My American Citizenship

I want to touch on voting and on enhanced earned sentence reductions. The right to vote is fundamental to any civilized nation. As is the right to liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. Should I, as an inmate and convicted felon, lose these things? No. It is true that I have lost a portion of my freedom, but only a portion. I am still covered by the Bill of Rights and the Constitutions of the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia. I did not lose my American citizenship when I was convicted of my crime. I did not cease to be a resident in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So why should I, as an American citizen and a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, lose my right to vote just because I was convicted of a felony? The answer is simple, because it is a way to further punish me and because most Republicans believe allowing me to vote will cost them elections. Now that’s not how Conservatives will frame their argument against my right to vote of course. They will claim, with a very staunch look, that removing a convicted felon’s right to vote is a deterrent to crime. Honestly, though, have you ever heard anyone say they aren’t going to commit a felony because they will lose their right to vote? Nobody has. So here is the crux of my position on convicted felons, incarcerated or not, voting. If it is constitutional to take away the right to vote from an American citizen and a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia because he or she committed a felony, then who is next? What’s to stop the government from taking away the right to vote from people who are pro choice? What’s to stop the government from taking away the right to vote from people who are Muslim? Now you are probably saying the Constitution stops them. Well, it didn’t stop them from taking away the right to vote from felons who are covered by the same Constitution of which you are speaking. Let me be fair though. I have been on both sides of the criminal justice system. I do fully understand stripping some rights away from convicted felons. I understand stripping a convicted felon of his or her right to bear arms. I understand stripping a convicted felon of some of his or her protections against searches and seizures. These things are done for the protection of society at large. But how is anyone protected by denying convicted felons the right to vote? They aren’t. That takes us back to my earlier point, denying convicted felons the right to vote is nothing more than further punishment. It is a Conservative stance to show that they are tough on crime and a product of their fear that allowing convicted felons to vote will cost them elections. However, I don’t think anyone believes it is constitutional to deny someone the right to vote just because they won’t vote the way you want them to. Yet that is what is happening to convicted felons each time we have an election.

Now to my second point, enhanced earned sentence reductions. These reductions make good sense on a number of levels. First, they make prisons safer for inmates, officers, and staff. The more an inmate has to lose, the more that inmate will think before doing something wrong. The less an inmate has to lose, the less that inmate will care about doing wrong. Second, giving an inmate the chance to earn credits toward a sentence reduction gives an inmate hope and something to work for. Hope and purpose are essential to anyone’s mental and physical wellbeing, especially an inmate’s. Now I realize that Departments of Correction do a great job of talking about rehabilitation, but that is basically all smoke and mirrors. The reality is that they do the absolute bare minimum to even try and rehabilitate anyone. That leaves rehabilitation in the hands of the inmate. He or she must take the initiative to better themselves. However, for most inmates that seems pointless. What is the point in trying to better yourself when you are not rewarded for it? Therefore, I have an idea I would like to see implemented in Virginia and other states as well. As the federal government makes pell grants more available, I believe this idea will become more and more implementable. Many inmates leaving prison are behind the eight ball educationally when they seek employment. I propose that states enact legislation that allows an inmate to earn enhanced sentence reductions for every degree the inmate receives while incarcerated. States could provide an inmate with a five percent reduction in their sentence for each degree they earn, on top of their good behavior reduction. This would make for smarter and more knowledgeable inmates. It would make for more qualified and employable men and women looking to join the workplace following prison. It would improve the mental and physical wellbeing of inmates. It would allow inmates a quicker transition back into society. It would allow inmates the opportunity to do something that would bring themselves, their families, and their loved ones a sense of pride and accomplishment. And it would keep inmates busy, leaving them less time to get into trouble. I firmly believe this program would benefit the States, the inmates, inmates’ families, employers, society, and our nation as a whole.

Travis Sorrells, Haynesville Correctional Center

BIO: Currently, I am about nine years into a fifteen year sentence. I am also seeking a Theological Degree through International Christian College and Seminary. My goal during this time is to make myself as ready as possible to reenter society in a way that allows me to be both productive and contributive.

A Breeding Ground for Sociopaths?

One of the more interesting – and disturbing – correlations I’ve found in my seven years of incarceration is the relationship between the length of stay one endures in prison, and their tendency to display and employ sociopathic, harmfully-manipulative behavior. Naturally, one must ask: post hoc, ergo propter hoc – does one thing actually proceed from the other? Or is this merely bias-infected coincidence? To be fair to logic, I must preempt my argument with that caveat.

I tend to see prison as an incubator of anti-social behavior. This, in my experience, is one of the fundamental flaws of the “system.” One may enter this environment, after truly making a bad decision, as an otherwise upright, moral and ethical person, complete with the normal range of empathetic regard for other people. But after years and years of grinding it out in such a hostile, negative environment, rife with personalities who are and have always been truly predatory, these normal, good people can adopt antisocial, manipulative behavior pattern as means to survive. And, after years of stewing in this muck, the system chucks them back out into polite society, declaring them rehabilitated, when in reality, they are anything but. They now have a whole new set of skills, skills which are detrimental to society.

This is a systemic failure.

Prison resembles a bit of a command-type economy: resources are doled out by the administrators, and there are zero ownership rights to anything, even the property you buy; in an instant, anything you “own” can be seized by the state, under any pretext. This isn’t a conducive environment, on economic grounds, for social harmony, to say nothing of viewing it through the other human sciences.

There are many people in a housing unit, but limited phones, limited kiosks (an email-esque service), limited ways to stay connected to the outside world. Likewise, there is limited sustenance, as well as limited means to make a “living,” as if slave wages can be considered as such. From a Maslowian perspective, prisoners are kept far, far away from the pinnacle of the human experience: self-actualization. And if Maslow is even half right – which some would regard him to be – humans will do what they must to claw their way up his pyramid.

So people adapt. And after years of fighting for the most basic of necessities, they maladapt. Can anyone really blame them?

In my life, I’m exposed to two extremes of prisoner: very short timers and very long timers. By and far, it is the very long timers who exhibit the most dangerous, zero-sum, manipulative behavior. They are, as the colloquialism would have them, thoroughly institutionalized. And there are those too who straddle these extremes, men with practical life sentences, which they are now just beginning to serve. Interestingly, it is they who help bolster my argument, as, over time, their reality sets in, and they begin to display new, antisocial behaviors; they are the transition cases that supports my hypothesis.

And I have trouble finding fault with most of these men. Truly, even I, a person who consciously, obsessively attempts to jettison his innate, and overwhelmingly normal, ego- and sociocentric tendencies, with a rudimentary understanding of metacognition, has to diligently guard against falling for the allure of an easier life by manipulating those around me, because the temptation is there. How could it not be?

So I put myself in the shoes of other people, more than I did as a free man, knowing well the temptation not to. Sometimes that’s bewildering and painful. Even just yesterday, I had a difficult conversation with a man who has done a tremendous amount of time. Respecting his privacy, I’ll call him Charles.

Charles isn’t a horrible guy, despite making a horrible decision all those years ago. Yet after so many years, his ethical framework has morphed into something totally self-serving and delusional.

Like so many contentious interactions in prison, this one revolved around a phone. Apparently I had vexed this man in my attempt to use a phone earlier than I had intended, which I actually did to conform to his need to use it at a particular time. Intentionally seeking to avoid conflict, I was confronted with it anyway. And afterwords, I was gaslighted to be made to feel that, notwithstanding my attempt to avoid conflict, I’d caused it anyway. The whole episode was bewildering; but, during it all, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for this man. He was truly just trying to look out for his own self-interest, not only in using the scarce resource of a phone, but also in trying maintain the even scarcer resource of his dignity. He’s simply a product of his environment. And had literally no idea he was acting in an antisocial manner. Total solipsism, totally unintentional.

Paradoxically, the society thought he needed 30-plus years to rehabilitate himself. And it hasn’t turned out so well, which I have a hard time faulting him for. This environment reinforces behavior like Charles exhibits. And the extra time he’s served hasn’t helped in that regard. It seems to have hurt.

This is the fault of the system, because the system, despite its Orwellian insistence otherwise, does very little to actually rehabilitate. Structurally, it can’t. It is designed on the assumption of low taxpayer cost, resource-starved to its core, totally isolated from the democratic process. Modern prison is nothing more than a warehouse, full of men and women waiting to be pulled off the shelf, when their number pops up, and shuffled out the door, “rehabilitated.”

In the interim, the longer they are here, the higher the chance of maladaptive behavior patterns forming, the higher the chance of institutionalization. What good, precisely, does this do them. And more importantly, what good does it do society?

Correlation isn’t causation. This is all anecdotal. Yet I see a trend, nevertheless.

Christopher Read
#1770228
Haynesville Correctional Center
Haynesville, VA

What’s a Pound of Human Worth?

By Christopher Smith Read

The institution of slavery is still alive and well in these United States. For authority, I cite the U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIII: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Readers doubting the actual effect this has on the twenty-first century, consider this: the author, as a person “duly convicted” of a crime, is required to work for the Virginia Department of Corrections, as a condition of his good time earning allowance, and is paid 45 cents per hour. Minimum wage laws do not apply to slaves. If he doesn’t work, then the department, through its own legislatively delegated authority, can make him serve his entire 10 year sentence.

This is the reality for millions of men and women throughout this putatively liberty-loving country; a country which, with proper historical, economic, and political context, has zero choice to be what it is: the world leader for keeping people in bondage. Granted, many countries subject prisoners to far more barbaric forms of imprisonment, but the U.S. nevertheless stands quite alone when it comes to the sheer scale of its operations. And United States’ prisons are barbaric for a far more insidious reason: U.S. prisons impose a strict regimen of pure, profit-driven apathy.

How we got to this point is no mystery. In fact, we’ve been doing things this way for so long that even before 1776, when we declared ourselves independent, the stage was set for today. As I’ll argue, we have no choice in the matter; structurally, the U.S. was destined to commoditize human flesh. And only through wholesale, aggressive federal legislation – or better yet, Constitutional amendment – will this ever change. But this analysis will end with what the author sees as a naively Panglossian prescription, given the alignment of the current interests in this country. That said, as Red, played by Morgan Freeman, concedes over and over again in “Shawshank Redemption” : “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Over three centuries ago, in 1714, a transplant from Rotterdam settled into London and penned this scandalous poem:
“Millions endeavor to supply
Each others Lust and Vanity…
Thus every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.”

Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), laid down the claim that “private vices are public virtues” in his “Fable of the Bees”, a sentiment not denied by the Father of Capitalism, Adam Smith (1723-1780), but put forth in his “Wealth of Nations”, with far more sensitivity to the era’s puritanical sensibilities than Mandeville could muster. Even still, both men had identified the beating heart of today’s free market, capitalist economies: people responding to incentives, exploiting opportunities with no regard for society’s well-being, and yet through their consumption, benefitting us all nonetheless.

And there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that capitalism generates wealth. Nor is there any real argument to be had that capitalism’s nearest competitors can even contend. They can’t. But, as with all things, there is a tradeoff; or, as economist’s call it, an opportunity cost. For to make a few immensely wealthy, and most historically far more comfortable than their ancestors, millions will find themselves locked in cages for profit. In a cruel twist, then, many victims of their of own vice, no doubt, will be locked away for public benefit – bees who can never come back to the hive.

Economies are circular networks; one person’s spending is another person’s income. Thus pretty much every tax dollar spent on incarceration ends up back into the hands of private enterprise. The concrete and fence contractors providing the means of bondage, the massive food distributors responsible for providing prisoners with the sustenance – just barely; even the army of correctional officers’ paychecks – all of this eventually worms its way back into private hands, private hands which constitute an asset holding class of people, U.S. citizen or not.

The asset holding class – or Marx’s capitalists – generally do not vote against their own interest. And they generally have an outsize influence on politics, being the people most likely to donate to politicians who will vouchsafe their wealth on the floors of this country’s legislative bodies.

And running prisons says nothing of the mega corporations existing in a symbiotic relationship with the state. Keefe Commissary Group, GTL, Bob Barker Corp., Armor Correctional Health, these are just a few named familiar to nearly every modern prisoner. Mega corporations such as these shamelessly gouge prisoners and their families, all with the blessing of the state in which they operate.

Yet, who can really blame the institutions and firms involved? Where’s the incentive not to seek profit from what lawbreakers have done to wrong society? If the state is to tax its citizens for arresting, prosecuting, and punishing those who harm society, then what’s wrong with getting tax payers the most utility for their dollar? In theory, if private enterprise, contracted to do what the state’s duty is, insofar as incarceration is concerned, can offset – or net out – the cost of its prisons, then society benefits; teleologically, this all sounds good and well. And the father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), had exactly this in mind with his Panopticon, which, interestingly enough, Parliament shot down because they feared the corruptive effects private enterprises would have on the lives of the Kingdom’s prisoners. One today cannot avoid the feeling that this presumption was particularly prescient.

Britain’s Parliament was right to be suspicious. The problem with this utilitarian line of thinking is its paradoxically antithetical quality in light of the very idea – the central focus – of this country’s founding: liberty. How ironic the country oppressing us saw this yet we didn’t. And still don’t.

To see the root issue here we again turn to the Constitution. Fully four of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are intended to protect those accused and convicted of crimes. As much as liberty is explicitly revered in our founding document, the implicit reverence is no less apparent. Which is why, structurally, our free-market economy, with its incentives to commoditize people, is inherently at odds with what we hold most dear: freedom. Simply put, where there exists any incentive at all of the monetary sort to put people in bondage, then the interests of liberty and capitalism clash.

Capitalism, however, cannot be cast off. It works too well. It creates too high a standard of living for far too many to replace with something untested. Though that does not imply market should run unfettered; that’s exactly why people are overly incarcerated today. Rather, the seemingly impossible task is to remind the people that liberty trumps profit, insofar as punishment is concerned.

Thus the author envisions a realignment of priorities, eschewing, by legislation, the incentives so at odds with liberty. In order to radically change the structure of our economy, to reduce the suffering of over incarceration – and ineffective incarceration – we must ensure the state and its private partners have zero monetary incentive to engage in such conflict-prone, deleterious practices in the first place. Positive policy changes will mean society actually pays for incarceration, and that the only real return is of people who’ve been truly rehabilitated. Thus the incentive must be for society to actually invest in those who run afoul of the law. Manufacturing need only perpetuates the problem.

When society actually pays for incarceration, then society will be incentivized to invest properly in the prophylactics to crime: education, vocational training, substances abuse counseling, and diversionary programs in lieu of incarceration. We do these things now, but they are lacking in efficiency and effectiveness.

This all skews left on the political spectrum, yet it’s far more than a matter of politics. But must we as a society simply box ourselves into the tribalistic corners from where we feel comfortable? Why can’t we dialogue, mutually engage, and share in diagnosing what’s wanting in society, without being beholden to some homogeneous theory of political and economic function?

The reality is that the incentive exists for the state to incarcerate any of us at any time because a whole industry – and wealth – has been erected on top of liberty. Society must have prisons. But society shouldn’t let that need drift into the realm of liberty. Until this incentive is removed, the over-incarceration will continue. We have no choice in the matter.

Christopher Smith Read #1770228
Haynesville Correctional Center
Haynesville, VA