I love the way topics for blog articles come to me! I recently connected with a distant cousin through a genealogy site. We shared information, photos, and family lore. Then I learned that she is an English writer and journalist who worked for three years as the writer in residence of a high security men's prison. This experience helped inspire her Penguin bestsellers which I have just started to read. Her name is Jane Corry and her books are twisty-turny suspense novels that are available at the public library and in a bookstore near you.
I began to write this article a few years ago when Plymouth joined the prison ministry program at Monroe Correctional Complex, started by the Reverend Dale Sewell. Reverend Sewell updated me on what is happening now with the prison ministry program. He said that the volunteers (some are from Plymouth Church) "are still hanging in there waiting for the prison to reopen to volunteer programs. Everything in the state prison system is about Covid right now, and I don't think we will get back inside before fall at best. Maybe I will be surprised. After Covid cools down, the prisons will still be cautious and will move slowly to let people back inside. Covid has been a huge crisis for them since it is so difficult to socially distance in prison, almost impossible." I asked him if there was a way to stay in touch with the men they had been seeing. He replied that family members can write letters, make phone calls, and visit via video call, but volunteers cannot.
That was particularly sad to hear because the folks involved with the prison ministry were visiting men who had had no visitors for years. You have to know that if they are released, they will have no support system of family or friends. How will they survive on the outside, especially those who are dealing with mental health issues? Did the prison system equip them to find a job that would provide a living wage? Are they leaving prison with enough money to pay for clothes, food, lodging, transportation?
Prisoners who have friends and family to go back to are not in a better place if their friends and family are felons or others engaged in criminal activity. A former probation and parole officer told me that, as a condition of parole, one must not associate with felons or others engaged in criminal activity. Any violation of the conditions of parole and one is sent back to prison.
(A quick, simplified explanation of the difference between jail and prison, probation and parole: Generally, people awaiting sentencing spend time in jail. Jails are usually run by cities and counties and, when sentenced to jail, it is usually for less than one year. Probation may be ordered as an alternative to a period of incarceration. More serious cases may be sentenced for a number of years (or for life) to a prison. They may be released early under Parole. During the Probation or Parole period, they must meet regularly with their probation officer and be employed or actively seeking employment - and refrain from re-offending. In either case, there are rigid rules, one of which is to not associate with felons, criminals or those engaged in criminal activity.)
The irony of this system is that, while we value the benefit of not associating with criminals, when we do sentence someone to jail or prison (even for a relatively minor crime), the individual is then forced to associate with felons and those who engage in criminal activity (past, present and future).
Supposedly, we incarcerate for the “protection of society.” Prison rates in the US are the world's highest. Roughly 1 in every 32 adult Americans are under some sort of criminal justice system control. And when they are released, what happens? My ex-parole officer friend says that, not surprisingly, the more time a person spends in prison, the more likely it is that the person will return to prison.
Is the system working?
The following books cover many aspects of the prison system and the lives of prisoners. Most of them are new to Plymouth library.
Prisoners of age : the Alcatraz exhibition /Levine, Ron, 365.60846 LEV
This is one of my favorite books in Plymouth Library. In 1996, Ron Levine first entered a geriatric prison to photograph some of the prisoners. He went back many times, and this book is the result. Photographs of the men are accompanied by their words, sometimes about their crimes or prison conditions, sometimes just random thoughts. Here is James Veach, 88: "Oh, my gypsy blood got to boiling again. This fellow tried to kill me with a pole ax and I beat him to it and shot him and he died. Course, I may have killed him and I may have not. Could have been a heart attack."
The maximum security book club : reading literature in a men's prison /Brottman, Mikita, 365.66 BRO
I found this book to be compelling reading. The author, a humanities professor, runs a book club for nine convicts (they bristle at being called inmates) in a maximum security prison in Delaware. Some of the prisoners leave and are replaced, but for the three years that she writes about, six were constants. The reader learns about these men, about Brottman's preconceptions, frustrations, and joys, and about the ten books that the group reads during this time and the men's reactions to them. Not least, is what the reader discovers about the realities of life within the prison system.
The following descriptions are from the Plymouth Library Catalog:
Unlocked : a journey from prison to Proust / Ferrante, Louis. B FER
A former Mafia member reveals how a childhood devoid of books significantly impacted his criminal development and how he reshaped his understanding of life, self, and faith by voraciously reading everything he could obtain while in jail.
American prison : a reporter's undercover journey into the business of punishment / Bauer, Shane, 365.973 BA
In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.
The expanding prison : the crisis in crime and punishment and the search for alternatives / Cayley, David. 365.973 CAY
An American marriage : a novel / Jones, Tayari, F JON
Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
Sing, unburied, sing : a novel / Ward, Jesmyn, F WAR
When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
The hunting accident : a true story of crime and poetry / Carlson, David L. F CAR
It was a hunting accident; that much Charlie is sure of. That's how his father, Matt Rizzo--a gentle intellectual who writes epic poems in Braille--had lost his vision. It's not until Charlie's troubled teenage years, when he's facing time for his petty crimes, that he learns the truth. Matt Rizzo was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face, but it was while participating in an armed robbery. Newly blind and without hope, Matt began his bleak new life at Stateville Prison. In this unlikely place, Matt's life and very soul were saved by one of America's most notorious killers, Nathan Leopold Jr., of the infamous Leopold and Loeb.
I've loved you so long/ Il y a longtemps que je t'aime / DVD F IVE
A shell-shocked Juliette is released from prison after serving 15 years for murdering her young son. As life has moved on, she must relearn certain basics. After being banished from her family, she is now reunited with her younger sister, Lea. Hopefully, Juliette will learn to forgive herself in the process.
Reverend Sewell wrote: "A book you might recommend to your blog readers is What We Know: Solutions from Our Experiences in the Justice System. Many of the essays in the book were written by incarcerated or previously incarcerated people. The editors are Vivian Nixon and Daryl V. Atkinson." This book is not in the Plymouth Library collection.