[Buddha-l] Beyond Hope

[Jim Peavler]

On May 10, 2006, at 1:42 PM, Gad Horowitz wrote:

> Debs spent months in prison without finding any crazy mothers.  But  
> Lusthaus
> prefers to follow Pryor.  Well, you can't stop progress

While most folks in American prisons are pretty normal chaps who  
desire more than anything to get out and try to live a normal life,  
there are also plenty of crazy motherf****ers (that is motherfuckers  
in the vernacular) in prisons who must be kept separate from others.  
One of my favorite poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca, spent some hard time in  
prisons in New Mexico and Arizona that he describes in his book "A  
Place to Stand". It you would like to know what life is like in a  
modern maximum security prison pick up this book:

http://www.jimmysantiagobaca.com/booksmerchandise.html or


I also understand Dan's comment about facing a person who would just  
as soon kill you as look at you. I have had the opportunity to do  
that several times, and it always takes me several days to get over  
it, once I have realized that it had happened to me. Usually, at the  
moment it is happening, a person is in a kind of shock and is busy  
figuring a way to not cause the person to kill him. A few hours  
later, I have kind of a mental collapse, as the realization makes  
itself conscious. Then I get the cold sweats and I can't get it off  
of my mind.

My first experience of this was when I had just graduated from high- 
school. I worked for the game and fish department, mostly building  
fences and digging holes for outdoor toilets at camp grounds. But I  
also rode a lot with the game warden. We were often called out to  
investigate poachers, and on two occasions the object of our  
interest, armed to the teeth, threatened to kill us both. The game  
warden was a soft-spoken fellow who managed to talk the men down, but  
I later dealt with the fact that someone had pointed a large gun at  
me and threatened to kill me with it.

I was mugged in the middle of the night in Detroit once, when I was  
at a convention of Mediaevalists. I had a similar reaction. Again, I  
used to teach college courses to inmates at Stateville prison near  
Joliet, IL. I had a large Irishman killer in the class who constantly  
interrupted the class until I finally told him to leave. I learned  
from the other students later that Cohen had talked about killing me  
because throwing him out of the class had cost him "good time" and he  
was being kept in his cell instead of getting to hang out in the  
television room or library to go to class. From then on a couple of  
the students met me at the gatehouse and escorted me to the class  
room and back to the gatehouse. This was a different experience from  
the others because after a couple of weeks Cohen was back out in the  
yard, or working in the gardens where there was nothing between him  
and me except my friends within the prison. At the request of the  
other students in the class, Cohen's threat to me was never revealed  
to the guards. That might have actually endangered the privilege of  
having college classes taught in the prison.

There are folks who have to be kept separated from society for  
society's good. I do NOT believe that they should be kept in what is  
essentially solitary confinement. In most modern prisons (many of  
which, by the way, are privately run for-profit institutions) it is  
common to remove "privileges" like having access to books or  
magazines, television, radio, music, sports, real exercise (they get  
to walk an hour or two a week in a small open area). I think this is  
cruel and unusual punishment and must be stopped. However, these  
"modern" prisons often don't even have facilities to treat prisoners  
humanely.

I believe the worst punishment that can be meted on a social animal  
is isolation and sensory deprivation. And isolation and sensory  
deprivation is the most common punishment of "criminals" today, even  
if there crime is no more serious than possessing, or being with a  
person who possesses, some illegal drug.