. More than 4,000 “Neighborhood Watch” organizations have been formed. Whenever community crime prevention programs have had real impact, resolution of the inherent alienation in a “them/us” situation has been critical. The same principle has guided the Community Boards Program in San Francisco. Initiated in 1977, the Community Boards set out to build a city-wide alternative justice system. Their procedure is to set up forums at which community volunteers hear concrete complaints about everything from parking disputes to vandalism, drug activities to harassment. Common concern and fighting the struggle within the community are two threads that run through successful efforts to reduce crime. There is no cure, but a substantial curtailment is possible within the foreseeable future if we attack the problem with intelligence rather than vengeance. Fear of consequences doesn’t stop crime; maybe removing the motivation will. Time to quit pissin’ in the wind. Get involved. Write your elected representatives now. ■ Clinton St. Quarterly 31
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