Needing More Space in Jail? Don't Make it as a Dormitory of the Privilege!

Anna Gorman, a Los Angeles Times staff writer, wrote last Sunday, June 22, 2008, that the L.A. County is expanding its screening at the county jail. The main goal is to determine who needs to be deported after serving time. The subsidiary goal is to free up jail beds.

Deportation is a good way of freeing up jail beds, but one more thing that the state has to consider is the privileges that it is currently giving to these incarcerated men and women. While ACLU/So. California's legal director reported on April 24, 2007 that the current jail conditions is inconsistent with basic human values, thereby, associating the L.A. Men's Central Jail as a version of Devil's island, my observation in the mid-90s of the American prison is the complete opposite.

I know that the condition, at least, at Mark Stiles Unit in Beaumont, Texas wasn't despicable and inhuman. I regularly visited the unit on weekends in mid-90s, as a volunteer chaplain, who later became a member of an interim committee of the unit's proposed literacy program. There was a time that all the volunteer chaplains-in-training were invited to dine with the inmates as part of the orientation. Being my first, I immediately was shocked to see the place. The entire jail and the inmates were clean, and the mess hall was excellent. As I saw the food, I forgot that I was in a pen. I thought that I was in an immaculately clean fast food restaurant. There were lots of steaming food: mashed potatoes with gravy, corn on the cob, meat loaf, steak, fish, vegetables, and dessert. As a family man and a newly-hired Filipino teacher with the Port Arthur Independent School District, my mind immediately contrasted what I saw. American prisons are a paradise, while Philippine jails (and pretty sure, other developing countries) is a Devil's island, a place where inhabitants are deprived of food, sleep, and sanitation. American prisons are first-class dormitories, while the Philippine jails are pigpens. American prisons have five-star restaurants; most Philippine jails do not even have a closed mess hall. (Incarcerated men squat, while eating. They do not have enough food to go around, just like what people see in the TV program, Prison Break. A group of the prisoners, with the closed watch of armed prison guards, even have to push carts around town to collect any leftovers from the restaurants in mid-day.) Incarcerated men are well-fed, while averaged working people outside the pen can even hardly get by with the salary they receive at the end of the day. Incarcerated felons in the U.S. are the privileged ones; most working people, who pay taxes to keep bad people off the streets are impoverished. No wonder, most of those felons that I have dealt with on one-on-one counseling, were ambivalent in terms of getting out of jail. They knew that life at the pen is easy and care-free than life outside the pen. No wonder, recidivism is high. The Los Angeles Times reported in May 20,2008 that there were 16,000 inmates in Los Angeles county, who were rearrested ( and charged with new crimes)since the large-scale releases started in mid-2002.

Don't you think it is high time for us to really consider how to properly treat our incarcerated men and women? Rehabilitation is our main goal, but that does not mean we have to pamper them with all the 'goodies' while at the pen, that they would rather prefer to commit another crime, soon after they are released, because life outside the penitentiary is harsh and tough. Pampering them with all the amenities, that even those law-abiding citizens have been deprived of, is not rehabilitation at all. Having them realize that life at the pen is a punishment and not a dormitory of the privileged ones would surely bring them to their senses...to think twice before they'd commit another crime. This way, we might have more beds in jails.