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notesfromthepen · 5 years ago

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Killers and Monsters...and Regular People Everywhere

I like to think of myself as a realist. Never will you hear me say that there is no need for prisons, that no one should be incarcerated. Without question, there are individuals whose freedom is detrimental to the functioning of a safe and healthy society, who, once arrested, cannot be safely released back into society. Though the percentage of these hopeless cases are far more rare than some would have you believe.

There are arguments to be made—not necessarily by me—about where these people belong, and what the purpose their incarceration is to serve, whether it is about punishment or rehabilitation, or some combination of the two. I'm not here to tackle these issues today. What I aim to do, is much simpler. As with most of my writings, I aim to reveal a better vantage point on a reality, a more complete truth (as much as is possible when coming from the perspective of a flawed human being) and to dispel myths and misinformation through the knowledge gained of personal experience.

This piece is titled Killers and Monsters because being in prison has shown me that there is a difference between the two, and it's a difference that needs to be shouted to the masses...or at least needs to be made more clearly to those willing to listen.

Rarely are complex issues laid out in plain black and white. If they were, they wouldn't be very complex. Admittedly, it would be much easier if everyone in prison were actual monsters, if the nature of the crime matched the person who'd committed it and you could identify a bad guy by simple appearance. Unfortunately, life isn't a Steven Segal movie. No, real life is much more nuanced. Get close enough and you will see that crime and punishment is a picture, much too intricate, to be painted in simple black and whites.

The illusion that our prisons are full of boogie men, blood-thirsty killers, and heartless drug lords, allows us the comfort of sleeping sound at night while nearly two million of our brothers and sisters rot in prison. (America has the highest incarceration rate in the world: 5% of the worlds population yet 25% of the world's prisoners). This painting of inmates, as maniacal killers and evil degenerates who deserved to be locked away, is a masterful propaganda technique used to manipulate a population into supporting the injustices of a system that will eventually, directly or indirectly, oppress the same population it relies on for survival. It would be death for the status quo if these incarcerated men and women were not looked upon as villains, but were thought of as they actually are: our brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. It's easy to subjugate the "other," much more difficult to oppress someone you know or can relate to.

Would it surprise you to hear that you could not, with any degree of accuracy above random chance, guess the crimes of the inmates in prison based on their appearance alone? (Other than child molesters, they seem to be more susceptible to superficial giveaways of their criminal proclivities, such as appearance and demeanor.)

Maybe, maybe not.

Would it surprise you if I said that you could not increase your chances of guessing correctly, even after observing the inmates for extended periods of time? Or even if you were allowed comprehensive conversations (excluding direct questioning about their actual crimes) with an inmate, would you be able to accurately predict the nature of their offense?

Growing up, I had an idea of what a murderer would look like. I was raised in the 80s when our pop culture had clearly defined, however unrealistic, depictions of heroes and villains. So I grew up thinking, for the most part, you could tell what a killer looks like, what a thief or drug dealer acts like (most of them wore black clothes, had scars on their faces, shifty eyes, and a snarl.) When I was younger I used to wonder if anyone I knew had ever killed another person. It was a reoccurring thought that would usually end with the false assumption that, "of course not, I'd know if someone was a killer." But how would I have known? By their shifty eyes?

After coming to prison I realized how wrong I was. It is both inspiring and terrifying, the moment you realize how unreliable our beliefs can be.

In prison you generally only ask about another inmates case under certain circumstances. 1: If you are bunkies, and 2: If you are a fellow gang member...and that's about it. In both cases it's to ensure that you're not living or associating with a child molester or a rat.

It's definitely not an icebreaker; you don't just come out and ask. Nearly all of the interactions in prison are with people that you know nothing about, or knew nothing about initially. It's only after time, after a level of trust and comfort is established, that you learn about someone's case. In a way it's kind of beautiful; there is less to be prejudice about; it's only after you've become close with somebody that you learn about the worst moment of their life, of the worst act they've committed. By then there's a context, a face and a story to the person who committed the crime. Too bad life isn't like this. We should get to know someone first, judge them on their personality and nature before we judge them on their past.

It's easy to hold onto idealistic beliefs when you keep your distance from the reality. It's easier to hate black people when you've never known, really known, a black person...etc.

I've watched shows like Date Line and 20/20 and gotten all worked up about the senseless and brutal murder of a helpless woman or an innocent child and thought things like: if you willingly take another persons life you should be put to death, or at least you should never, ever, get out of prison. This was just more belief at a distance, based on nothing but reactionary emotion, uninformed, safe from scrutiny, belief. It was ignorant. I'd never known anyone who had killed someone, or anyone who'd had a family member killed.

But the salacious crime stories, meant to play on fear and intrigue, are often the only ones that get told. So it’s easy to see the fault line that these beliefs rise from.

Over the last few years I've learned that the wall we imagine separating us, the free citizens from the degenerate criminals, is much thinner than you think. Often it's only a stroke of bad-luck, a moment of impulse-control between us.

Don't agree?

If you have ever drank more than a beer and found yourself getting behind the wheel of a vehicle without waiting at least an hour to drive, you could be right here in the bunk next to me.

My two time bunkie/best friend is in here for vehicular manslaughter in which he blew a .09 blood alcohol level (just .01 over the legal limit, roughly half a beer) The person driving the other car involved in the accident was also intoxicated, much more so than him but, because the guy died and my friend lived, he was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years in prison, on his 1st prison sentence. And make no mistake, there are plenty of people in here for similar cases. A sixteen year old, who thought he was giving a friend a ride to steal a twenty dollar bag of weed, finds out that his friend killed somebody in the house while he waited in the car and is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Thrown away for a stupid teenage mistake.

The point is, we're not all monsters. By my—completely unscientific but nonetheless reliable—calculations, the percentage of monsters, assholes, douchebags, slime balls, lazy fucks, hard workers, generous, ingenious, lucky, funny, genuine, unlucky, selfish and selfless men in the prison system is the exact same as it is in anywhere else in the free world.

The two main differences seem to be upbringing and luck but, surprisingly, not their nature. Without going into a series of examples I'd ask you to trust me when I say that there are people who've committed murder, the most serious of crimes, that I'd trust with my life, and that my mind would be blown if I found out that they'd stole a candy bar after they were released.

But they're almost never the ones we hear about. It's always the escaped convict who kills someone that makes the news, or the inmate who rapes someone after their parole. In these cases, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; truly reformed inmates rarely ever attempt to escape prison, and they certainly don't hurt people if they do, so you're never gonna hear about them. And there IS no salacious story to be told about the inmates who are successfully released. This is why we only ever hear about the terrifying minority. But this inaccurate exposure leads to the false narrative of prison being populated by blood thirsty monsters.

You never hear about people like another one of my bunkies: One of the best people I've known in my entire life is in here for killing someone eighteen years ago in an act of perceived self-defense. He understands his crime, and himself, in a deep and profound way that many of us will never know. He fully accepts the responsibility of his action and the pain it's caused and it breaks his heart. And after living with it for all these years, he admits that, though he may have felt threatened, he could've, should've, handled it differently. And not because he got thrown in prison for it but because he took someone's life. Trust me, it is the most sobering act you can commit. And though I didn't know him eighteen years ago, in the years that I have known him, it's hard to imagine him hurting anyone. He's a funny, generous, thoughtful person who does anything he can to help other people with no expectation of personal gain. You might think you’d be able to bullshit the parole board for fifteen minutes, but I've lived with this man 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 2 years straight. It is not bullshit.

This is just one example of many, since I've come to prison, that has shown me how easy it is to think about crime and punishment from a distance, and how wrong I was about my opinions. People make mistakes, some really stupid and hurtful mistakes, but some really change, and everyone deserves that chance.

Let's be honest, there ARE “monsters” in here: child rapists and baby killers, sociopaths, remorseless murderers, and heinous heartless criminals, but they are an unequivocally small minority. During the six years I've been in prison, in the three joints I've been to, from maximum to minimum security facilities, I've run across maybe a handful of, what most would consider, "evil" people beyond rehabilitation. Many inmates are ignorant, impulsive, immature, and emotionally stunted, but very few are actually bad people. And unfortunately this place does almost nothing to help them get better.

It's so easy to throw monsters away, it's easy to turn your back on people you think, because they're in prison, must deserve whatever their punishment is. But the reality is you're throwing away your brothers and sisters, you're turning your back on your neighbors and friends, and you're wrong about who it is behind these walls.

I'm ashamed that it took me coming here to realize just how wrong I was, how naive I was, how willfully ignorant my beliefs were. I can only hope that it doesn't take an up close experience like mine for you to take a second look at some of your untested beliefs.

Because it's never so black and white as to think the fence separating prison and the free world has nothing but monsters and killers on one side and regular people on the other.

This picture here calls for more color.

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