By Just A Guy
Editors note: Just A Guy spent more than two years as an inmate in a California state prison. He was recently released and is continuing to comment on news and trends in the prison-industrial complex.
Been out for about a week and half now and things are going really well.
I am very fortunate to have been able to get out of California and go home for the holidays, very fortunate that I have the means and support to do so — and to stay the fuck out of California.
I think of all the men and women that are going to get out to nothing and wonder what will become of them. I wonder how well spent our taxpaying dollars are being utilized to ensure the safety of the public. How can the situation that currently exists in California promote public safety? How can a system that allows parolees to live on the streets possibly protect you from someone who wants a warm bed and something to eat?
What is going on out there? Where is the money going? Already, before I got out, they were starting to shut down a lot of the programs that were supposed to enable a person to transition back into society more effectively, that made it easier for a person to get work, to stay off drugs/alcohol, to live.
Here’s what’s going on now:
The state, in its brilliance, wants to send a good portion of people to county jails to ease prison overcrowding. It’s completely unconscionable that the state try to pass the buck to the counties. If you think there are no programs for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation inmates in the prisons, ha! Wait till you see how fewer there are in the county jail.
Remember, all of this is done in the name of public safety, yet they fail to tell you the full story of what will happen in the future when these people get out with even less rehabilitative programs. All of this is to cover political asses. It’s political wrangling, and there are no plan plans that will save butts across party lines — because they will blame the feds if Willie Horton happens (it will).
What really needs to happen is for the public to wake up and realize the self-fulfilling prophecy of recidivism is a result of 70,000 families being dependent on CDCR for their livelihoods (not to mention vendors etc…). That California is a state that is dependent on its prisons for its sense of self. Yeah, really, most people are, disgustingly defined by their occupations, so California is defined by its.
Ya’ll have fun now getting unburied from your mess.