730 people out of every 100,000 are locked up in the U. S. It has been reported that “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of it’s own citizens”
With in keeping with the vain of laying Boy About Town’s most personal moments bare for all the world to see I want to pose the question “Why are America's Prisons reaching the popping point?” Given my state sponsored vacay that just ended I would like to touch on some facts of life behind the fence as well as the struggle to re-enter the free world. Now I am aware that many of you are saying people in prison are there for a reason & they deserve everything they get, and while I too believe if you break the law that there should be a price to pay but at some point life has to move on. I did break the law & I paid my price. What I want to talk about is how we figure the price to be paid, what happens while paying that price and at what point the tab is paid. This is not my story but I will draw on some of my own experiences to drive home a point, and we all know how much I enjoy doing that!
With that said the question needs to be asked “are we sending people to prison for crimes which may not warrant such an extreme punishment?” The Justice Dept. said in it’s annual report for the year 2012, that that public safety can be maximized without maximizing prison spending. While the Justice Dept was mainly speaking to the fact that the budget for the federal prison system is a shocking $6.2 billion per year the same train of thought can be applied to the over crowded state prison system. Ask yourself do you think it makes sense to send someone to a state prison for driving without a valid license? Even if someone has a record of driving without one do you, as a tax paying citizen of your state, want to pay for an inmate to “learn his lesson” while doing hard time in a dorm setting with murders? It cost, on average, $31,000 per year to keep an average inmate. That's average, meaning no big health crisis or sudden change in mental state. On the flip side we spend just $6000 per year to educate the average child in America. I firmly believe if those figures were reversed the number of people “needing” to be locked up would grow much smaller very quickly! In places like Broward County Florida, which has the largest sheriffs dept in the United States, the rate of prosecution had gotten so outta hand that during his swearing in newly elected Scott J. Israel stated that he wanted his term as sheriff to be judged not by how many people Broward County locked up but rather how many people they kept out of jail & prison. It remains to be seen if this rare outlook on crime fighting will catch on in both in Florida as well as the rest of the country but what is clear is that police forces can not continue to arrest people for every minor offence & the states attorney offices can not file charges on every piece of paper that crosses their desk! In short..... A post-it is not an indictment!
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| There's a new sheriff in town, Scott J Israel. |
There are crimes that truly cry out for a prison term. The length of those terms is at times decided by a judge or a jury or as is becoming the case more often, sentencing guidelines. These guidelines fail to take into account all the human factors that come in to play, such as age, either at the time of the crime or at sentencing,the effects a prison term would have on the either the family of victim (if there is one) or the family of the person being sent up the river. But people do end up in prisons everyday, all over this great land of ours. The purpose of that prison term is to keep the inmate away from society. The correction officers are not judge nor jury. Their job is to make sure no harm comes to any inmate as well as make sure that everyone is where they are supposed to be at any given time. For some reason this simply task seems to go to the head of a great number of these “professial C.O.’s” They use the position to abuse, mistreat & at times harm the very people they are supposed to be guarding. And we have all heard of prisoners have wine, cellphones & drugs at their beck & call. It’s all true & let me tell you folks folks, 99 percent of all of those things come in through the officers. They are making a small fortune in cash by walk these items right in the front door & hand delivering them to an inmate. Your tax dollars at work! There are also those that seem to get a sick kick outta the power position they find themselves in. They LOVE to call the the inmates names. If your Black they will call you nigger. Gay? You’re a punk. If you are of Latin descent then your are “Mexico”…even if your from Cuba. Clearly these tend not to be the smartest people working within the prison system. At Dade Correctional Institution where I was there were 2 such hot messes. Sgt Humphries & Ofc Forbes. Miss Humphries had a way of speaking to you that made it clear her education level peaked somewhere around 7th grade. She had been moved from one end of the prison to the other due to the fact that she LOVED to threaten inmates with violence & fellow Dept of Correction employees with getting them fired. The administration staff dealt with this problem by giving her a promotion & moving her yet again…letsomeone else deal with her was the rule of thumb. Ofc Forbes spent his time explaining his world views to people. He was known to pull Gay inmates out of religions services to tell them that they were going to end up in hell. This fine, upstanding example of your tax dollars at work was treated with disdain by many staff, yet never reprimanded. I left several messages for Warden Jerry Cummings & for some reason none of my calls were returned? Funny that. But in trying one more time I got a hold of Captain Thomas. I think that was his name, hard to tell as he was in the middle of a meal the seems to have required a lot of smacking of his lips. He seemed less then excited to chat about the misdeeds of his fellow officers.
As ones time in prison draws to a close, it never comes fast enough. But there is a great deal of work that goes into getting a person ready for release back into "the free world" and more often then not that work is not done. So for those of you that believe that there are programs that help inmates prepare to enter the workforce after they leave prison let at me explain something to you.....it's all a bunch of state funded manipulation. Prime example is the "re-entry" program at our troubled Dade Correctional Institution. What is supposed to happen is that in your last few months in prison the inmate is supposed to go to a class a few times a week that covers everything from job interview skills,
opening a bank account & budgeting to health lessons. In offering these classes the prison gets a grant from the Federal government. In other words, more of your tax dollars. But really happens is you are handed the work book for the class and are told to complete it yourself. Thats it. Nobody checks it. There is no one you can ask questions of. The only thing that is the same is that the grant is paid to the prison for offering the class, which, to recap, they do NOT do.
Lets bottom line it people. The system is broken, on that we can agree. But what can we do to fix the problem? Why don't we redirect some of our money from uncaring, unmotivated staff & the programs that don't exists except on paper to hiring people that know what they are doing as well have enough sense to do it & funding programs that work to ensure that the number of people returning to prison is lowered. Seems to make sense I to me.....
Stay Fabulous!
Boy About Town
Watch for our upcoming posting on the business of porn
And as many of you know that when something like this happens it seems to open the flood gates. Your world begins to unravel...quickly! Angela lost her job. I mean your employee calls in one day saying "I can't come in today, I can't walk anymore need to deal with that real quick." So no more income. And funny thing, no one wanted to hire a middle aged, newly wheelchair bound, woman. So she lost her house, there by becoming homeless. Speaking from experience I know how dehumanizing that can be. At this point, many people would have thrown in the towel. But remember I said Angela was goal oriented, so she made some goals. 
Now Angela's story, like many of our stories, has many twists. But unlike most, Angela does not allow the adjectives used to describe her to define her. She looked at what she was handed and said it was simply not good enough. She then went about building a world which not only works for her but in which she excels in! In her spare time....whatever that means to her....Angela has managed to pen a book "Rowing Against The Wind" which is now available for pre-order on Amazon! So, we have, as a community, over looked this strong, gifted, lady. But let me say this.....My friend Angela Madsen is truly is a Hero Amongst Us!
