Guilty Dogs!
Isn't that how most people feel about prisons and jails? I admit that I used to think that.
It
is the foolishness of humanity to think that life itself only exists in
only day and night; black and white; on or off. Sometimes the dumbest
people on the planet are the ones who feel they are the most righteous.
(hint hint)
Take prison issues. I want to share with you a post
I wrote concerning an issue about how someone felt that those in prison
have no one to blame but themselves.
This in a very general term
sounds righteous, but when you consider how many people have been in
prison, this becomes a stupid form of logic. If your idea of every
person who has been in prison is that "they shoulda known what they
were doing" is an example of a small mind.
I am not trying to
sit here and say that every one in prison is a saint in heart; that
would be a lie. There is, without a doubt, some EVIL people in prison
that care for no one but themselves, and would destroy a life for no
other reason but for the pleasure that they could. I am not talking
about those kind of people. I am not talking about terrorists that
could care less about taking the lives of numerous innocent lives, just
to prove a damn point for some "god".
But I am talking about
people who were once normal, just like us all, but fell into a series
of unfortunate events that resulted in the breaking of the law. It is
easy to sit 100 miles away from the nearest prison and talk righteous,
but to actually be IN those situations, or to be near or beside those
who live those nightmares is a completely different scenario
altogether.
Kinda like church. It's easy for the congregation
to sing hymns, dance and shout "glory" when things are at least average
in your life. Some people get so religious that they forget the
commandment, which , unless it has been rewritten, says to love your
neighbor. Some churches get so stuck up in the Bible that they forget
how to help their fellow man, but are quick to point out other's faults.
So here is a post I wrote, based off a similar comment:
(THE FOLLOWING IS A POST I WROTE AWHILE BACK)
There is probably a more psychological answer than what I am about to say, but let me try to counter that answer as best I can.
Caution
here, I am not trying to defend anyone, but only try to create an
avenue of thinking...which ironically is the answer here...thinking.
Rather...not thinking and moreso response.
The
rationale of action and consequence I believe is many times overrated,
because we as human beings like to assume that if I think that way, so
should the rest of the world. Not so, otherwise we'd all be exactly the
same.
I agree that yes, most people in prison are in fact guilty
of what they did, but to assume that there is some trigger that tells a
person, "hey, if I do this, then this might happen" I think is not as
true as we think.
If that was true with people in prison, then
this is also true for every single action for every human. The world
would be perfect if we all stop and thought about every negative
action...but we all know it isn't.
Sometimes we like to take the
shortcut to condemnation and assume that every person had a
choice...and that is true because we do. But when you don't factor in
the 10,000,000,000 other factors that made the situation happen.
Again,
I can't sit here and defend any inmate, and nor is it my intention,
because I don't know all the circumstances, but often times the easy
way out is to simply say, "you shoulda thought about that when you did
the crime".
To me, that does not solve the problem, because there is really no attempt to understand the person. Let me give you an example:
One
guy I got to know while in county jail was looking at life for a double
murder. I actually knew him a couple of years before because when I
graduated from college, I got a job as a GED instructor for a
techinical college, and he was one of my students. A nice guy, and as
we chatted while in jail, an great sports fan (my kinda guy!)
A
guy that knew him told me what happened in his situation. He told me
that the guy found his wife sleeping with another guy...and he kinda
snapped. He told me that he saw that guy that night and asked him where
he was going, and was told, "I'm about to do something I shouldn't do".
He ended up killing both his wife and her lover.
Now,
it is easy for anyone outside the box to say, "he shoulda thought about
that before he did it" and I guess there is logic behind that.
But
sometimes logic is replaced by rage, if the situation was great enough.
I am not justifying the guy who killed those two people, not at all.
But how many of YOU would remain calm, cool and collected if you
actually saw your loved one sleeping with another person? I am not
saying that I would go that far, but surely that person never thought
he would do that either.
You just never know what you are going
to do until it happens. No person on earth can assume that if you just
think things through, you will always make the right decision. That is
good theory, but not realistic.
How many people in prison did
what they did because they needed money to pay the bills, or support a
family. What if a man got laid off from work 2 weeks before Christmas,
and needed to support his family, and to do so, robbed a grocery store?
Again,
this isn't right, the crime is the crime, but we cannot sit back and
wash our hands by simply saying that "if he thought about the
consequences, he would not have done it". His mode of thinking changed
from pure righteousness to survival...something many people don't think
about when judging inmates.
I understand what you are saying,
and I agree with you, no doubt about that. But as a guy that has been
inside those walls, I got to hear lots of different stories from guys,
and many times it was the circumstances that they were caught up in.
Another
example, you might meet a guy in prison that was doing time for murder.
You might be quick to think, "well, if he thought about the
consequences, then maybe he would not have done that, and would not be
in prison" Sounds right, but what if this was the story;
A
burgler broke into his home, and when caught, tried to escape and
grabbed the 10 year old daughter and held her at gunpoint. The owner of
the home also had a gun, and in an attempt to save his daughter, shot
the burgler and killed him. Maybe not by intent, but in any case the
burgler is dead. Even though the incident should be seen as self
defense, it isn't (don't assume all courts are fair either). The man
gets 20 years in prison.
How can we charge that man with so much
condemnation without knowing what really happened? Surely that same man
could have said, "if I shoot this man, and he dies, then I will go to
prison". But he had to react, and the instincts were survival. All in
seconds, sometimes split seconds.
I grant you, there are lots of
guys in prison that were 100% knowledgeable of what they were doing,
and thus are indeed fully guilty of what they did. But I assure you,
many are not, some had unique circumstances. Still a crime is a crime,
and by our laws have to be punished. But don't put every inmate in the
box; some were very circumstantial.
One more example, one I
commented on months ago on another site. An inmate escapes from prison,
only to be caught, and given more time for escape. A couple of people
online was talking about how stupid this guy was for trying to escape.
They said "didn't the guy even THINK about the consequences. I wrote
back and talked about what if that was why he did it? I talked about a
guy I knew that broke out of prison and was caught, because he wanted
to be caught. He knew that if he finished his sentence, he would be
released back into a society with no home, no job, no money, no family
no anything. He knew his chances were better in prison, so to extend
his incarceration, he escaped to be caught.
What we are talking about here is survival, not always along the lines of righteousness.