Flutterby™! : No more prison success tokenism

I've been thinking a lot recently about the ways in which the carceral system is worse than self-perpetuating. As I have more conversations with people who've been incarcerated, I start to view the prison culture that Buzzy Martin described feeling uncomfortable with in Don't Shoot, I'm The Guitar Man as not the product of violent people in a violent culture, but as rational people responding to the circumstances that the prison guards and wardens have imposed on them.

Prison culture and the "justice system" have lost any veneer of attempting to be about making society better, or reform, or what-have-you, and simply become a dumping ground where we've let the most violent and out of control members of our society go nuts on those who suffer from mental health problems or trauma from upbringing in social circumstances that we've al so created.

So this rang true this morning: Joseph Margulies in Justia Verdict: No More Prison Success Tokenism

Like most people, I love these stories and am thrilled for people like Mr. Hudson. Who doesn’t love a good redemption story with a happy ending? But something about them bothers me a great deal. Not the fact that a small number of people are achieving great and highly visible success despite decades in prison, but that there are so few who do—few enough that their jobs and awards and speeches and meetings still make national news. Not the fact that society forgives these few people who had been sentenced to so many years, but that it angrily refuses to forgive so many others in the same boat. And not the fact that the press celebrates these few people in a carefully choreographed dance between redeemed and redeemer, but that the happy coverage creates the comforting impression that as a society we are no longer so punitive, so vindictive, and so cruel, when in fact, we are—if anything—even worse.