When this writer was packed off to prison there were no publishers waiting to give me a book deal. Prison is a much more lonely experience for those of us who are not so famous. At my trial, which was a patent railroad job, there were no cameras or sketch artists. There was one dozing local reporter there on the day of my sentencing. Most victims of our so-called Justice system are shuffled through without note or notice.
The Razorwire Hotel is hardly five-star. When I arrived there I was greeted, not by a gracious concierge, but by a gruff officer who instead of asking me to sign the guest book, confiscated all my property, rings, watch, wallet and ID. He took away my name and gave me a number. He then escorted me to the spa where I was hosed, deloused and my head was shorn. They are very efficient; all of this took perhaps ten minutes. It was not a Good Thing.
In the early 1830's Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study our penal system in order to help the French in developing theirs.
America invented the idea of penitentiaries. There had been jails and dungeons for centuries but the Quakers in Pennsylvania came up with the novel idea of the penitentiary which is the corrections model today. Punishments of torture, mutilation and the whip were successively abolished. The well meaning and religious people of Pennsylvania thought that, in the words of de Tocqueville,
"solitude, which causes the criminal to reflect, exercises a beneficial influence." So they devised the idea of the penitentiary. The place where penitents can do enforced prayer and reflect upon their crimes in solitude.
The problem was that solitary confinement kills people and does little to promote their "rehabilitation." Tocqueville goes on to say, "the problem was, to find the means by which the evil effect of total solitude could be avoided without giving up its advantages. It was believed that this end could be attained, by leaving the convicts in their cells during night, and by making them work during the day, in the common workshops, obliging them at the same time to observe absolute silence."
At some point someone figured out that convicts would be much more profitable if they were working instead of praying.
When I was locked up, I printed and inspected 32 million license plate stickers. The shop in which I worked made the State of Texas several million dollars a year. I also ran their computers and managed materials for the massive construction that they were doing to expand the capacity of the gulag. Sure, you hear all the bellyaching about how prisons are country clubs and it costs thirty-five thousand dollars per year to keep an inmate in his cage, but the work I did for them was worth $80,000 a year in the free world. They were making money off of me."This is the reason why labor is introduced into the prison. Far from being an aggravation of the punishment, it is a real benefit to the prisoner. But even if the criminal did not find in it a relief from his sufferings, it nevertheless would be necessary to force him to it. It is idleness which has led him to crime; with employment he will learn how to live honestly." --Tocqueville
I was young and stupid then. If they ever lock me up again I will never do a day's work for them. It will be interesting to see if Martha does her time in the laundry, sorting clothes and pondering the depths of her crime. Then she returns to her cell at night, hands chaffed by detergent, to scrawl out her five million dollar memoir in #2 pencil. Or maybe Martha, with her great energy and focus and her ultimate sense of what is a 'good thing,' will take up the issue of prison reform.
I can only imagine what Martha will think of the cuisine in prison. It consists mainly of starch, pork and mysterious vegetable fillers like Soylent Green. But who knows, by the time Martha does her five months the Federal Prison System may have stylish curtains over the bars and be serving souffles in the chow line.
The Poet's Eye wants to see cameras following Martha Stewart for the next five months. That's reality TV.
"Hold your head up, you silly girl
Look what you've done.
When you find yourself in the thick of it,
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl."
--Martha, My Dear by Lennon/McCartney
