The early morning news announced that Senator Ted Stevens, or former senator, would not be coming to prison. The new attorney general determined that prosecutors had handled the case inappropriately and violated the former senator’s rights to a fair trial. Rather than defend the prosecutorial misconduct, the attorney general made arrangements to dismiss the indictment and conviction against the former senator.
Many men in prison feel as if this is another example of the wealthy and powerful receiving favorable treatment. After all, the government had convicted him through a jury trial. Ordinary defendants serve prison terms after criminal convictions. This defendant would escape the justice applied to others, and the prisoners with whom I spoke expressed outrage.
From my perspective, Eric Holder’s decision to dismiss the indictment against Stevens was a good sign. Stevens had been convicted under the Bush justice department. The prosecutors under that leadership abused their power, and the new attorney general said he would not stand for abuse of power in his justice department. I felt optimistic that Eric Holder would extend the same new leadership over the prison system.
I intend to work harder to write about what I perceive to be injustice in the prison system. Prison administrators do not have the power or capacity to adjust injustice with regard to prison terms for nonviolent offenders, though they play a significant role in shaping the policies by which prisoners live. An abuse of discretion conditions perpetuating cycles of failure. I must work to bring such abuses to the attention of the American citizens who fund this system.
The injustice that irks me most afflicts all prisoners and it contributes to recidivism. I refer to the obstacles administrators erect to block prisoners from nurturing strong family ties. As Congress has found, strong family ties represent the surest ways to lower recidivism rates. Yet in the prisons where I’ve been held over the past 22 years, prison administrators restrict telephone, visiting, and communication mechanisms. Those restrictions obstruct prisoners who strive to prepare for law-abiding lives upon release.
Continuing this pattern of writing about what I perceive as injustice in the prison system, I wrote four blog posts in the early morning today. At 7:00 I walked to the track to begin my exercise. I ran six miles, then interrupted my run because I was scheduled to attend a TOAD meeting. We coordinated and rehearsed a presentation for an audience that would visit the prison in the evening. After the practice session I returned to the track to run the remaining four miles, and I followed the run with 370 pushups. I spent the afternoon organizing and clearing out the stacks of paper that had been accumulating in my locker. My running tally, incidentally, is now 970 miles over the past 110 consecutive days.
Before the evening TOAD presentation began, I wrote a lengthy letter to my grandmother and another letter to my brother-in-law. During the meeting that began at 6:00, all 12 members of the TOAD group spoke for the teenagers in the audience and we performed three skits. I didn’t get to sleep until 8:20, which was the latest I had gone to bed since the year began.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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