Daily Archives: July 11, 2023

The Problems We Solve Are the Problems We Don’t Have to Face

News, Uncategorized, , , ,
Licensed from Adobe Stock

There was an article today in the New York Times titled, “For Ex-Prisoners, ‘Second-Chance’ Jobs Can Be Hard to Come By”, and I think it’s something important enough for us to discuss now, so instead of focusing on billionaires in sinking submarines near the Titanic or on international affairs/wars like in Syria or Ukraine, let’s focus on something a little closer to home, and something that may affect each and everyone of us.

Now, the chances of any of you reading this ending up in jail is pretty slim. Actually, I’m being kind of nice. Statistics from the Brennan Center for Justice indicate that one out of every three adults in America has a prison record. Yeah, I double checked that on another site, and it was correct. Doing some math myself, about a quarter of those arrests were for felonies, which means we have a lot of ex-cons in this country, and if you read this particular article, that’s a real problem.

One of the problems in America is that we’re not a very forgiving country. Oh, we say we are, but we’re not. You spend time in jail, and America kind of turns its back on you, kind of like the Klingons did to Worf when he was banished from Klingon space. Yes, that moment hit me hard, almost as hard as when I realized going for humor in a very serious piece is definitely reading the room wrong. If I was a Klingon, you’d be turning your backs on me and waiting until I left the room. Please don’t do that.

Getting back to seriousness, mainly because this issue is quite serious, I would like to ask the generalized question of “what should we do about this?”

One thing I’ve noticed from a lot of the pieces written and distributed on this site is that people have a tendency to complain about something that’s wrong and then advocate for nothing. Or worse, they advocate for something that’s ludicrous, as in something that’s never going to get done. I read an article the other day that argued that men tend to treat women horribly in relationships; then the writer advocated for all men to be nicer. Really? That was the solution?d I’m sure all those bad boys out there doing bad boy stuff are thinking about cleaning up their acts now.

One of my favorite moments in the Marvel movie Ant Man was when he got out of prison and took a job at Baskin Robbins, serving ice cream. And then he was fired once they discovered his prison record. His friends kept saying “Baskin Robbins always finds out.” And we in the audience all laughed.

I wonder if any ex-cons were in the audience and laughed as well. Well, they probably did because it was absurdly funny, but after some time I started thinking that perhaps there’s something wrong with the way we do things in our society.

The idea of prison is that it is punishment for transgressions. When your sentence is up, you are released and your crime is considered paid for. Sure, there might be probation and all that, but if they let you out of prison, it’s supposed to mean your debt to society has been paid.

But it doesn’t work out that way. Whenever you apply for a job, there’s almost always that section you start to fill out that starts to ask you if you’ve ever been arrested for a misdemeanor or a felony. And if you’ve been lucky enough to not have ever been arrested, I’ve even seen applications that ask if you’ve ever been accused of a felony or a misdemeanor.

I’m waiting for the application that asks me if I’ve ever imagined doing something that might land me a felony or a misdemeanor.

The point is: If you’ve paid your penalty, the punishment should be over. There are very productive citizens who had been locked up for years who are released and find themselves in situations that are impossible to improve. Not everyone comes across a reclusive millionaire who gives him an antman costume to fight crime. No, most ex-cons end up in situations where they can’t even find a job, so the most obvious next step for them is to do exactly what they did that got them the felony in the first place.

So, they end up back in jail.

What deranged mind thought through a system like this that makes it inevitable that someone who commits a crime is always going to end up in a vicious cycle that keeps that person in prison for life? There are some ex-cons who immediately commit another crime that is easy to solve, just so they can get back into prison, a place they at least know how to maneuver with some modicum of success.

And what this problem has led to is an overpopulation of prisoners across the country. And that has led to something extremely unique to the American prison system: For-profit prisons. Realizing that we have so many prisoners, independent contractors made their own prisons and farm their space out to cities, counties and states. Not only that, but they use the prisoners to conduct for-profit labor (the profit going to the guys that own these prisons). Had these prisoners been released into society upon the conclusion of their first incarceration, and been able to find productive jobs, they might never have seen the inside of a prison again, and they might be productive members of society again.

But America isn’t about forgiveness. Just watch an election debate, and you will see both sides of the political spectrum arguing to convince the voters how rough they will make life on prisoners and anyone who transgresses upon anyone. If one candidate talks about reforming the prison system, it’s instant political suicide, and you will never see that candidate again.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: “Doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same bad result.” Usually, they add that this is the definition of insanity. They’ll also say it’s a quote from Albert Einstein. Well, he never actually said that, but if people keep repeating the same lie over and over again, people start to believe it, which is kind of similar to the quotation in the first place.

The problem isn’t that we do the same thing over and over again, get the same result, and then repeat the sequence. The problem is that we do the same thing over and over again and then never check on the progress, cause if we did, we would realize that our prison system doesn’t work and needs reform.

So who can we turn to if our politicians can’t fix it without being run out of office? For that, I suspect the answer is awareness that there’s a problem because I don’t think people are even cognizant that there’s a problem in the first place.

But there is a problem. So what do we do?

Tom

Uncategorized

I first met Tom in college. But I’ll get back to that in a second.

It was the first day of when I was to attend San Francisco State University. My previous foray into education was a decade prior, and now I was about to do it all over again. Only, this time I decided I was going to do the whole college experience, including living in the dorms, something you didn’t really get when your first run through college was at one of the military service academies.

Anyway, this time they were going to set me up with a roommate, and as it goes, the roommate was going to come as a complete surprise. And boy, did it ever. My roommate showed up and that’s immediately when sparks started to fly. Well, let me explain.

The roommate who showed up was someone with green hair. That should have been my first warning. The second warning was that she was a she. And boy, did that make her angry.

Even though the roommate “choice” was a crapshoot, and none of the roommates actually chose each other, she lit off like a firecracker. Well, more like a firecracker that explodes over and over again.

She immediately blamed me and started yelling at me nonstop, like I had secretly arranged this with my patriarchal cousins who were obviously snickering nextdoor, just out of earshot of her.

This went on for about half an hour before I left the room to retrieve the dorm manager downstairs, and as the two of us came back to the room, she was still yelling. At whom until he returned, neither of us knew, but she continued to be red mad.

So, the dorm manager took her out of the room, at which she started screaming that the guy (me) should have to leave, not her, even though all of my stuff was unpacked and her stuff was still in suitcases ready to be moved to wherever they needed to go.

So, for the first night, I had no roommate. The second night, my new roommate arrived, and that’s when I met Tom.

For my second roommate, they decided to link him with me because the two of us were veterans. He was a former Marine and I was former Army. There was an age difference; he had fought in Vietnam, and my time was Grenada, Panama and the first Gulf War.

Because the timeframe of our first nights on campus coincided with huge bouts of noise on campus, on one evening after lights out the campus band and glee team was practicing at what had to be after midnight in some impromptu blast of music. I just assumed this was a normal thing and struggled to get back to sleep, but then like a bolt of lightning, Tom came rushing out of his room and straight out the door of our dorm. The next thing I heard, he was yelling at the leader of the band, and someone yelled back at him from out there, and then there was dead silence.

Then Tom came back to the room and said, “They’ll shut up now.” And then he went to bed. I never heard another sound from the band again. As no police units showed up knocking on our door, I assumed he settled that problem without any violence.

Over the years, Tom and I bonded as most roommates do when they get along and have a common frame of reference. A few years into our friendship journey, one of my debate partners and I decided we were interested in starting a radio program with the school Broadcasting Department, even though we weren’t part of the Broadcasting Department.

But we couldn’t even get the Broadcast Department to give us an opportunity to try out. But when Tom overheard us talking about the failure of our plan, he said that he knows the director of the Broadcasting Department, and he’d talk to him. We kind of took it half-heartedly but then a few days later, he handed me a piece of paper with the director’s name, a date and a time, saying that he would see us then.

So, my friend and I put together or best elevator pitch and presented it. Next thing we knew, we were told we had some studio time to create our vision and then we could present that as proof that we could do the job.

When we got to the studio, we encountered the first bit of politics in the Broadcasting Department. Everyone in that department was competing for airtime, and as outsiders, we were infringing on their territory. But the director had told them to give us access and one of them took that obligation to actually show us the ropes. So, we finished the demo tape and then had to present our elevator pitch to the students who ran the radio station. They heard us out and then said no.

We were devestated, and Tom listened to our entire group commiserate over how we gave it our best shot, and unknown to us, Tom took the demo tape to the director so he could hear what we had done. The next day, we were given air time and the students running the station hated us forever after that day.

But we had our air time.

Years later, Tom and I remained good friends, and after I published one of my novels, Thompson’s Bounty, about a Coast Guard crew that gets pulled through time to the age of pirates, Tom called me and said that he loved that book and felt it needed to be a movie.

You see, after Tom graduated, he got into the movie industry and was a huge advocate of science fiction. He wasn’t high up in the industry, nor was he ever working to get up high into it. He took those types of jobs that are necessary, but most people don’t generally acknowledge. In other words, if there’s a guy who drives around on movie sets and takes the director around, or picks up the luggage for a cast member, he was that guy.

But being in that position, he was always talking with people who made movies, and he hyped my novel to some of the biggest names, itching for me to send him a screenplay, so he could pass it onto someone who had asked for it.

To put it simply, Tom was my biggest fan, and when you’re a writer, that is such a great thing to have. Every couple of months, he would call me, or send me a message, and he would love to talk about something I had written, depending on what kind of movie he was working on at the time.

I just received a Facebook message that his funeral has been announced and will occur in a few days. I didn’t even know he was sick. Only that I hadn’t talked to him for awhile. And I’m really sad about that. If there was any consistency in the universe, it was that Tom could brighten your day in a few seconds of a conversation. I don’t really mean to make it about me, but I really needed those moments. And now they’re gone.

Well, at least the San Francisco State University drill team can practice at midnight without the fear of some guy from the dorms scaring them half to death.