getting tough on crime

I held my brother's hand in the prison visiting room last night. His long, slender fingers were very pale and smooth. My husband's hand, resting on the table across from us, was calloused from yard work, the fingernails chipped and darkened in places from working on the car. My husband's hands lay motionless on the table, but my brother's hands were never still, fidgeting, playing with the coins on the table, illustrating what he was saying with small, quick gestures.

My brother used to keep his family's cars running, too. He renovated several houses for them, painting, plastering, refinishing antique woodwork. He used to coax gorgeous floods of perennials from the rocky new England soil and chop wood to stoke the kitchen woodstove. His hands used to heal, as well. His gentle touch and kind, humorous manner made him a beloved family physician for many years. His hands delivered babies, stitched up wounds, administered healing medicines, made dyng patients more comfortable while they lingered in hospice care.

But those hands have been idle for seven years now - never motionless, but idle nonetheless. He can still paint the pictures which have hung in many exhibits, he can still write the poetry which has won awards more than once, he can still play the guitar beautifully in prison worship services and sing in the tiny Catholic choir , but he can do nothing to help his family, or to make any kind of restitution for the crime which landed him here. He has been sentenced to ten years of idleness.

I look around the visiting room and wonder how many of the men I see playing with their children, chatting with their parents, trying desperately to be cheerful for their wives are really such a danger to society that they need to be locked up in a cage, because that's what prison is. I know a small percentage of the 1500 men at this state "correctional" facility do need to be isloated from society, but many, if not most, could repay whatever debt they owe by actually doing something productive rather than rotting in a cell for years and years till they come to believe they really are as worthless as the lives they lead behind bars.

They could work for non-profit agencies, they could care for AIDS patients and the indigent elderly; they could renovate low-income housing, they could work at animal shelters. They could do real work for a real paycheck so their families would not need to live on public assistance, which vastly increases the cost of incarceration. Here in NH they used to be able to teach college classes inside the prison walls, but the warden vetoed that because it gave inmates too much power (read "self-esteem") so no one can teach any longer, and no one else can learn. By locking people up behind bars for years we not only insure they can do no more harm; we insure they can do no more good.

Many of the punishments that our enlightened society would consider "cruel and unusual" are far less cruel than the system of lengthy imprisonment that we have come to use as a "one-size-fits-all" punishment for any crime. Many of these men languishing in prison for years would far rather have had a hand cut off or an eye gouged out and go through life with a physical handicap than to have their spirits destroyed through years of enforced worthlessness and humiliation. Most would much rather work for years to make restitution to a victim than to be condemned to sit idle for years with no way to act upon the remorse they may genuinely feel. Most would choose a public flogging any day over the thousands of naked body searches and daily humiliation from guards who call them losers, and much worse, and treat them like so many unruly animals they can order about as they please.

I wonder if there were a reality TV show about daily life in prison whether we might see some changes. But there never will be one, because the whole system can only continue out of sight. No one knows what life is like behind the bars except the families of the men there, and they are the least able to agitate for any change. They have all they can do to pay legal bills, make ends meet without the primary breadwinner, drive hundreds of mile to visit their loved ones as often as possible and pay exorbitant phone charges so they can keep in touch. They have no time or money to put into an unpopular crusade to educate their neighbors who keep voting for the "get tough on crime" candidates.

It seems pretty hopeless to me. I can only imagine how it seems to my brother.