WE5

Chih-Chung Tsai

LTWR113: Rivera-Garza

WE:5

Work

            While in San Francisco, he (Ron Silliman) served on numerous community boards including the 1980 Census Oversight Committee, the Arson Task Force of the San Francisco Fire Department, and the State Department of Health's Task Force on Health Conditions in Locale Detention Facilities.

“It’s a cold world out there. Criminals need to be put away. They’re the side of society that no one wants to see, no one wants to pass on the street at midnight in an unlit part of the city. We put them where we don’t have to see them. And then we forget them. But the worst part is that we forget them. Because we forget that they too are humans, and we do a very un-human thing, treating a person like an object. In the end, we all become a little less human. It’s not a question of ‘who started it’, but a statement of ‘There’s a better way’.

            “Deterrence is a future oriented concept: Rob now, and you will pay later. Phil Zombardo, chairman of Stanford’s Psychiatric Department says Orientation towards the future is a middle class concept. Unemployed people with few job skills don’t even have weekends to look forward to.”

            Our prisons have everything to do with us. Even the perfect, white, suburban family with 2.5 kids, a minivan and a sedan, both sets of grandparents who visit only on holidays and bring heaps of gifts, even they are deeply involved in this discussion of where we put killers, rapists, and shoplifters. In a store, where we stock the shelves with factory made products to be sold, we never put out the defective products. We don’t want the customers to see those. So we set them aside, in some clearance aisle. Or we ship them off to be sold at a 99 cent store or some other lower cost retailer. In society, where the ideal lifestyle is the ultimate product, we don’t want to have to see crime in its ugly face. We don’t want to know that someone who did something wrong might be our neighbor, or even know that we live down the street from someone who once stole a car ten years ago. People are merely products, and we put the defective ones away in these prisons we built. How much do we spend just to make sure that we don’t have to see them again? When indeed it could be cheaper to rehabilitate, to fix, and ultimately take the price tag off of humans?

            “Have you ever visited a prison? I doubt it. I doubt you’ve ever talked to someone who’s been to prison before.”

            “No I haven’t.”

            “Well let me tell you. It’s nothing like what the movies say, it’s nothing like what the politicians say, and it’s nothing like you would ever imagine it to be. Fuck prisons. They make people crazy. You got the guards who hate the prisoners, and go to work each day just trying to make sure they don’t get stabbed, and to make sure the prisoners don’t take the easy way out and get killed themselves. They have to be in it for the long haul. Then the prisoners hate the guards, simply for being there. Even the nicer guards get shit sometimes, being “the man”, you know? The face of the institution. Something like that. I know on the outside you got people trying to make prisons a nicer place. But it’s a place filled with hate. People are angry here, they’ll just get out and stay angry. I don’t blame them though. They’re angry for what others do to them. They’re angry cuz most of them feel like they’ve been put here against their will, like someone put them here. Even though they admit that they pulled the trigger or pushed the knife, they get the sense that someone else was involved, everyone else was involved. So what’s the point?”

In 2002, United States prisons and jails

held more than 2 million inmates for the

first time. In Massachusetts, more than 20,000

residents are incarcerated and over 40,000 more

are on probation or parole.

The criminal justice population suffers a high

prevalence of health problems. Most inmates have

not had access to non-emergency medical care,

creating an immense financial burden to the state

in expensive medical interventions that could have

been avoided through improved detection,

prevention and treatment.

Incarcerated populations have significantly higher

rates of substance abuse and risk behaviors, such

as intravenous drug use and violence, than the

general population. This contributes to the high

rates of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS,

hepatitis C, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted

diseases found in the incarcerated population.

Additionally, drug addiction, lack of access to

health care, poverty, substandard nutrition, poor

housing conditions, and homelessness often

contribute to increased risk for chronic conditions

such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, skin

conditions, poor oral health, gastrointestinal

disease, diabetes and asthma.

The ramifications of these health problems are

experienced not only by people moving through the

criminal justice system, but also by the

communities to which they return.

• If infectious diseases are not prevented,

detected and treated adequately, the

public’s health is being put in jeopardy.

• If the chronic illnesses and behavioral risk

factors of the incarcerated population are

not addressed comprehensively, vast

financial resources will continue to be spent

on preventable expensive medical

interventions.

• If substance abuse and mental health

treatment are not adequate and integrated,

opportunities will be missed to use costeffective

means to protect the public’s

safety