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Prison Administrators Should Encourage Prisoners To Nurture Community Ties
In the federal prison system of early 2009, a huge disconnect exists between administrative platitudes and the policies by which prisoners must live. Often, those discrepancies hinder individuals who are striving to prepare for law-abiding lives upon release. Prison reforms could and should bring the expressed concern for rehabilitation into harmony with the rules that […]
Prison Policies Block Families from Nurturing Ties with Loved Ones in Prison
In the Second Chance Act of 2007, Congress found that although close family ties represent one of the most effective resources to help offenders in prison transition to society successfully upon release, prison administrators under utilize the resource of families. As a long-term prisoner, I know that Congress missed the point. Administrators not only fail […]
They’re Prison Guards, Not Correctional Officers
Readers have sometimes criticized me for referring to those who staff prisons as prison guards. They don’t like the term prison guard. They would prefer that I used the term Correctional Officer. When I was living in Lompoc’s Federal Prison Camp, Officer Smith told me that he found the term prison guard demeaning. He said […]
Lowering Recidivism Rates Through Liberalism
Josh is a recent graduate from Yale University who responded to an earlier article I wrote about prison guards. In my article, I had given my perspective on why they were guards rather than correctional officers, and Josh wrote about lessons he had learned through a course in political psychology. According to findings from an […]
Support Senator Jim Webb’s Call for Prison Reform!
The article below appeared in The Washington Post. Contact your elected Congressional officials and: 1) urge them to learn the facts about America’s failed prison system, 2) tell them to support legislation for national prison reform. Click here to find your legislators and their contact information: United States Senators, US House of Representatives Webb Sets […]
Prison Reform Should Include Work-Release and Study-Release
How does society benefit by locking nonviolent offenders inside prison boundaries for years, decades, or multiple decades? I’ve heard the term justice, yet I’m not quite convinced that we serve justice by simply watching calendar pages turn while separating an offender from society for such long periods. As leaders contemplate appropriate prison reforms, I hope […]
Prison Reforms Should Bring E-Mail Access to All Prisoners
Recidivism rates for prisoners in the United States exceeds 60 percent. That number ought to appall all Americans. Many factors contribute to the reasons so many people fail upon their release from confinement. I know because I have been locked inside prisons of every security level since 1987. During those 21-plus years, I have made […]
Why I Write About Prison
I’ve written more than a million words about the prison experience. Through the pages of several books my publishers have brought to market, and countless articles, I describe prison from a long-term prisoner’s perspective. Administrators don’t like that I work so tirelessly to expose this creepy underbelly of society. Like the boundaries that separate prisoners […]
America’s Prison System Represents a Tribute to Marxism
During the more than 21 years that I’ve served in prison thus far, I’ve read a fair amount of books on political philosophy. As I read the work of Karl Marx, I was struck by how the American prison system models itself on Marxist principles. Prisons, I am sure, are as close as we come […]
Reforms Should Facilitate Ties Between Prisoners, Family, and Society
According to Congressional findings in The Second Chance Act of 2007, the Bureau of Prisons’ own metrics show that strong family and community ties represent “the most important factor” in helping those who have been released from prison to succeed upon release. That same Congressional Act found that “families are an often underutilized resource in […]
Prison Reform Should Include Incentives to Encourage Positive Growth
With a surge in violence in federal prisons across America, Bureau of Prison officials have responded by creating a Special Management Program inside the walls of the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg. The new program design makes living conditions at USP Lewisburg much more restrictive than other high-security penitentiaries, yet not quite as restrictive as […]
Influences of John Locke and Thomas Hobbs on Prison Reform
I’ve heard a couple of poignant political explanations since my imprisonment began, in 1987. A Democrat, I’ve been told, was simply a Republican who had been arrested. A Republican, on the other hand, was simply a Democrat who had been mugged. Such descriptions simplified political parties, of course, mistakenly reducing their total platform positions to […]
Prison Reforms Can Help Solve Gang Problems
In the 15 December 2008 issue of U.S. News and World Report, Alex Kingsbury published a lengthy story entitled “The War on Gangs.” According to Mr. Kingsbury’s article, the FBI estimates that nearly 800,000 people belong to more than 26,000 gangs. Those numbers are high, yet they exclude prison gangs, a group with which I […]
Prison Reform Should Include Pell Grants for Prisoners
In today’s punitive prison system, fewer prisoners have access to higher education. I read an article that Matthew Ryno published at Wiscnews.com, for example, that described how the federal prison in Oxford was about to substitute a program through which inmates could earn degrees from the University of Wisconsin in order for the prison to […]
Era of Transparency Should Abolish Administration Obstacles to Prisoner Writings.
President Obama issued an order indicating that “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.” As a federal prisoner who writes about the reasons our country needs prison reform, I was encouraged to learn […]
