Commentary: WHAT A PRISON SENTENCE REALLY MEANS

Jeff Goodman

When I was sent to prison, the judge mentioned just the length of my
sentence. Had he included the entire scope of my punishment, he may have
said it differently:

"Mr. Goodman, I sentence you to take responsibility for every social ill --
past, present and future. Each time America runs out of foreign enemies, it
apparently turns on itself to find more. By way of media, politics and
indifference, people who break the law, good law or bad, become those
enemies and are then responsible for every social malady. Whether this is
logical, you are the culprit.

"You are sentenced to live in a maladaptive, alien environment that defies
description. You'll be stripped of your work skills, your self-worth and
your humanity while at the same time face the daily threat of assault,
rape, false accusations and unjustified punishment. You will live like this
for seven years. If you manage to reenter society as a productive person,
some will say prison was just what you needed. If not, others will say, 'I
told you so.'

"Because of counterproductive prison policies, you are sentenced to live in
a world of cruelty and indifference that engenders the very behavior it
purports to alleviate. If you share this with those outside of the prison
system, you will be called a liar; most won't believe that millions are
spent on the proliferation of facilities that perpetuate harm, not repair it.

"You are sentenced to consume $150,000 in taxpayer dollars for your prison
stay. While lawmakers cite the ever-growing cost of incarceration as a
public necessity, you will learn that 10 percent of that amount goes
towards your daily needs, while the other 90 percent pays for a bloated
prison bureaucracy immune from any cost-benefit analysis. These tax dollars
will be siphoned from school programs, child care and job training, all of
which do make our communities healthy and safe and save millions in the
process. Despite the media frenzy that portrays society as seething with
crime, you'll learn that relatively few prisoners represent a danger to our
communities; we're mad at most felons, not scared of them. So you'll wonder
why the majority of prisoners aren't on home arrest, a logical move that
would save millions of dollars and obviate the need for more prisons.

"Practical education programs, universally proven to drastically reduce
recidivism, will be almost nonexistent. In fact, you will be disciplined
for possessing more than 10 books. Therefore, you will live in an
environment where recidivism it tacitly encouraged, a fact not lost on
those who want to run prisons for profit.

"It is true that there are some counseling programs in prison and some
people will benefit from them. Yet, if you attempt to describe the futility
of a therapeutic environment placed within an atmosphere replete with
dehumanizing policies, you will be told that your intentions are distorted
and without merit.

"You are sentenced to bear the wrath of a misinformed society. While you're
experiencing everything I just said, you will be told how easy you have it.
The media will find your Christmas meal more newsworthy than the damage
caused by lawmakers who jostle for the next 'get tough' policy at the
expense of society's well-being. Your privilege to have this once-a-year
meal will be presented as so outrageous, a debate will ensue over which
'luxury' to take away next. Politicians will focus on violent sociopaths
and pronounce their horrific crimes as a yardstick to measure the innate
danger and incorrigibility of all law-breakers, including you.

"Finally, as perhaps the most perverse component of your sentence, I hereby
prohibit society from ever listening to you. Your comments on crime and
punishment will be ignored. You, as well as others, will see the big
picture, but few will care about the politics of crime and its role in our
growing prison population. You will know that most prisoners are guilty of
breaking the law, but only a few need to be separated from society. You
will know that it is the reporting and sensationalism of crime that has
skyrocketed, not crime itself. Unfortunately, though you will one day
return to society with firsthand knowledge of our prison system, few will
care; most see only the door leading into prison, not the one leading out.

"Therefore, if your opinion ever gets printed in a newspaper, you will not
only be perceived as just another lawbreaker unable to accept the
consequences of his actions, but of being manipulative as well. Society
will know this to be so because you once broke the law.

"You are hereby sentenced to be a messenger whose message will be forever
perceived as tainted, self-serving and disingenuous, regardless of its
veracity and accuracy.

"No one will believe you.

"You have been sentenced to be a criminal."