I have never met a prisoner who did not regret what happened that led to their incarceration. If they could turn back the clock or wave a magic wand to reverse what happened, prisoners would gladly do so. But, prisoners cannot turn back the clock or wave the magic wand to make or to set things straight. What happened happened. It is in society's better interest to find out what happened and why, and to work towards correcting or preventing it in our posterity. Instead, society sends those individuals to prison, forgets about them, pretends that nothing happened, that everything is somehow okay or better, until the next child travels the road of making the news and ends up in prison.

I have never met a prisoner who would not help me when I genuinely needed their assistance. Many prisoners help to calm down upset prisoners having problems with staff or other inmates. I see prisoners experience sadness when their love one or the love one of another prisoner is ill or has passed away. In fact, prisoners networked with each other and a guy on the streets to notify my sister that my mother had a heart attack February 2003. Several members within the Kinross Jaycees signed a get well card for my mother after she had open-heart surgery in June 2003.

When I listen to prisoners telling me about their back ground, it saddens me that many prisoners may have had mothers who were drug addicts, if they even knew her. Their father could have been a pimp, hustler, drug dealer, etc., if they even knew him. Others have grown up in foster care homes, reform schools, or on the streets. Many prisoners have never had a chance since the day they were born. In short, a prisoner is also a sign of society's failure. Not just that particular individual. Until society and those in government recognize the red flags and starts to address root causes from a genuine, authentic, and altruistic perspective, crime is a product of the societies we create more so than just a single individual prisoner. For Christians, failure to do the right thing when they know what should or ought to be done is a sin [James 4:17]; an offense against religious or moral law.1 (see footnote page)

Prisons today are like corporeal punishment in schools or parents who beat their children rather than nurturing them. Corporeal punishment and beating children have been outlawed for alternative ways of molding reasonably prudent behavior. Prisons, then, may be a crime against nature and humanity.

Prisoners, like all people regardless of age, are still children and creatures of the universe. Society cannot put someone in prison, think everything will be okay, and then release them back into society as if nothing happened. That is similar to a parent sending a child to their room or beating them with no explanation about their misconduct and no attempt to reason with them to do better in the future.


In the United States, 2 (see footnote page) Michigan in particular, 3 (see footnote page) sentences for alleged wrongdoing is supposed to serve four basic objectives: (a) reformation of the offender; (b) protection of society; (c) disciplining of the wrongdoer; and (d) deterrence of others from committing 1ike offenses. In 1988 those priorities were reorganized before a three-judge panel of the Michigan court of appeals. 4 (see footnote page) Discipline and protection went to the forefront while reformation and deterrence trailed.

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