A3N: Any closing thoughts?
SM: The Eastern State Penitentiary was torn down, I believe, in 1973"Most of the prisons in the U.S. today, however, retain the EasternState, 19th Century Quaker culture that punishment builds character. It has survived through a system of patronage and nepotism getting rid of good staff people in favor of the corrupt. The high tech boxes that we today call prisons are designed to manage mass movement rather than to build community and self respect, with punishment being arbitrary, inconsistent and capricious in most cases, extended out of sheer boredom.
Prison staff believes and promotes the belief that they have dangerous jobs"I ran some statistics on jobs in the US"Prison guards hardly surface"At the top are commercial fishing and logging industries, both prominent in Maine but rarely heard to complain about danger"It might interest the readers to know that a prison guard has a lower death rate than do licensed drivers lower than 21 per 100,000 population.
Studies prove that re-entry programs begun in the inside and carried over to the outside will cut recidivism rates by as much as 75%. Why, then, are we not implementing those programs? I believe it is because Corrections is protecting itself as a growth industry. It is only when the public begins to realize it is being fleeced, will it demand change. Meanwhile, we the people continue to elect arrogant obstructionists to public office in protection of the status quo.
--Angola 3 News is a new project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.
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