The awkward question about the meaning of prisons in America part III

So, if the isolation rationale is not totally what it appears, if rehabilitation is not happening, perhaps we can feel better about the notion our rather expensive prisons are "punishing" offenders for the wrong they have done.

Obviously, you have never visited in a prison. Talking heads decry the luxurious life of the offender incarcerated in Texas, but again, such folks largely speak from ignorance. I am sure there are folks in Texas whose lives of grinding poverty would find prison a step up.

Most would not. Space is cramped, cell mates are almost always undesirables (this is prison not the Hilton), food is available but much more than that description might be disrespectful to other things that are described as "food." Clothes supplied by the system( which is only what you are allowed to wear) seem to been purchased worn out but that's alright because offender areas in most prisons are without air conditioning and more often than not are hot and stuffy.

More troublesome than all this is the surrender of freedom that comes when one is incarcerated. It is one of the great ironies of life that people who don't want to have people telling them what to do end up in prisons where folks are always--telling them what to do. You can only be where you are told to be. You can only shower when you are told to shower. You can only watch TV when you are told to watch TV and you share that TV with 40 other people, the biggest of which determines what the channel is set on. You are told when you can eat and what you can eat and what you can possess and where you can walk and when you can visit your family and when they can visit you and if and when you get to get out of your cell and out of prison.

Although such an environment may begin to sound a little like "punishment," in order for that to work, it is necessary for an offender to grasp the idea they are guilty of something. Although there are over 150,000 offenders in Texas prisons, a guilty person is hard to find. They either didn't do what they are accused of, or they didn't do it like the courts said they did it, or there were mitigating circumstances that leaves them innocent in their own minds. And what would those circumstances be: well the person they killed was warned to quit messing with them; or they were just defending themselves or their stuff, or the other person(s) that were helping them got away, or the person they robbed/assaulted/killed was a worthless piece of s***.

So there we have it: innocent people locked away in "god forsaken" prisons being disrespected and denied their rights.

In the absence of genuine feeling of guilt, there is little chance for remorse, and less chance for change. In fact, for many, prison become a school where the goal is to learn how to do the same thing and not get caught.

Right!