Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sixty-Five Days Until My Release From Taft Federal Prison Camp
Early this morning I watched a news broadcast on CNN. It showed a troubling development in our society. The segment focused on the City of Sacramento, and showed hundreds of families who were homeless. They had set up their own community in an open field and called it Tent City. They lived without electricity or running water. They cooked their meals, vegetable scraps and fish heads, over an open fire, in an empty coffee can with boiling water. These Tent Cities the news segment informed, were springing up across America as a consequence of the high unemployment and foreclosure rates that come with the economic crisis.
Although I know my perspective was biased, I couldn't grasp the values of governmental policies that filled our nation's prison camps with people who could function in society while thousands of Americans, including children, were living without simple necessities of civilization like bathrooms. The values seemed awry.
Of course I want to return to my community. I want to work and live as a productive citizen, and I commit to living a responsible existence for the rest of my life. But I must conclude these remaining 65 days in prison. I understand that it is not much longer, yet I cannot help but to scratch my head when I watch news reports of those Tent Cities. I wonder why society would keep so many people confined in country club prisons like Taft Camp when other citizens are struggling with basic survival. The prison system doesn't seem to make much sense.
In Taft Prison Camp, 500 men serve time under the honor system. Like me, many of the prisoners self-surrendered. They were not arrested. They were men who could work, pay taxes, and make contributions to society. All of us here had committed or were convicted of having committed crimes. Imprisonment was a sanction we served. Yet in light of what was going on in society, our imprisonment seemed misguided.
If judges determined that we could self-surrender to a prison without external boundaries, and administrators trusted us to stay within the unmonitored signs that told us not to cross the line, then why weren't we serving our sanctions under home confinement? We could be working, paying taxes, contributing to society while under electronic surveillance. Clearly, the conditions of our confinement showed that administrators and judges did not consider the men confined in prison camps to be a threat to society. I don't really know the meaning of why we're here when so many families are struggling.
It would seem to me that the people I saw depicted in the Tent City news segment would gladly move their families into Taft Camp, or any of the other prison camps. We have three good meals a day, much better living conditions then a tent in an open field, and great recreation. I've read that taxpayers spend more than $15,000 a year for each person confined in a prison camp. But what's the point? I miss my family, but I'm not really being punished. The punishment comes with the shame I felt at being convicted. Confinement in a camp, on the honor system, seems a little absurd. A much wiser approach, from my perspective, would be for judges to impose community-based sanctions on those who do not present a threat to society. These prison camps seem a poor use of public resources when people across the country are living in tents.
