Is it just me?

Okay, I love reality kinds of TV. I love "Forensic Files", "Dirty Jobs", "Ghost Hunters", "Lock Down", "Critical Situation", etc. All those kinds of documentary style shows, that don't follow a story line, but we're also not competing for who can dance better than Marie Osmond.

I just watched "Lock Down" on National Geographic last night. Here is my simple opinion of incarceration. I don't think it's difficult, but after watching shows like this time and time again, it seems to be confusing. For me prison is not for rehabilitation. It is justice. It is punishment to serve justice to those who have been victims of those who are incarcerated.

Let me give you some background of an inmate I thought was a friend years ago. Her name is MP. Middle aged woman alleges she accidentally killed her husband when she was trying to commit suicide by shooting herself in the head. He tried to intervene, and she accidentally shot him in the scuffle. She served eight years for a manslaughter/second degree murder type of a charge, and she has been released. From what little I can find of the trial, it seems that is the basic scenario.

I really enjoyed visiting with her until we had a major disagreement in the end where she was forcing me to believe a lie. That is a huge, icky story. Conclusion to that is this--she contacted me a few years ago after being released. I simply asked her for an explanation of the lie, she couldn't do it. She sent me pages and pages and pages of emails telling me about everything else about being incarcerated. She just couldn't fess up to the fact that she tried to get me to believe a huge lie, and to this day still hasn't accepted responsibility for that. It wasn't just a little white lie either folks. It was huge, psychotic, slanderous, and also revealed to me she had a very different inside than she was presenting to me in letters and visits.

Here are my bullets on my experience visiting her in the California maximum prison system:

1) I brushed elbows with Susan Atkins, one of Charles Manson's "girls". That was eerie! Click here to read about her. Yes, it was in the visiting area of the California Institute for Women (CIW) that I saw her. It is pictured above. As I would walk around with MP, so would Susan and her husband. Yes, at a maximum security prison, we visited in a room very much like a cafeteria sitting across from tables from each other. There was also a little yard where we would basically walk laps or sit at picnic tables. All tables were coffee table height so we couldn't pass things underneath, but for maximum security, I was amazed I wasn't talking through glass using a phone.

By the way, Susan will never ever be paroled. Her victim was an heir to the Folger's (as in coffee) fortune. That Folgers estate has a knack for adding wings, fences, etc. to the facilities at CIW. There are other Manson women housed at CIW but I never saw them.

2) If you are visiting an inmate, you are treated like one by the guards. I am not complaining, it was my choice to visit there. But there is definitely a feeling of being shamed by guards for even being there to visit people.

3) Inmates act completely differently on the inside than they do with their buddies who visit them. I found out that MP did that to me to an extent. Although others certainly deceived worse than MP (ie lesbian relationships, illegal activities, etc), she deceived me nonetheless. MP would point out inmates to me who were visiting with their kids and husbands, yet carrying on a secret lesbian relationship while not visiting with the family.

4) On more than one occasion I felt myself getting mad at listening to the "victim mentality". How hard it was to be an inmate, how badly they treat you, etc.

As I watch "Lock Down", I hear the same complaining. Here is where I get miffed.

Okay, so an inmate doesn't have great holidays, they are estranged from their children, they have their things rifled through constantly, they have lousy meals, the health care is so so, etc. I agree! It's lousy! It's prison folks! It's all the same complaints.

I am sure that MP's victim's family wished they could spend Christmas with their lost family member. I am sure his children from a previous marriage feel their loss a little more than MP does of her kids. I am sure that an inmate's loss is nothing compared to what the victim's feel. Putting murder aside, how about the convenience store clerk in our area that was shot and is now on a ventilator, and immobile. He isn't dead, but the losses his family is feeling seems a lot more important than having a bad meal.

I have a sense of justice for the victim's. If a crime is committed, there needs to be recompense/punishment for it. I am not for rehabilitation, or at the very least rehabilitation is very secondary. I get really angry when I hear of identity thieves who have shattered people's life savings and robbed for hundreds of thousands of dollars--getting less than a year in jail. It happens where I live. I get really angry when a convicted pedophile/child molester on death row in my state, gets freed on a technicality. Click here for that travesty. The old cliche definitely holds here--where is the justice?

If I ever intentionally inflict this kind of harm, I know I will have a hardened, criminalized heart. I will be defensive and selfish. But once that veneer is gone, I will also sit quietly in my cell and accept my punishment. I can say that because I am on this side of the bars, I know.

But I hear of it all the time. Did you completely read Susan Atkin's bio at the link above? She isn't fighting and appealing and raising a ruckus. She has become a Christian, accepted that she committed a horrifying crime, and knows her life on this earth will be in a prison cell. She has accepted her punishment. Hypothetically, if I am ever in that position (I am always mindful of the saying 'but by the grace of God go I'), I hope I am that accepting. I think true justice is when the perpetrator says "I deserve this, I will accept my punishment." Then goes about proving that statement by never filing an appeal as well as not committing crimes while incarcerated. That is the proof of true justice to me.

What is the adverse of that? Check out MP's website. Click here. Now, I am not unsympathetic. I know she had a very difficult childhood, adulthood, drug addiction and incarceration. But she also killed a man, and for that she should be punished, and was.

Yet, she is still complaining. She was beaten in prison once, and for that I am incredibly sympathetic. But her husband died. Prison is not supposed to be fun. Plus, if all inmates, in a perfect world, calmed down and accepted their punishment, maybe crime wouldn't continue to happen in prison. She thinks it's unfair that happened to her? Let's chat with her husband's family and see what their opinion of "fair" is.

I guess what my point to all of this is, I am more sympathetic to her husband. At least MP's family can see her, have holidays with her, etc. His family has nothing except knowing he died horribly. What about the freed child molester/killer? How does that child's parents feel? I would be so angry, for so long, I can't imagine. Keep in mind, he confessed to doing it! At least MP served her time. There was no justice for the molester/killer's victims.

When a crime is committed, there needs to be justice. I tune out the complaining quite a bit.

Crime and punishment. Not crime and rehabilitation.