Prisoners Of Capitalism And Isolation

We often make prisoners of ourselves in our own little world. Sometimes we are made prisoners by higher or stronger authority. And sometimes we are made prisoners by bizarre and “in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time” circumstances. Some Bible thumpers say that God is making us prisoners for our sins – or the Devil is getting to us when God isn’t looking.

Take the case of Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721), a bonny lad of Old Scotland. As a teenager Alexander was not one you would want your daughter to go for a walk with. When he was 19 he was supposed to appear before his church board because of his “quarrelsome and unruly behavior” in the community and church. Alex avoided punishment by running away to sea, joining pirates who conducted raids in the South Seas.

Even by 1704 he had not lost any of his skills in troublemaking. Concerned about the seaworthiness of the ship he was on, Alex tried to convince his fellow sailors to desert with him on the San Juan Archipelago, an uninhabited group of islands way off from normal ship lanes. Alex couldn’t convince anybody and the captain was fed up with his mutinous attitude, so he put him off the ship alone. Alex lived on the islands for four years, four months before being rescued by another pirate ship.

Alex actually survived quite well in this isolation, thank you. He found wild turnips and cabbage on the islands and ground his own spices from black pepper berries. The captain had given him a musket with sufficient ammunition and gunpowder, so he had the ability to kill wild goats for meat. He domesticated a few favorites for milk and sexual gratification. He built huts out of pimento trees. When his clothes disintegrated, he sewed others out of goatskins, using a nail for sewing. Although he was in his present condition because he failed to follow church rules, while isolated on the islands he read his Bible frequently. Maybe the text served as an anger management course.

Perhaps by now you have recognized the outline of Daniel Defoe’s “The Life And Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” Defoe had read three accounts of Selkirk’s experiences and thought they would make an excellent adventure novel. It is still recognized as the purest adventure tale of all time. Selkirk was buried at sea off the west coast of Africa in 1721 after succumbing to yellow fever. In 1966, one of his islands was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island and the largest island in the San Juan Archipelago was named Alejandro Selkirk Island, although Selkirk had never set foot on it.

Yes, Selkirk was a prisoner of his character, emotions and anger throughout his life, whether in isolation on an island or aboard ship. But he was a survivor of the first rank.

The Prisoner In The Diving Bell

Another prisoner of circumstance is Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of “French Elle,” who suffered a massive stroke at age 43. The stroke imprisoned him in his body, totally paralyzed except for one eye. He was a victim of “locked-in syndrome,” a condition where the brain is completely functional and memory remains intact. The eye was his contact with the outside world. He could blink, so he could indicate yes or no. By blinking his eye and identifying one letter at a time, Bauby “wrote” his best-selling memoir, “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly.” The book and the subsequent movie are fascinating. Sure, the man is a prisoner in his own body, but his mind is roaming free over his past, present and future. Is he really a prisoner?

A 27-year-old man was killed at Pamplona this week testing his speed against the fighting bulls with the long horns. What personal prison was he in when he sacrificed his laugh and cry to glorify the name of Ernest Hemingway? Hemingway, the author of the famous book “The Sun Also Rises” about the “sport” of bullfighting, was also in a personal prison all his own when he blew his head off with a shotgun blast. It’s an eternal lesson: The sun also sets.

Why Do We Have 25 Percent Of The World’s Prisoners In Our Jails?

I really had a good laugh when our politicians, all caricatures of profiles of cowardice, screamed bloody murder about imprisoning Gitmo detainees in our mainland jails. “Not in my backyard,” trumpeted the Casper P. Milquetoasts of the U.S. Senate. Republicans seem to express the most fear, but I may be prejudiced. With five percent of the world’s population we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners in our jails. One in every 31 adults is in prison, in jail, or on some kind of supervised release. We spend $70 billion a year housing and “correcting” prisoners and parolees.

California has tripled the number of its prisons in 30 years and has quintupled the number of prisoners. In 1970 it spent $5 on higher education for every dollar spent on correctional institutions and programs. It had less than 30,000 prisoners in 1970. Now it has over 150,000 inmates because of nutty “three strikes” laws and laws on the length of jail time for drug offenses.

I remember reading about a California three-time loser who stole one piece of pizza and was sentenced to life imprisonment because of the “three strikes” law. That one piece of pizza is costing $50,000 a year. If the prisoner lives to the male life span of 78, that piece of pizza will have cost California taxpayers well over $2 million protecting them from pizza thieves. Ronald Reagan started this silliness when he was governor. He called it law and order. In 2009 the expenditure for colleges and prisons is even in California. But flaky California is not alone. Michigan, Vermont, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware all spend more on prisons than on colleges.

Not With A Bang But A Whimper

In 1994 the feds built a super-maximum prison at Florence, Colorado to hold some of our worst. We even have some terrorists there. Ramzi Yousef, the foreman of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (remember the vans stuffed with explosives?), occupies a cell for life. Shoe bomber Richard Reid has a room there. Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent and member of the conservative Catholic cult Opus Dei who spied for the Russians for cash, is locked in his cell for 23 hours a day. Remember Terry McVeigh’s partner in the Oklahoma City bombing of the federal building? Terry Nichols is there along with the Unabomber and the super-violent leaders from the Aryan Brotherhood and the Latin Kings.

If we can hold these guys, why can’t we handle a few Cheney terrorists from Gitmo? If we transferred all Gitmo detainees to U.S. prisons our prison population would go up one-hundredth of one percent! That’s less than our entire Congress – and most of them probably belong in jail for accepting bribes. People who have visited and experienced both say that Florence is tougher than Gitmo.

In Super-Max the prisoners are isolated all of the time. They are allowed only one hour of exercise. When exercising they are shackled and escorted at all times in individual cages called “kennels.” When al Queda terrorist Zacarious Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hi-jacker) was sentenced to life there, the judge described it this way: “When this proceeding is over, everyone in this courtroom is free to go to any place they want…(to) see the sun…(to) hear birds. You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison…to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, you will die with a whimper, You will never again get a chance to speak.” Although completely alone, Robinson Selkirk Crusoe had the sun, birds, raucous seals to listen to and friendly, willing goats to chat with on occasion.

Prisons, The Defense Department, And Health Care Will Bankrupt Us If Not Reformed

Before 1970 our incarceration rate was about equal to the rest of the world, but then we went nuts locking up drug users, sellers and hangers-on. By the end of the Lurch administration one out of 100 adult Americans was in prison. One of my favorite Republicans, Democratic Senator James Webb of Virginia, has started a national campaign to change the correctional system. (Webb was a Republican until he had to switch parties to win his Virginia Senate election. He is a Marine who served as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administrator.)

Some of the history involved in his campaign:

1. During segregation in the middle of the 20th century, blacks were imprisoned at a rate four times that of whites. Now the rate is seven times higher. If this rate continues, one in three black men born today can expect to go to prison in their lifetime.

2. In the 17th century Puritans used to beat the crap out of their kids to keep them out of prison. This method gradually changed to incarceration for wrongdoers. Treatment was so horrendous in some of our prisons that inmates injured themselves to avoid pain. In the 1920s Alabama inmates who were leased to mining companies for work details would put dynamite caps in their boots and blow off their toes or feet to escape worse treatment in the mines. Capitalism had turned human beings into slaves for their plantation mining masters.

3. The prisoners on death rows are slowly rotting away. As an example, there are currently 641 prisoners sitting on death row in San Quentin. They will wait an average of 17.5 years to meet a maker. Nationally we have 33,633 prisoners serving lifetime sentences without possibility of parole.

4. The Justice Department estimates that at least 350,000 prisoners (16%) suffer from mental illness – and the rate in juvenile detention centers is much higher.

5. Sixty percent of state prisoners serving time for drug offenses have no history of violence. Although drug usage roughly equals percent of population, 70 percent of those serving time for drug felonies are black and Latino. Blacks only represent 14 percent of our population.

6. In many states a theft of $100 triggers a four-year sentence. It costs about $40,000 a year to keep someone locked up. (Does a $160,000 cost create a good cost-benefit ratio for a $100 theft? It’s crazy!)

7. Medical studies indicate that prisoners in solitary confinement are turned back to an animal state rather quickly. At least one-third of prisoners in prolonged isolation develop acute psychosis with hallucinations. People such as around-the-world sailors who have been isolated voluntarily for long periods say it is mind and soul destroying. Three prisoners at Angola in Louisana were kept in solitary for thirty years. One wrote: “There’s no describing the day to day assault on your body and your mind and the feelings of hopelessness and despair.”

Charles Dickens, who knew a lot about English prisons, visited a Pennsylvania prison in 1842 and observed those in solitary confinement: “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not on the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”

What good does it do to put Bernie Madoff in prison for 150 years? It’s a “feel better” sentence, but wouldn’t it be better if he served homeless people and programs for the balance of his years?