Old Pike County Jail, Milford. October 2010
[from FB post: August 15, 2011]
Just back from visiting a friend in the Pike County Correctional Facility. My mind is filled with confusion over just what the point of that place is??? Prison is not punishment, nor is it rehabilitation. Is the point to BORE the inmates into becoming "better people"? Seems like it's whole lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere....
I grew up believing bad people went to jail. Then as I matured and life became more complicated, filled with shades of gray, I realized that there was also a certain amount of luck and "fate" involved.
MD
When I lived in Milford a smart-assed, but good-guy-at-heart kid, MD, chose a difficult path forward through his high school years. Who you are at that age really is who you hang out with. Unfortunately, he chose non-traditional peers and ended up in the can. Milford, being the small town it was, made his incarceration an open secret and I decided to go to the Pike County Correctional Facility to visit him. I must admit at least part of the purpose of the visit was to do the "talk to someone on the telephone behind the glass wall" thing. I know that sounds terrible, but I am a very experiential person and the victim of far too much TV and film imagery. My own conversation with MD was a lot less interesting than the tragic snippets of lives I overheard around me. I was eavesdropping on an America I knew nothing about. The whole experience saddened me. On top of that, during those interactions (I went a few times) and then post-jail talks, I learned that prison (for non-violent offenders) was like "adult detention". People were basically being "sent to the corner" to reflect on their bad deeds. A convoluted system had evolved where people had to pay the state to remain in jail AND if a person were in jail due to nonpayment of fines (very common), they could basically never hope to leave the endless loop of jail and probation because they couldn't earn enough money to pay the very fines that kept them in that unending cycle of no-freedom and monitored-freedom. It was downright Dickensian.
MD and I fell out of contact after my flight from Milford, but when we caught up again he had spent more time in jail for even worse (but still nonviolent) offenses. Now he is out again with that scarlet letter "F" (felony) stamped all over his life which basically disqualifies any adult from a normal life in the United States. There really is no life after prison unless the time was for a misdemeanor. Few places will hire convicted felons. They can no longer even vote. What choice is left but to live in the margins of society and just get sucked back into bad behavior? Whether punitive or rehabilitative - jail never ends, even after probation.
--
I recall a friend's father in Japan had spent time in jail. It brought great shame to his entire family and I felt sorry for him. Through knowing him I learned a little bit about prison there. The US often criticized Japan for light jail sentences, but then again Japanese jails were punitive. They were horrible places to live and meant to be that way. Jail was far more of a deterrent in Japan than it was in the US. However, if the US's scarlet letter "F" was bad for a person's future, then Japan's post-prison existence was even worse. Literally nothing was left for those who paid their debt to society except to sit at home feel worthless. At least the US offered some feeble chance for life after prison.
I watched "the system" ruin two people's lives in my lifetime (one so damaging I cannot bring myself to write about it) and almost do in a third who escaped by the skin of his teeth. This is not about said people being "wrongly accused saints". It is about the stripping away of the "American Dream" with no hope of regaining it. That is a heavy punishment, indeed.