The Baltimore Museum of Art recently presented a panel discussion on American prisons. It was generated by an exhibit at the Museum of photographs taken over a period of 30 years at the Louisiana state prison known as Angola. The panelists included Norris Henderson who had spent 27 years in Angola for a crime for which he has since been exonerated and it became clear from his description of prison life that prisons like Angola do not exist to provide a hand up for convicts or to prepare them for life when they are released. What Angola does provide are jobs for a significant group of undereducated whites to – as Henderson said – (“watch black prisoners as they till the fields around the prisonâ€). There is no meaningful effort at training or education and the state actually makes money off the work of the prisoners. While it’s not exactly slavery, it’s damned close. Henderson has had an impressive career in the legal and civil rights arenas including succeeding at persuading the Louisiana government to return voting rights to those who have served their time. It is a step that at least begins to reorient released prisoners into a more normal life. He has also moved the state to ban the requirement to report past convictions on employment recruitment forms.
The discussion also considered the prison business in America as it has become increasingly privatized. One interesting note was that many operators of private prisons sign contracts with governments that include a requirement for those governments to provide enough prisoners to maintain a 90% capacity rate. The economics of the system are based on per-prisoner costs and this translates into a need for the various governments (mostly states) to seek prison time for crimes that are frequently “victimlessâ€. The stupid – actually tragic – War on Drugs made a huge contribution to filling prisons and will continue to do so until its remnants disappear. The fact that black Americans are more than three times likelier to be in prison than whites raises a question of just how many African Americans caught with drugs does it take to keep the numbers up. The fact that the opioid crisis, which is now a largely white problem, has led to investment in recovery programs rather than increased imprisonment adds to the inherent racism in our justice system and therefore our prison problem.
But Americans have their prisons and for many they provide an outlet for their anger at people who do not live up to what they believe are community standards, irregardless of actual crime. Many seem to enjoy seeing others punished regardless of the severity or importance of the “crimeâ€. It is almost never an intent or even interest to improve a person in trouble, help them develop in any way; it is simply a need to punish them to provide some unhealthy self-satisfaction to the pious, sanctimonious, purer-than-thou. It was striking to watch this week the outpouring of glee over Felicity Huffman being sent to prison for two weeks for having spent $15000 to get a proctor to fix her daughter’s SAT scores – a crime that cannot in any meaningful way be viewed as having hurt another individual. And yet, the Boston Globe was full of comments celebrating her getting jail time. Why? Well for some it was that their children had had to take the SAT’s without help. For others it was their false view that she had taken a place at a school away from some other more deserving child – simply and obviously not true. Still others wanted her punished because she was a rich actress. But mostly it was that Ms. Huffman had been a bad girl, used poor judgment and simply needed to be punished – beyond a fine and community service. She needed to suffer in a more personally degrading way to provide vindication for the righteous, pious and sanctimonious to be – well – so righteous, pious and sanctimonious.
A footnote to the comments is that many compared her 14 day prison term to a five year term given to a black woman who misled school officials on her address so her child could go to a better school. Where were these folk when the black woman got railroaded? They were nowhere and they are nowhere every day that American blacks get tossed in jail – or worse. While Huffman’s penalty pales in comparison to that meted out to a poor black woman, neither that poor woman nor Felicity Huffman deserve prison time. In neither case is there any rational reason for the sentences which serve no reasonable purpose.