A VIEW OF PRISON SYSTEM AS SEEN BY BLACK OFFICER

As a black man and state correctional officer, I feel that the
prison-industrial complex is akin to a "plantation." Anyone familiar with
sharecropping and plantations would understand corrections today. It's long
been perfectly clear to me that if America's crime begins to fall, as it
has, and if we became 100 percent law abiding, that America's prison
systems would look for ways to either import crime or import prisoners.

We have already done the importing of prisoners, and probably would opt to
do the other if that opportunity ran out. It has always troubled me how so
many minority men and white men on the bottom of the socio-economic scale
always end up in prison for unfair drug-related charges.

You never see upscale white men in Minnesota prison systems. And that is
confusing because drugs do not emanate from the minority communities. They
merely end up there.

Most drugs first start in the upscale non-minority communities. So I agree
with letter writer Paul M. Bischke (Aug. 30 letter) that poor American men
- -- and especially black and Latino men -- are used more for fodder then for
any supposed payback to society or any rehabilitation effort. As a
correctional officer of 12 years, I can assure you this is the case. Also
because I work on the inside and it is a closed world for political
reasons, I can assure Bischke that we also carry a very "aristocratic"
class of bureaucrats for leadership. They are numerous and they make sure
that they compensate themselves expertly.

This causes much angst in the system because correctional officers deal
directly with inmates and we do put a mandate on ourselves to do this hard
job well and we look at our job as the "primary" job in corrections. After
all, this system was not made for our very well-paid and numerous
bureaucratic leaders; it was made for inmates.

If speaking candidly, most correctional officers that I work with would
share with you that our leadership behaves in a fashion consistent with a
belief that this department was first made for them. Just check out our
Department of Corrections Web site ((http://www.corr.state.mn.us/) and see
how Commissioner Sheryl Ramstad Hvass keeps herself very prominently
displayed on it. You would think that we didn't have inmates and
correctional officers in the system.

One might make the assertion that Commissioner Hvass feels her political
portfolio is more important then her correctional job responsibilities.
Minnesota correctional officers do an expert job in this system under very
trying circumstances. Our governor is in great denial about us and other
fine state workers.