According to the figures I’ve read, taxpayers have already spent more than $700,000 to confine me for the past 23 years. Yet they will spend another $100,000 to keep me in prison for the remaining years I must serve. That cost is to confine me—one prisoner who was as ready for release as he ever would be more than 15 years ago.
Newspapers I read today describe the effects of the financial crisis in cities across America. Some cities (leaders) have made decisions decisions to turn off thousands of street lights to save electricity. Some cities have closed schools on Fridays to save money, leaving children with shortened academic years. All states have cut finding for social services. The prison system, on the other hand, continues to thrive, swallowing up billions in taxpayer funds every week.
As a prisoner I live in a cave without a full understanding of why taxpayers are not demanding prison reform. I know that lobbyists who represent the prison system influence the debate, but common sense suggests that as people drive on dark streets and scramble for childcare because kids are out of school, millions of people would question the wisdom of pouring financial resources into such a wasteful system.
Certainly our nation’s prison system serves a purpose in confining violent, predatory offenders. But the prison lobbyists have succeeded in growing this system into a colossal waste of human lives and taxpayer resources by confining tens of thousands of nonviolent offenders for years and decades. What a waste! The prison camp where I’m held in Taft, California, doesn’t have a fence and hundreds of the men who serve time alongside me have job assignments in the community every day. No one here is deemed a threat to society, yet every year taxpayers spend tens of thousands to feed, clothe, and confine each prisoner.
The strength of prison unions result in prison staff members earning exorbitant salaries in excess of $50K that would only merit $20K in the private sector. Still, I don’t hear any calls for prison reform. Instead of reserving prisons for those who prey on society, taxpayers have authorized their expansion to the point where America now leads the world in imprisonment. We incarcerate more people on the earth than any other nation, and yet taxpayers don’t seem to think anything is wrong. We close down schools in order to keep prisons open. We deny health care coverage to people in order to ensure that nonviolent prisoners do not leave prison one day early.
Priorities seem out of whack from my perspective.
Ran 10 miles / 5,405 miles in 606 days
500 pushups / 86,200 pushups in 2010
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
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