PRISONS NEED TO SEE THE LIGHT

Last week I sat swinging at our land in Grant County, feeling the wind
rush by my face, looking up into a beautiful hickory tree. When I'm
there, troubles flow by and simple pleasures reassert their
importance. But occasionally I find it a little creepy out there alone
and half expect to look up and see a gaunt, hollow-eyed fellow staring
at me. So I have to admit that I secretly shuddered at the decision to
build a Supermax prison at Boscobel, just a few miles from our refuge.

That's mostly the way we see prisons, I think. They're where bad
people who did horrible things are put, and where you want them kept.
Away. Locked up.

I talked with a friend who stood in long lines yesterday to visit the
Boscobel prison. She described the various forms of solitary
confinement in which all inmates will live, including small cells with
a toilet, cement beds with chains for the occasional need for
restraint, and no glimpses of sky. An exercise yard, used in solitude,
will offer more daylight but still never sky, prison visits will be
through a TV screen, and of course there are layers of electric and
razor wire fence. Aside from the severe environment, my friend felt
hopeful about the prison administrators, who appeared to have a
genuine commitment to good educational opportunities for inmates.

After we talked, I wondered about those long lines to see the prison.
Were most people more worried about whether prisoners might escape or,
like my friend, prompted by concern for prisoners and an urge to
understand their plight?

Recently a group from my church visited the federal prison near
Oxford. At some point the pathos overwhelmed me. Maybe it was when the
pleasant inmate with whom I shared music, who is due for release in
2017, joined in singing ``I'll be home for Christmas.'' Conscious of
my utter failure as a cheerful presence, I disguised my crying. But
before long, another inmate reached over and asked if I was OK. My
singing friend went and got tissues. Later, they and others wanted to
talk, not about prison but of God, divine purposes, hope and faith.

Regardless of what any of those men had done, I felt a kinship with
them. Last year when visiting a low-security prison, I was struck by
how much the inmates reminded me of my high school friends. Smart,
curious and communicative. Looking at my own errors in judgment, my
moments of moral weakness, I shook my head at how easily one can slip
onto the wrong side of the law. One foolish possession of drugs, and
I'm in jail. One drunken or drug-induced fight, and a killing's done.
One gang-pressured robbery, and I'm in prison.

Granted that those who joined us in singing religious songs aren't
likely to be the hardened prisoners for whom wardens want chains on
beds. And such inmates exist.

But I'm struck that visitations from Boscobel's inmates are the least
of my worries. I should worry about my gargantuan tax bill for their
upkeep. About the hardening and alienation of prisoners kept
perpetually in solitary confinement and many prisons' lack of
constructive programming. About policies that remove inmates'
incentives for good behavior, such as truth-in-sentencing laws or the
state's plan to export only inmates who aren't disciplinary problems.
Most of all, I worry that society's current systems for education and
social support are failing more and more people, and that so many
whose mistakes put them in prisons are minorities.

I cheered when the Wisconsin Catholic Conference recently issued a
statement about prison conditions, charging the public with forgetting
prisoners and their needs. When they advocated for programs to
overcome the deadening idleness in prison, I thought of inmates I'd
met who have to struggle against prison bureaucracies to be allowed to
garden or enroll in vocational studies.

Prisons are a potent metaphor for human failings we hate in ourselves.
We want to imagine we can isolate evil and cast it away as if it
weren't a part of ourselves with which we must contend. But life is
more complicated than that. Current anti-crime hysteria that has
bloated our prisons needs the remedy of compassion and practicality.
It needs the public to visit prisons to understand the life prisoners
lead. In more than one way, our country's prisons need more daylight
shining inside.