Voices From The Row: The Purpose of Incarceration

Hotep,

This next voice from the row will display an interesting perspective on a failed justice system intent on prioritizing suffering in the initial stages of capital murder cases – only to redeem a fraction of the faulty convictions decades later, under the guise of an appellate system that works. 

This malefic practice of justice has spawned 35 executions in 9 years, as well as causing an 8-year de facto moratorium on executions in the state of North Carolina.  To understand the purpose of incarceration is to know the demographic of its inhabitants.

Lyle C. May, aspiring memoirist (http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-For-The-Last-Train-ebook/dp/B00JXVZN90) ; integral member of the literary expressionist team FFLOW; and first time contributor to this W2TM platform, is the voice that now, engages your ear canal.  Feel it.

100,

MannofStat

Copyright © 2014 by Leroy Elwood Mann

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The Purpose of Incarceration

What is it about prison that creates the need to write about perceived suffering?  I do this as much as the next man and after all, there is certainly some injustice in this situation we term “incarceration.” 

Yet for those who are responsible for their crimes is there a legitimate gripe?  This begs the question of whether one believes he or she deserves any punishment, regardless of what sentence is handed down by the court. 

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, it is difficult not to want a level of fairness no matter what crime has been charged under the law.  Justice is equity and blind justice is a poor attempt to hide the numerous disparities amongst the convictions and sentences that currently imprison approximately 2.3 million people in the U.S. (Prison Legal News, April 2014).  Even as I write that, what am I doing beyond repeating an oft-cited fact most of the public seems to care very little about?

The easiest answer to the original question is that there is little to do in prison except suffer the loss of liberty, any sense of fairness, familial connections and respect as another human being.  The harder answer no prisoner wants to hear is equally obvious: we are meant to suffer in this place of the powerless and ignorant.  Stripped of everything but our minds in this human warehouse, we cannot even be considered slaves because even an indentured servant has more utility and purpose. 

A prisoner’s purpose, in the eyes of the court and the people who support this adversarial legal system, is to endure whatever punishment is applied upon violation of the law – be it imprisonment or death.  There is no distinction between the punishments beyond the finality of a particular sentence.

The criminal justice system is warped and skewed toward the conviction of the poor, which tends to be mostly minority races, but this is unilaterally so.  Injustice, from the time an individual is suspected of a crime to the conviction and sentence, is so common in the U.S. legal system that it seems ignorant to believe it could be any other way.  There may be token cases where the ideal of justice is held up for the public to see, but such cases are handpicked by attorneys after it has been determined they are unlikely to lose.

Cases like those of Alan Gell, Lavon Jones and Glen Chapman, who were on death row for years before they were finally acquitted and released, are put on pedestals as shining examples that the system works.  The system does not work.  

It should not take a decade long appellate process to determine these men were wrongly pursued and convicted from the very beginning.  How many more men and women on death row and serving time in other prisons would be acquitted of their alleged crimes if an attorney zealously defended the client from the beginning?

Prison is suffering, a catchall for those who fail in society and fall through the cracks of life, and for those whom society fails.  Writing about this failure, and all of the real or perceived pain along the way, is the only escape from the damage done to us, to understand what has happened and put a face on why this onus was placed on our shoulders. 

A concise picture of the torment was in place well before any crime was committed or any of us arrived at this destination.  It is only necessary that we recognize this and accept it as an inevitability.  Only after that affirmation has been made can we begin to see past the razor wire and chains, beyond the pain and loss, and begin to live again.

Lyle C. May

Copyright © 2014 by Lyle C May