Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings — to convert the population into specimens in a a zoo — obrdient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

— Angela Davis

Here’s a brief description from my series The Gulag describing, first hand, how our tax dollars are being spent in the New York State prison system — keeping in mind that those who have been relegated to doing time WILL be released into our community. After doing time, innocent or guilty and being ignored and discarded — WE pay the price for a Criminal Justice system that is abusive and ineffective. I spent almost 5 years interviewing them in prison.

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I met a 6′ tall black man with a ready smile and a Jamaican accent who was interested in helping other inmates.

“Hey,” he said, “how are you man?” he said, shaking my hand.

His hat, under which his hair was piled, had multi-colored bands.

“Remember me?” he said. “From IPA? My name’s Esam. “Dey call me Dreaddy.” 

“Sure,” I said, “I remember. Teaching now?”

“Yeah, pre-GED.”

“Uh-huh. How is it?”

“Well, dey don’ have class very often,” he said, “it’s like having a job you don’t go to.”

“What do you mean?” remembering my uncle talking about no-show jobs on the Brooklyn docks.

“The prison cancels the class most of the time so I don’t have to show up.”

“Why?”

“I dunno’,” he said. “I think mostly because they don’t want to be bothered.”

“So, what is pre-GED? What do you teach?”

“I try to teach some of these guys basic math, how to spell, how to read,” he said.

“How to read?”

“Oh, yeah, most’a these guys cain’ read.”

“How many would you say are unable to read in the prison?”

He thought for a minute. “Easily 50% of these guys can’t even read a few paragraphs in, let’s say, half an hour. And, then, they’d be guessing about what it said.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m serious. Half’a the guys in this prison can’t fill out an application because dey don’ know what it says. A guy came to me the other day. He had his social security number written where it asked for his name.”

“So, how do they function? How do they agree to a plea or sentence?”

“What d’you mean? Dey from the streets. Dey sell drugs, steal, do whatever dey need ta do ta survive. Reading a book ain’t part a that. Dunno ‘bout da legal stuff.”

“Can any of these guys spell?”

“A little. Words like bid, for their time here, yeah. When it gets to words that my five year old daughter can spell, they’re in trouble. Words like waist turns into waste. It’s pretty scary. Because these guys are going to be on the street again. With NO future. And, soon.”

“You like teaching?”

“I’d like to teach if they’d let me. Some of the guys actually want to learn but they cain’.

I was tempted to ask about how he saw the future of education in prisons progressing. How reduced time could be REALLY, GENUINELY tied to becoming literate. 

But, then I realized that they weren’t going to be discussing Aristotle’s tabula rasa and the philosophy of John Locke anytime soon.

It also went a long way towards explaining why so few people showed up in the Law Library to try to accelerate their release since they neither received nor could understand adequate legal help. Not only didn’t they know how to use a computer, they couldn’t read anything on it or in the books that accompanied it. For many the Law Library was a useless tool.

When I first arrived in the prison I’d discussed some ideas about mentoring inmates — teaching them how to read, how to spell, how to write some basic essays with well-formulated paragraphs. He got a few smiles.

I was in Civil Service land now.  I was the one getting an education. In the prison system, Mental Health and Education were only concepts for expanding budget demands, not for any actual implementation. Just like Criminal Justice.