We Are All Prisoners Now
New America Media, Commentary, Nell Bernstein, Posted: May 23, 2006
Editor's Note: Today, one in 10 American children has a parent under criminal justice supervision -- many for non-violent drug offenses. As incarceration touches the lives of more and more Americans, a backlash against the drug war may be brewing. Nell Bernstein is the author of "All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated" (The New Press, 2005).
Over the past year, 1,000 new prisoners entered America's packed jails and prisons every week, bringing the nation's prison population to 2.2 million -- a record high here and anywhere on the planet.
During much of this time, I was traveling around the country speaking in person and on talk radio about my book, "All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated." Everywhere I went, without exception, I heard the same thing: My family has been touched by this, too.
Once, after a radio interview, the engineer told me that he had been arrested in front of his children. Another time, the engineer was a young grandmother trying to gain custody of her incarcerated son's children. During yet another interview, the host announced on-air that his brother-in-law had done time, leaving his children fatherless.
In reporting my book I spoke with children across the country whose families had been severed by incarceration, and particularly by the drug war, which is single-handedly responsible for the boom in the prison population. Many of these children were black: African-American children are nine times more likely than white children to have an incarcerated parent. But plenty were white: the drug laws, while disproportionately targeting blacks (who use drugs at almost exactly the same rate as whites -- and so make up about 14 percent of the nation's drug users -- but comprise 74 percent of the nation's drug prisoners), are so broadly written that they inevitably reach beyond these targets.
When I set out to promote my book, I hoped to let those who had little first-hand experience of the criminal justice system see that system through children's eyes. I hoped to spark new ways of thinking about crime and punishment. Think of it, I imagined myself exhorting the unenlightened, as if it were your children.
This instruction, I quickly learned, was superfluous. Everywhere I went, someone told me, This is my child. This is my story, too.
A reading at a Borders Books in Phoenix quickly devolved into a tearful group therapy session. One woman -- a black child-welfare worker -- was struggling with whether to take her young son to visit his incarcerated father. Another -- a middle-age white woman who looked every inch the soccer mom -- had been visiting her daughter, a grad student picked up for her first DUI, in the county jail for the past several months, and was stunned by the hostile indifference she met as a family member.
At a university in New Mexico, a student thanked me for the book; she came to the reading, she told me, because of her younger brother, who is growing up in the shadow of their mother's incarceration. She herself, she hastened to add, was no longer affected; she was grown up now and able to care for herself. Then, in the lobby of the student center, she began to shake.
I spent five years researching my book, talked to hundreds of children; I thought I had limned the pain caused by our policy of indiscriminate incarceration. I may have tested the depth of that pain, but I underestimated its breadth.
Is it desperation that leads me to find hope in these numbers? One of the basic functions of incarceration is invisibility: We place our prisons in remote rural counties, build high walls and lock out the media. Then we fortify those walls with stigma, so that those who have been there, or seen family sent there, will keep that journey secret.
But an elephant can grow only so large before people start remarking on its presence in the living room. One in 10 American children has a parent under criminal justice supervision today -- in jail, in prison, on probation or parole. The number does not include those who have had this experience at some point in their lives, or those who will. Those who have lived or worked inside a prison, or seen a family member spirited away, have seen what we are hiding from ourselves, and they are beginning to speak out. I have to believe that it is their voices, their experience, that will turn back the tidal wave that incarceration has become.
Last month in Florida, Governor Jeb Bush signed an executive order aimed at rolling back the multiple restrictions on employment that make it virtually impossible for those leaving prison to get back on their feet. He's got occasion enough to be concerned: Each of his three children has had run-ins with the police, and his daughter Noelle has found herself behind bars, albeit briefly, because of her drug problem.
At a drug policy conference in Florida after his daughter's arrest, Jeb Bush wept at the podium as he talked about his family's struggle. Critics were quick to cry "hypocrite," for Bush had previously cut state-funded rehab programs. But rather than pointing fingers, why not ask Bush to join hands with the thousands of parents whose children are locked up in his state prisons for non-violent drug crimes; the thousands of children who won't have Dad there to bail them out when they forge a Xanax scrip (Noelle's crime), because Dad is incarcerated, too.
The reasoned arguments against the drug war have been made ad infinitem, and new ones emerge every day. A study released in April, for example, found that Proposition 36, California's treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative, has saved the state's taxpayer's $7 for every dollar spent.
The economic argument against indiscriminate incarceration is irrefutable, but that doesn't mean it can't be ignored. What may bring it home is a river of tears, from governors and grandmothers -- the millions of Americans who have seen their families shattered by our insistence on answering addiction, and myriad other social problems, with incarceration only.
In Phoenix, I told the weeping soccer mom with the DUI daughter how powerful her testimony was, and encouraged her to share it more widely. Not now, she said; not while her daughter is still in the clutches of the state. But soon, she promised, we'd be hearing from her.
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User Comments
LA Johnson on Jun 01, 2006 at 01:16:15 said:
Paul,
You have schooled me. I appreciate your comment. It is very sad that the U.S. Big Business has done so many things to so many countries, since they started. I never even understood all the things that you touched on. Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Caribbean peoples, Iraquis, Africans, Asians. America has disenfranchised so many leaving them to rely on it, only to turn their backs on the very people that they have stolen from. Now, it is choking on it's own greed. It is quite sad that we have our priorities so out of order. More military funding, but not better educational and healthcare and rehabilitation funding. I guess we're so scared of repercussions that what should matter to make our citizens better doesn't! Greed started this country and unfortunately, I know it will only get worse. We are so concerned with getting richer, and not getting enriched. It is a shame that someone from another country has to tell me so much ugliness about my own, but thanks so much, your brief history lesson was such a wake up call for me. I will follow up with more reading.
Paul W. Campbell on May 25, 2006 at 07:34:32 said:
This not a surprising or really a difficult US problem to sort out. Not if you consider your country's history. It is like your current problem with the Mexican and other Caribbean people flooding into the USA to find work and a new life.
During prohibition a lot of Canadians became very rich producing alcohol and exporting it to the US. The Bronfman family at one point in 1980' had parlayed their great fortune made from the sale of liquor into control of 98% of the world's hard liquor market.
Why? because it was a very stupid law and you Americans have a real problem with right wing religious zealots, lunatics really, who you allow to influence your secular leaders to the extent of complete incomprehensible stupidity in the governing of the country.
I am surprised that the Canadians have not capitalized again on your great paranoia over the Marijuana(hemp) based on the very insupportable ranting of one man, (as crazy as Joe MaCarthy in the 50's), back in the 30's and 40's. Well we have in a way and I'll explain that later.
You as a people have this great capacity for being gullible and irrational. You are denied proper information by the corporate controlled press and kept ignorant and easily manipulated; the rich and powerful believe it their elitists right to complete control over your lives and they do energetically exercise these believed powers.
What was the saying by President Madison, I believe about managing the "great unwashed masses" and the fact that he and none of the founding fathers really intended or considered it safe to really give you any real democracy because they felt that government should be in the hands of the privileged few who by birth and wealth considered themselves the only rightful leaders.
Lincoln was not the first president you had who fractured the Constitution and acted like a dictator. Polk got you into a war with Mexico to steal California, New Mexico after first giving heavy support in his effort for the annexation of Texas that got him the presidency. He deliberately caused and incidence with Mexico and then cried fowl and on the basis of misinformation and lies you all got in a lather and frenzy and immediately wanted a war with Mexico.
You have been interfering with the politics, the economy, and the lives the Mexican people ever since. NAFTA ruined the Mexican economy and resulted in the theft of most of the country's natural resources by the big multinational US based corporations. There are more people in Mexico than in all of Canada, Australia and Afghanistan combined and it is ironic that all the land you stole from Mexico has now been reclaimed by the Mexican illegal immigration.
They wouldn't be there if it wasn't for those big corporations wanting cheap labor at the expense of the American workers.
It's also a way of preventing US workers from unionizing; a way of controlling the US workers.
So think about that and forget blaming the Mexicans and other illegal immigrations from most of the Central American and Caribbean countries where your leaders have systematically for the last 100 years or more been causing instability in the whole region on behalf of big business and it's wish to steal the natural resources from these countries.
The US invades and then appoints a dictator of their choosing and then arm him to the teeth and demand that he allow no progressive action by the people to towards self determination and proper benefits from the proceeds from their natural resources to that would allow even a basic standard of living.
Take the tiny island of Grenada. It is about 146 square miles in size and has less than 100,000 people. They grow nutmeg as the primary crop and their economy was agriculturally based with other crops such as bananas and coca and of course before the US invaded them tourism was also important. If you think Iceland is small then Grenada is really small because it is not even 1% the size of Iceland.
Well Reagan and his cronies didn't just lie to the American public about the Iran contra scandal He lied about Grenada.
I was in college at the time and there were two very beautiful sisters attending the same college one of them, Sonia Sheppard, was in my class and her uncle the newly elected vice-president was shot on the steps of the parliament building by the US soldiers.
This was in 1983 I believe and I remember a friend and I helped them move. There was a complete news black out and they were unable to get in contact with their family and were in great distress. The student body was in revolt over this unwarranted invasion and occupation of this little island by the US.
The word communism has always bemused me because of the effect it has on the American citizen. The US is more of a communist state than Russia ever was. But the word Socialism and Liberal causes you folks to nearly bring up not knowing that you would benefit greatly by more social and liberal programs to help provide a much better standard of life. This would free people to allow more self expression and inspire creativity and establishment of small enterprise and business and not as you folks think due to propaganda the reverse.
You really do not have even a semblance of a democracy or hadn't you noticed. This little island, Grenada, had a very democratic election and the people wanted to use their taxes to benefit of the people for social programs such as health care.
Real democracy can not be tolerated and allowed to exist because the great benefits of real democracy would be a bad example for the normal citizen of the US to see. To allow it to exist anywhere according to the ruling elite can not happen. They have to stamp it out and destroy it less the citizens of the US get the idea that they would like a similar system and better standard of living.
So that was why the US with more soldiers than Granada had citizens nearly, was invaded and taken over. They totaled the place and now it is no longer a nice safe little island to visit because it is overrun by criminals and drug traffickers. You were lied to by your President Reagan; he told you they had become a danger to the region because the communists and leftists had taken over and that had to be stopped.
There is no difference between the two parties in your two party system you have so it's just a one party system and the voter has no real choice. Your elections are rigged and there has been from the time of Aaron Burr who should have been president over Jefferson if the popular vote were indeed adhered to, an ongoing history of rigged elections and you folks never seem to get the picture.
In 2000 your votes did not count. The powers that be took the decision about who was to be president right out of your hands. Appointed judges on the Supreme Court basically told the American people we don't care how you voted, you may as well not have voted because we appoint Bush.
Again in 2004 there were incidences of serious irregularities with the vote counting and Kerry actually won. Ohio for example was rigged for Bush and no one said a word in either case about their constitutional rights being stolen.
In India, there are about 1.1 billion people with semblance of the British Parliamentary system for government. When they have an election there is one system for the whole country and no possibility of vote tampering. They have at each voting station a sealed computer in a box(cost about $1100.00 US each) that people use to register their vote and when the poles close these boxes are collected and within a few hours the vote is announced. It virtually tamper proof and can be trusted.
I never really take much faith in the results of any US election. One wonders why common sense would not rule the way elections for president in the US does not have a country wide similar type of fast reliable cheap voting system.
India because of the British rule were reduced from a very advanced nation of ship builders and cloth-making for example, to cultural and economic collapse. Their steel industry was far superior to that of England, their clothing making, and indigo and other industrial advancement was far superior to England but England had the army and the navy and was a colonizing country and they invaded and shut all this down and forced the farmers to grow and produce opium to trade on the black market in China.
The Chinese wanted silver but the British refused to deal in silver and they went around to the back door and bought China's great wealth of products with opium dealing with the criminals and that effectively ruined the economy of China also. So England was the example for the US in causing the creation of a drug driven industry as has the US.
India has never recovered from the British occupation and they like all countries who suffer decline in their economy and state of well-being where the standard of living becomes subsistence and ignorance and fear takes over due to greed of the dominant invader. So it is with US and it's copying so well the British template of an earlier time now not acceptable.
So this is a nation of extreme poverty now where old archaic religious traditions that cause terrible inhumanity. Yet they can run a clean election and have a better claim to proper democratic elections than the US.
When I was a boy hemp or marijuana grew wild every where and the horses would eat it in the fence corners. We thought nothing of it. There are thousands of products that can be made from this very hardy plant. It is an annual plant and can be grown anywhere practically.
Each British Ship in the days of sailing vessels used thousands of feet of rope of all sizes for sails, cots, storing cargo in the holds, securing canons. The sailors clothes and the charts and maps were all made out of hemp or marijuana. It was used for cooking oil and food. It has also great medicinal properties.
One acre of hemp will produce the same amount of wood product as one acre of 5000 year old trees. The difference is that you can only harvest the trees once whereas you can grow a new crop of hemp year after year.
Where current patent drugs have usually but one use and the benefit of these drugs is very questionable with some being very dangerous. They all cost a great deal of money and like Thalidomide, Viaxx some are very dangerous and others cause dependency or addiction.
The most addictive drug of all, cigarette smoking,the most costly in terms of disease and by far the greatest threat to health and the most costly in terms of cost to society economically. Yet curiously the US tax payer subsidizes this dangerous substance by government grants to these huge tobacco companies that make so much they don't know where to spend it. If any drug should be criminalized that is the only one.
If it were not for this extreme fear and paranoia by the US over marijuana,(hemp) that translates into very heavy pressure on Canada to keep a stupid law on the books that we do not enforce in any serious manner we would have decriminalized marijuana years ago. Certainly Prime Minister Trudeau wanted this back in the early 80'. We allow farmers to grow it now and it's only a matter of time before we start building factories to manufacture the wide variety of products that this great plant can be used for.
We also grow the best most potent marijuana available today and it is exported to the US making many rich. It's like Prohibition and the your 21st Amendment. If you will let the right wing religious lunatics; the fundamentalists, pressure you into making a substance people want illegal, then we will grow it and we will sell it.
Remember the Iran contra deal?
Your government, your President and vice-president to become president Bush1 was dealing in drugs;what do you call that immoral and criminal or is it hypocrisy? We role with laughter when we see the drug lords hook up with these fundamentalist fruit cakes to keep the plant illegal.
After the american revolution the poor folks from the Appalachian Mountains and other back country folks who had fought against unjust taxes by the British suddenly found that their new masters were taxing them even more severely.
Their tax dollars were not going into roads, schools or hospitals and trying to get several loads of barley, oats, corn over bad roads requiring several trips caused exhaustion to the horses and mules and broke down the wagons.
So they said to hell with this and decided to produce something in smaller amounts, easier to transport and much more lucrative and non taxable. That is how the bootleg industry grew and thrived. It was these disenfranchised people who out economic necessity forced on them unjustly who found a way to deal with the harsh conditions and generate a living by brewing alcohol. That is the example, the template that explains your drug problems and created so many stupid incarcerations at such great cost to the government. You encourage crime and drug trafficking by your policies. that's why your jails are full; too many marginalized people with few options.
Colombia once was a very prominent exporter of agricultural products; a major wheat producer. They also are very rich in natural resources. The US farm lobby forced them out of the market and all their natural resources were taken over by big multinational corporations and their government became imposed dictators put in power by the US on behalf of these thieves.
Right now the US tax payer is paying for the defoliation of the crop lands forcing the peasant farmers farther and farther into the mountains. US planes are basically flying over Colombia killing everything like in Vietnam. These lands will never be productive again; at least not in the foreseeable future.
Elections are rigged by American usurpers and thousands who want no part of a NAFTA like trade agreement like we Canadians are locked into and want out of are being killed by paramilitary forces trained by the US. They can't even vote. The dictator is American picked and propped up. There is revolution in the making there.
Most of South America is now deeply committed to taking back control over their resources and creating their own system totally exclusive of any dealing with the US and the US dollar.
Like the Appalachian farmers what do you thing they have done due to try to eek out a living? You got it, they grow and produce cocaine. Grows anywhere, processed, it's easy to transport and the revenue is huge.
Free trade is not free trade. The US embargo on Canadian products has put a lot of people on farms and in the lumber industry to mention a few examples, out of business.
British Columbia, Manitoba ,Ontario and Quebec farmers are not to shabby at growing good produce and high grade Marijuana is their answer to unfair competition by the US.
If you won't allow fair trade in one sector due to lobby groups and subsidization of your own farmers etc. then we see this vast nearly 300 million market next door for a product that never should have been criminalized in the first place. The demand is so great that we can't keep up with the supply and demand. And look at the revenue flow.
Now to jails and things like the death penalty, or to were we started. You wonder why you have so much trouble and have a huge criminal population. You are the only nation in the industrial world that still imposes the death penalty. That is barbaric.
You know the old story build it and they will come. Well no country in the world has more jails than the US and you keep on building them.
But like you say, they are privatized and although the tax payer pays the bill, these guys who run them are in it not to rehabilitate or educate but to make large profits from slave labour and you would preach to the Chinese about inhumanity and denying of civil rights.
You cry about drug problems. You cry about boarders. Your people grow more and more despondent for lack of proper services and a decent standard of living. You are hated throughout the world because you invade other sovereign states to steal their natural resources.
You have a president that has repeatedly lied to you and it just never ends. Daily there are reports of more and more criminal acts and your constitution is now a joke to the world; it's a worthless piece of paper.
This president has committed more crimes than Hitler and that surrogate, that little non self sufficient can't be called a country that you arm to the teeth with submarines, planes , tanks, bulldozers, atomic warheads and the facilities to make more nuclear weapons ( no not that want a be English prime minister who is embarrassing the people of England who want no part of the Iraq war) but the one that has not signed the NPT and is practicing large scale ethnic cleansing.
You know the people no one wanted as refuges after the second world war and so England and the US forced them on the Palestinians. The ones who are god's chosen people, who cry about the Holocaust, and war atrocities. How come they have been allowed to go unnoticed as the worst source of destabilization in the middle east region.
Iran did sign the NPT and is a responsible adherent to that agreement contrary to what the news forgets to report. Saddam Hussein was bush league compared to these two aggressors as far as killing cruelty and inhumanity goes. And he did have a progressive society with universities, hospitals, an improving standard of living for the Iraqi people.
Remember he was put in power by the US and a great friend. The US helped him with his 8 year war with Iran. But then like Iran now, he decided that it would be wiser to get Euro dollars than US dollars for his oil and that sealed his dome.
All of sudden he became the worlds worst danger. Did he bomb his people from 35,000 feet in the air and go home to play video games? I really don't think he was as good at torture and the war atrocities as the US and it's so called coalition.
His trial is a bit of farce don't you think? I mean Supreme Court Justice-judge Jackson at the Nuremberg trials said some very valid things and George Bush should he and his cronies be put before Jackson to-day they would be executed along with Goering, Ribbentrop and the 21 Nazis that were executed for war crimes, invasion and occupation of other sovereign states etc.
Big corporations are making so much money it is obscene and there is no integrity. There has never been more criminal activity by CEO's of companies; the Enron's and Halliburton-KBR' are not the exceptions they are the norm.
So many members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are daily surfacing charged with extortion, accepting kickbacks, and other forms of criminal activity it appears that there is no integrity left. I don't think there has ever in history been a more corrupt congress and executive branch of the USA.
You have so many disenfranchised citizens in the US that in addition to the bad example set by leaders there is no question that cause and effect is directly traceable to so many jails and so many inmates.
You have more people than Canada and Australia together, over 46 million people who are illiterate, over 46 million with no health benefits, millions of children who go without meals and live in squalid conditions below the poverty line.
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela subsidized over 180,000 poor with heating oil and donated millions to the poor on the east coast of the US this winter. He is Nicaragua, and Honduras providing those countries so badly damaged by US aggressive invasions to seize control of their resources that there is severe draught and the land has been so badly damaged due to rape and theft of trees and mismanagement by big land owners(and these are tropical countries) providing free fertilizer,and gas and oil.
Exxon created a terrible oil spill on the west coast in the Exxon Valdiz incident and they were found guilty and ordered by the court to pay millions in reparations costs. They have never paid a cent. was it Dow Chemical that was responsible for 126,000 deaths in India and the suffering of thousands more and they walked away from it. This is what people see and they get despondent, depressed, and suffer great hopelessness and they are helpless to find a way out and can expect nothing from the criminals that are causing the degradation of their standard of living and loss of freedoms and rights.
Right now you are at war with Iran and Iran is not yet responding.
You are invading their airspace and flying reconnaissance flights to identify targets, you have sent in paramilitary forces to stir up trouble and civil unrest and to also hunt for targets and to recruit mercenaries. What in hell would you do if China were to do the same to the US.
Iran has a right to self defense and to trade with whoever it pleases. It is years away from having nuclear military power so it posses no threat. Israel does have about 300 nuclear warheads and top of the line fighter planes and the US has thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons.
There goes more to your tax money on military weapons instead of repairing the decaying infrastructure in the US and and the new schools and housing needed by so many. Are you going to accept more of the same old deceit, lies, and deception by Bush and his cronies?
You have so badly damaged Iraq by stupidly even blowing up oil pipelines so you are not even able to raid the oil and reap the profits of aggression and unjust invasion.
There is a civil war going on there now but the TV and media outlets are not reporting the fact that the country is now ungovernable. You cry about the cost of gas while speculators make millions as the cost of crude skyrockets.
Several ships and aircraft carriers have been dispatched to the Caribbean and are slated to make stops three Dutch islands off Venezuela in the Dutch Antilles. There are some 6500 troops on board. This will be the fourth time US has tried to assassinate Chavez. More lunatic wasting of money and indication of a dysfunctional administration.
Venezuela has more oil and gas than the whole middle east. But Brazil just decided that they are not going to buy or fly US built planes anymore and have entered into trade agreements with Venezuela, Chile,Bolivia, Cuba, Paraguay, Argentina and trade missions are seeking new clients in Europe and East Asia. Chavez just came back from England.
I think the balance of power has shifted and it is unlikely this display of force and intimidation will have the desired effect.
They may be able to prop up the US backed dictators in Ecuador and Columbia.
I guess the question is how much more are the American people going to accept from Bush. Iraq is lost and he has to get out. The British people have had it with Blair and they are calling for his resignation. The people want no part of this sporting Yankee imperialism.
What about little Canada. We have a minority government which means most of the people did not vote for Harper. He committed troops to Afghanistan without a vote in parliament and is increasing military spending by $6 to $7 and the people are marching and protesting.
We have no business being in Afghanistan. Yesterday US generals ordered an air-strike killing several innocent civilians and they did not inform the Canadian general. The Afghanis are blaming the Canadians. We left the British Empire over this after the first world war were our troops were squandered and killed by inept British high command.
It is pure lunacy and will only invite terrorist attacks here. Everyone is embarrassed by some of the statements made by one of our generals about the afghani people when the so called purpose for going there is to help out the same Afghani people he was denigrating.
And then this jackass Prime Minister spend money on an ad campaign to put up posters and billboards in the subway stations and other places in New York stating what good little friends we are in support of the Bush debacle. As if Canadian troops really are of any meaningful help.
You can't suck up to a bully it makes you look weak and easy to manipulate. Lot of embarrassment and anger over that. We want no part oaf aiding and abetting war crimes and barbaric acts of torture and the killing of innocent civilians without any just cause.
We too need a good leader, a wise strong person who will make every effort to find new trading partners, get us out of a defunct NATO and tear up the NAFTA agreement.
You're right the prisons are built to cause the castration of human will and destroy the desire to try achieve self-determination and meaningful purpose. Mental trauma certainly is a result and most people who have been incarcerated do become anxious, fearful and submissive.
It's a bit like Rome. The judges are under pressure to fill the forum with victims for the spectacles of the blood bath to please the Pat Roberts of the world who as good Christians call down the wrath of God on the people of Pennsylvania because a judge decided against Intelligent Design being taught in science class. The are so fanatical dangerous that they can sanctimoniously call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and believe that it is their God given right to perform such charitable acts for the good of the world.
So you have jails full off people and they are there because you have a whole lot of silly laws they can be arrested and jailed for. You have to fill them now that you built them don't you. I mean they have to pay for themselves and denying people their human rights and enforced slavery is very Chinese of you. Drug problems, well we covered that. Canadian farmers and Columbian farmers have to make a living so don't go thinking about this stuff;don't change a thing.
Allegra Harrison on May 25, 2006 at 03:18:23 said:
Your book is not superflous. I'm sure for each of the folks that shared their relationship to it's theme at your readings there was a roomful of people who were oblivious beforehand who were shocked and amazed by this reality, rammed home all the more by these personal accounts right in their midst! And it also sounds like your words were often the catalyst for those voices being "released" from the the confinement of undeserved shame and isolation. I'm sure the effects will be similar among your readership.
Also I wanted to let you know that I am really thankful that in your book, in addition to so clearly and objectively depicting the problems for children and families associated with our current system, that you also illustrate existing alternatives that are addressing some of these problems in small pockets around the country. I think it is really helpful, and hopeful, to see alternatives that are working in the midst of such a seemingly hopeless situation.
M. Simon on May 24, 2006 at 13:30:17 said:
Manger,
Then why do so many democrats in Congress support drug prohibition.
We have a little prison industrial complex in our town that was supported by Democrats.
All to fight a phantom menace.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2005/11/is-addiction-real.html
*
Manger on May 23, 2006 at 09:45:29 said:
Personally, I don't think it's a "backlash" with what's happening to the citizens, due to the PIC.
-->America see's two major benefits in the Prison-industrial complex. One, a lot of men who could be productive and competetive in the corporate and political arenas won't be available. Two, slave and sweatshop labor is performed in prisons. Lot's of work gets done by inmates for pennies on the dollar.
Simply put, I think Ameica, Israel, EU, have always sought incarceration as a de-manning technique, mental trauma, submissive tool.