The comments contained herein are the personal opinion of the writer..

In one of Poe’s stories, when a thief wanted to hide a stolen letter, he placed it in plain view, where the average person looking for it would not notice it. Like that purloined letter, a multi-billion dollar American growth industry, operated by every state in this nation and the federal government, exists today in plain view, largely unnoticed by the public.

If stock of this state and federally-owned industry traded on a stock exchange it would be super-blue-chip, never suffer a loss, be as solidly established, and more bankrupt-proof, than the Federal Government. This industry has a steady growth, especially during recessions and riots. It is not affected by inflation, since it creates its own product, and determines its own rate of growth-- in part due to its solid service monopoly.

Kind of whets your appetite and tempts you to pull some big bucks out of that savings account, the mutual fund, or the IRA, and line up to plunk your money down, doesn’t it?

The industry, on the state and federal levels, doesn’t take investments. It emphasizes complete failure to reach its goals. No profits, no dividends, no annual reports to the SEC. Nothing.

Success is neither sought nor permitted to exist. If success ever does threaten to overtake this monolith, it will attack to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Not to worry. The "Criminal Justice System", as it styles itself, will not be a success story in this century. Unless you happen to be invested in the private-for-profit prison operating companies.

The effects of this system are felt at every level of society. It employs hundreds of thousands and generates billions of dollars in cash flow into communities, large and small. With hundreds of thousands of prisoners in state and federal prisons, and tens of thousands more in local jails, we’re talking real money.

While serving a prison sentence in Leavenworth in the 1970’s, I corresponded with a lady in Sweden. She was interested in how the American prison system worked, and what it was like to be an inmate. She had one insight into our prison system that is rarely shown by free people or the convicts inside:

"I think you convicts handle your PR badly", she wrote. "You have an undeserved bad reputation. You’re making a big contribution to fight unemployment, for instance. For judges, lawyers, cops, prison guards, officials, detective story writers, many journalists, watch dogs, burglar alarm manufacturers, lock manufacturers, etc., you are creating an immense amount of job opportunities. Not to mention how you are raising the self-respect and mutual admiration among everyone in the free group. You should do something about this; start up a prisoner public relations drive, maybe".

I didn’t agree with her about the bad reputation-- most of us deserved it-- but the point about us supporting a vast number of people, and keeping them off welfare and the unemployment rolls, is as valid today as it was then.

Aside from finding a PR firm on Madison Avenue to handle a favorable campaign for them, or hiring someone to lobby Congressmen at the federal and state levels, prisoners don’t have the money, nor are they a particularly attractive or glamorous client.

Can you imagine some of them big Hollywood stars appearing on TV pleading to the public:

"For just ten bucks a month, you can support a poor, lonely convict and enable him to obtain training in a skilled trade. He’ll then be able to stay out of prison and support his family.

"Each month you’ll receive a color photograph showing his ugly mug, along with a letter telling you how his training is progressing and what he plans to do upon release from prison!

"We’ll also let you know his release date so you can hide the booze, and lock up your daughters".

Convicts shouldn’t hold their breath until that happens. They’ll die first.

Crime is such big business that your neighbor may owe his job to it-- as a policeman, prison guard, judge, prosecutor, or a crafty politician. Everyone in the "criminal justice system" who benefits from crime is paid with our tax dollars.

Depending on whose statistics you believe about the rate of recidivism-- ex-cons who return to prison-- it’s probably between 55 and 70 percent, but might even be 90 percent. I’ve always thought that those statistics were best described by that old saying:

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Whatever the return rate actually is, those ex-cons will be back in prison convicted of another felony. Despite the waste of billions of tax dollars, and the platitudes and misleading opinions of criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, and others who claim to have expertise in the reformation of prisoners, with the increasingly harsher sentences being imposed by vengeance-minded judges, or those bound by laws that mandate minimum sentences, the return rate is huge. The Three Strikes laws make it even worse.

Perhaps the picture is not all that dismal. It could be worse. The return rate could be 100 percent. We’re already spending hundreds of millions in tax dollars to build more prisons. If we keep locking up everyone for increasingly longer mandatory sentences, with no parole, one day we might have a zero rate of return, as convicts serving sentences start dying off in prison. All we’ll have to do then is clear some land for graveyards. That’ll save a bundle of money-- we won’t even have to pay for tombstones. Just dig a hole, shove ‘em in, and throw dirt in their faces.

Or, maybe we could take a lesson from the Germans.

As buses full of prisoners pull in to the prison, let the warden and guards separate out those who can be worked at hard labor. The old and the infirm can be shipped to gas houses disguised as showers.

Don't separate the whites, Blacks, Jews, Hispanics. Hell, we wouldn’t want anyone to think we’re prejudiced. Better to kill ‘em all, bury the bodies, and let God sort ‘em out! But before they die, let ‘em suffer a little bit-- breathe in that good old Zyklon-B gas, sucker!

Or, maybe we can wire ‘em up to a 1000 volt electric fence, wet ‘em down with a fire hose, and pull the switch. That’ll teach ‘em not to mess with Miss Blind Justice. Then we can bring in the mayor and some local townspeople to verify that the system is efficiently dealing with those "troublesome" criminals. There might even be a few wardens who will say: "We’re doing God’s work!"

Most criminal justice "experts" who claim that they have the solution to crime, have never served a day in prison and don’t know what they are talking about. Their theories get in the way of reality. The information they get about prison life comes second-hand from prisoners. Many prisoners live in a fantasy world in which they imagine themselves innocent victims of a society out to get them. The conclusions of those "experts" from data they have would be laughable if they weren’t so counter-productive to any real prison reform that could significantly reduce the recidivism rate.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons actually listened to the academic musings of one of those jerks-- whose ideas sounded like he was on a bad acid trip when he thought of them-- and scrapped almost every vocational training program it had!

This academic-type actually came to Leavenworth to address the inmates about his theories. The auditorium rocked with our laughter as he quickly dug his way in to a hole of misunderstanding and fantasy as to what prison life was really like, what we cons went through while serving time, or the kind of training we needed to stay out of prison. Who knows-- maybe he was on some more bad acid.

We would loved to have had a big shovel to bury him in the bull he spouted. The auditorium reeked of manure for a month afterwards. Maybe the warden was punishing us for the way we received the jerk. We looked, but couldn’t find, any fresh ground-droppings brought in from the cattle feed lot outside the prison. So, the smell must have come from the "perfume’ our "expert" left behind.

Most prisoners are uneducated. Stupid, they’re not. They know what they need to enable them to stay out of prison. Education and real job skill training. The high rate of their return is an indictment of a bankrupt approach of the system to the reform of criminals. Is it the fault of the public? The legislatures? Or the petty bureaucrats who staff the prison systems, and the boards of correction that oversee them?

In exchange for the billions of dollars spent at the state and federal levels, what positive results are there?

Almost none!

Besides the steady return of ex-cons, more first-timers arrive at the prison door, daily. An increasingly larger number of them are African-American men. We hear or read, daily, complaints that an entire generation of Black men are being destroyed as they are warehoused in prisons, serving long prison terms for what are often petty crimes. The crimes that many of them are charged with, and the sentences imposed, are often determined by the color of their skin. Most prosecutors are white...

Many of the Blacks in prison are there for petty drug deals and are serving long sentences because of mandatory sentence laws, and Three Strike laws passed by legislators. Many legislatures are bribed by special-interest lobbyists and right-wing conservatives. (Whoops! Sorry about that ‘bribery" mischaracterization. Lobbyists and right-wingers "contribute" to the re-election campaign treasuries of politicians. Then many of the politicians siphon the bucks in to their own pockets).

Already filled prisons bulge outward. The reaction of the system is to demand hundreds of millions more tax dollars for more prisons, more guards, more judges, more cops, crime commissions.... well, you get the idea. And who gets stuck with the bill? You and me-- the taxpayers. Now that I’m free, working, and paying taxes, I don’t like it a bit more than you do.

Are there solutions? You betcha!

The big problem is that the sources for the solutions, which the average person hears about, are part of the very interest group that has its own economic survival at stake. Prison wardens, guards, judges, police, prosecutors. Many of them say "Lock ‘em up, and throw away the key!" I don’t blame them. I’d say the same thing if my job and the continued welfare of my family depended upon a steady supply of prisoners.

If locking up everyone convicted of a crime really made the streets safe, Washington, D.C. would be the safest city in the world. Even the greenest hayseed who just fell off a turnip truck knows that’s not true.

No one listens to prisoners on the issue of reform. They have no money for "contributions" to those re-election campaigns, nor do they have the right to vote. Very few prisoners have skills that are salable in today’s economy. Virtually every one of them who intends to become a law-abiding citizen after release, pleads for more educational opportunities and training in skills that will enable them to support themselves and their families and not have to resort to crime.

Every day, tens of thousands of good paying jobs go unfilled. Ex-cons can do them if they receive the skills training. Jobs such as cooks and chefs in food service, commercial truck drivers, computer programmers, auto mechanics, electricians, plumbers, HVAC mechanics, sheet metal mechanics, roofers, etc.

One example of a successful program was the computer programmer training course set up at the Federal Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas. Every inmate who entered the program enrolled as a full-time student with the University of Kansas, studying for a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. Some of the students earned Master Degrees. Every inmate in the program was paid from funds earned by Leavenworth for computer processing for the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. Those inmate wages were no where near the going rate for such work on the outside but were sufficient to enable the inmates to pay their tuition at the University of Kansas.

This program worked. For those who graduated from the program and got their degrees, there was almost no recidivism! This program could be duplicated throughout the nation’s prisons. It would require little expenditure of funds by the states. All they would have to do is put some of their agency computers in prisons, and train inmates to run them, do data processing, and learn computer programming. Tens of thousands of computer programmer jobs go unfilled every day. Doubt that? Look at the ads in the Sunday issue of any big city newspaper.

Prisoners who have no interest in doing any thing except returning to drug dealing, rape, or robbery, are not going to be helped by any prison programs because they won’t participate in them. But the vast majority of prisoners will eagerly join meaningful programs that offer them a way out from the revolving-door syndrome.

There have been some courageous correctional administrators, legislators, and others who have called for the implementation of programs that really prepare convicts to make it in the free world. They are voices in the Wilderness. Ignored or fought at every turn.

An ex-convict with an empty stomach, a wife or kids, no food in the house or money to buy any, and facing possible eviction on to the streets, cares little about abstract ideas like obeying the law and not committing crimes.

Until the public demands that legislatures appropriate the necessary funding to set up real skill training and educational programs in prisons, the prison door will keep revolving. We’ll pay increasingly higher taxes. Billions of those tax dollars are now being used to build new prisons. Crimes by ex-convicts who can’t support themselves and their families, is continuing to rise. When a con goes to prison and a wife and children are left behind, they are usually supported by welfare. Who pays for that? We do.

Is it worth it? Every citizen has to decide that. If they’re damned mad, had enough, and are not going to take it any more, they might want to consider contacting their elected representatives to demand real solutions to the revolving-door-- education and skills training, not platitudes or evasions. Long minimum sentences must be repealed, except for dangerous, violent criminals. Most prisoners are neither.

Perhaps, my Swedish friend was right. What the convicts need is a PR man or a lobbyist. Is there a volunteer in the house?
 

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