Most likely there is more to this story than the news clip that I saw. However, it is the first time I have seen the subject of someone going to prison appear in any publication.

Without a doubt, we will see a lot more in the weeks and month to come once the flood gates are opened. In part, you only have to look at the statistics to get a sense of the story behind the story.

Mandatory minimums and zero tolerance have put a number of men and women in prison for more years than they are/were able to recover from to the point where they can get a life and consequently the go to where they are the most comfortable once they approach the age or find themselves in a situation where they are no longer able to care for themselves.

I have met and know these men and women over the 15 years that I have been a volunteer in prison. If you have to do time in such circumstances then the fed is the way to travel.
Ex-Cop Admits To Robbing Bank To Get Health Benefits In Federal Prison

An unexpected voice in the mass incarceration debate

This was totally unexpected. A good article with lots of good statistics in one spot. Some of the information came to me as a surprise and don’t really have the time or skill to verify it. Worth the read anyway.

The saddest statistic is “…The statistics on mass incarceration for juveniles are bleak. For the more than 93,000 young people in the juvenile justice system in 2008, about 80 percent went on to have contact with the adult criminal justice system, found the MacArthur Foundation…” Makes it seem as if we are not helping them but training them for a life in prison where the recidivism rate is about 68 percent…”

A depressing but informative read: Occupy for Prisoners Comes Out Against Mass Incarceration

Private or public, prison system can’t be a profit center

Never in all the writings have I ever seen anyone catch the heart of the issues surround this insane and unsustainable mess called the Florida prison system. This is one article I would make mandatory reading for every citizen in the state of Florida.

Then I would go back and put names and organizations that have been the prime movers in the evolution of this mess.

“…It would be madness for Florida to mass privatize the state prison system. It also would be madness if Florida didn’t change the state prison system, and the legal system that feeds it…”

Randy Schultz has captured the issues, truth and depth of the scandal. “…North of Orlando, prisons long have been economic development. Two of the toughest prisons are across the river from each other in Union and Bradford counties northeast of Gainesville, where they are the local economy. A high school education could get you hired as a prison guard, which beat most other jobs in rural counties that tourism and subdivisions missed. Almost half of Florida’s 67 counties have fewer people than Boynton Beach’s 69,000.

For a very long time, imprisonment was a growth industry. Those in charge doled out jobs, and the Legislature kept the inmates flowing. In the early 1980s, the Legislature took away most judicial discretion by setting sentencing guidelines. In the mid-1980s, when crack cocaine arrived, the Legislature made drug sentences mandatory even for users. That rush forced early releases of violent inmates, which led to outrage and a prison-building boom. Next came the law that inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, and more minimum-mandatory sentences….”

What brought the entire issue to a rolling boil was “…So now Florida is closing prisons. The system has 112,000 beds for about 100,000 inmates, and is opening another 4,000 beds. This is the public profiteering. Both the DOC and the private companies – which already run seven prisons, including one in South Bay – have a vested interest in filling cells….”

Lost in the entire debate are the lives that have been trashed in the process. Lost in the debate are the children who will never get off of the starting blocks in life because their parents were sent to prison to meet the jobs programs and profit lines as well as the political aspirations of those who distance themselves the consequences of their actions.
Private or public, prison system can’t be a profit center
 

Hepatitis C Surpasses AIDS As Killer

This came in over my transom early in the morning and for who knows what reason caught me totally by surprise. Those coming out of prison with a history of drug use ought to read it and take head.

Yes, in coming out of prison there is always an incredible amount of wreckage from the past and demands on finances are enormous but this is a quick test that can put your mind at rest.

It is easy to live in ignorence but there is a price to be paid down the line especially if you ever get into a significant and lasting relationship down the road. “…Dr. Robert Bettiker, associate professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Temple University School of Medicine, says that once symptoms appear, the liver is already damaged….”

Follow this link: Hepatitis C Surpasses AIDS As Killer, Hitting Baby-Boom Generations Hardest

Reliving the Crash

I have known more than a couple men and women that are doing time for DUI manslaughter. Whereas they are not on the road more than two or three times a year if that, they do experience many of the same symptoms as mentioned in the below linked article. Whereas they may not be on the road, there is a curios phenomenon of the anniversary date that takes over takes the place of the triggers normally experienced in the free world.

There is another phenomena that I don’t understand but it seems to me that some of the women get pregnant between the time they have the accident and go to prison. That is something that is certainly worth investigating for a PhD candidate.

The subject of incarceration for DUI manslaughter is a very contentious issue. In many cases, I would say that prison does not even begin to touch on the damage and suffering that most go through on their own. For the most part, people guilty of DUI manslaughter are honest and sincere people that have suffered a drastic turn of events in their life. I have had some tell me that going to prison is almost like absolution for what they did and in a strange way welcome it.

Nevertheless, the memory of the crash along with the guilt and shame remains embedded in their brain.
Reliving the Crash

The Art of Distraction

Often, mothers coming out of prison are behind the power curve on how to deal with the conditions that may have arisen with their children while there were incarcerated. Advice that may be appealing is to medicate children that could provide a temporary solution but not address the core problem.

This is especially appealing when there are so many other pressing demands on time and finances. “With Ritalin, the parent stupefies the child for the parant’s good.” The article is a good introduction to some of the traps associated with this strategy.

The Art of Distraction

Drinking and Drugging

This is an interesting contribution to the debate on drugs be they legal or illegal and alcohol. The point is made very clearly that “We too often forget that alcohol can be as destructive as any pill.”

The platform for the debate in this article is the death of Whitney Houston. This article took me back to the days I was a bartender in the lounge at Pensacola Beach, Florida owned by the Tiki Motel. I was working the day shift when a couple of customers came in towards the end of my shift celebrating who knows what. One customer ended up drinking more than a couple of rounds of a drink called a Moscow Mule which was equal parts of Vodka and Kalura. At some point his buddy took him upstairs to put him to bed where he later rolled on his back and died in his own puke.

“….No. By many accounts, Houston also drank. More than a little. In fact one early, leading theory about the cause of her death, which won’t be known until toxicology tests are finished, was that a mix of prescription drugs and alcohol did her in.

But while the drugs leapt immediately to the foreground, with questions raised about which doctors and pharmacies had provided them, the alcohol receded from focus, as it too often does. Wrongly, perilously, we tend not to attribute the same destructive powers to it that we do to powders, capsules and vials….”

Then again: “…That’s not to mention all the injuries, emergency-room visits, disabilities and missed work days. Brewer calculates that for those reasons and others, heavy drinking costs the United States about $224 billion annually.

“There is a huge societal burden that we’re all bearing,” he said.

But is there a commensurate societal concern?

States have raised the legal drinking age to 21 over recent decades, and there has definitely been extensive public education about drinking and driving.

But I can’t recall much alarm about drinking’s other perils. From antismoking ads, I have pictures of blackened lungs and amputated fingers seared into my memory. From antidrug ads, I remember an egg in a skillet as a metaphor for a brain on amphetamines. Where’s the analogous image for the ravages of too much booze?

And where are the taxes? Many studies have shown that pricing is a surefire way to control consumption, and taxes on tobacco have risen accordingly, so much so that in New York, a pack of cigarettes now costs upward of $10.

But excise taxes on alcohol have gone down over the last few decades, when adjusted for inflation and measured in terms of the percentage they represent of the wholesale and retail price of a bottle or a can. The federal government and many states long ago set those levies in terms of a certain dollar amount per gallon — and then didn’t tweak them much as the cost of living went up.

Because Congress last revised excise taxes on distilled spirits in 1991, the real value of those taxes has declined more than 35 percent, said Alexander Wagenaar, a professor at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine who specializes in alcohol research….”

For the entire article Drinking and Drugging