Posted by Carole Santos Honestly, I didn’t know anything about prison before I reconnected with Michael. However, when I pledged my heart to him and joined my life to his in February of 2002, real prison suddenly had an every day presence in my life and I felt a responsibility to learn about it. I was eager and willing [...]
Today’s blog is from Carole Santos I’ve watched a few of episodes of Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC. Hoarding is a disturbing condition in which sufferers are unable to stop themselves from acquiring and holding onto possessions. It’s a costly, debilitating condition that destroys relationships and creates an isolating environment. Hoarders are unable to break [...]
Today Charlie, a new prisoner at Taft Camp, sat down to talk with me in the room where I write. He self-surrendered to the camp two weeks ago, and amazingly, in that span of time he’s been able to surmise all that is wrong with the prison system. Charlie is serving a nine-month sentence for [...]
I heard a radio broadcast announcing that the Senate will swear in the newly elected Scott brown, Republican from Massachusetts, tomorrow. The new Republican eliminates the supermajority of the Democrats, and that equation, supposedly, will introduce new hurdles in bringing about a liberal agenda. I’m not clear on Senate rules that require supermajority votes of [...]
This is fantastic! Check out: http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/990 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F34p0YiSp8g&feature=player_embedded What it’s about: 1. Alienation of people: We are creating refugees amongst our own people. Inmates come back not feeling like they are part of their own community; not knowing “we the people” means them too. 2. Break up of families: unreasonable prison policies and a culture of [...]
I saw a blurb cross the streaming news ticker at the bottom of the CNN screen this morning that related to prison crowding in the State of California. The state legislature is deliberating over prison reforms that would allow nonviolent California prisoners who participate in education or vocational programs to serve the remainder of their [...]
During the 22 years I’ve been confined, I’ve never heard a U.S. Attorney General say that America’s dependence on incarceration is economically unsustainable. Yet that was what Attorney General Eric Holder told the nation’s lawyers at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. Mr. Holder isn’t the first high profile government leader to call [...]
At 3:00 this morning, as I waited for officers to walk by my cubicle for a morning census count, I listened to an NPR broadcast reporting on Pesident Obama’s mandate to cut hundreds of millions in wasteful spending from the U.S. budget. That report inspired me to write a few blogs on the need for [...]
I resumed work on the rewrite of the chapter for Professor Joan Petersilia at 2:20 this morning. By 7:30 I had completed the project. Had I been able to access a typewriter, I could have typed the document in a couple of hours at most. Prison has made me a fast typist, but the rules [...]
At 2:22 this morning I resumed work on the chapter for Professor Petersilia. I wrote the first words for this chapter last Wednesday morning at 2:15, and today, at 7:15, I finished a first draft. Professor Petersilia asked me to write 7,000 words. Since I’ve written the chapter in longhand I don’t have an exact [...]
