Justice perverted

March 20, year 2

Dear Dee,
Your letter, as always, was welcome. It's Sunday morning and I just finished Linda Hansen's sermon. It was particularly noisy in here and I ended up in my bunk with my pillow wrapped around my head so I could cut the noise level sufficiently to give my full concentration to the material.

It was a real winner and impacted me on several levels. First, there was the point she made about Plato's "Parable of the Cave," about prisoners in a cave who remain unaware of the world beyond that cave. That is a very real problem here. We see the news on television and read newspapers and magazines. But for  many, this is their reality and what goes on beyond these walls is someone else's.

Then there was the story of Hecuba and the admonition that, "we can always refuse to become the beast, the non-human others try to make of us." Then she illustrated with Wm. Wenders' film, "Wings of Desire," the value of human intimacy. That has always been a problem for me. My unruly childhood taught me that the only person I could depend on was myself. That was a positive lesson in terms of making me self-sufficient, but it has been a huge negative in my life where relationships are concerned. Thank you for the gift of accepting my faults and shortcomings to see me for who I am at my core, which is allowing me to learn to share intimate thoughts.

I have a horror story for you that illustrates the craziness around prosecution of perceived sexual offenses. About three weeks ago, an inmate here was let out because his guilty verdict was overturned. He was a professional photographer and was hired by a nudist colony to take photos of some weekend festival they were having. A middle-aged couple asked him to take their picture. As he composed the shot, a 17-year-old girl was crossing behind them and ended up in the shot. When the pictures were posted for all to see, the girl's mother saw it and freaked that he didn't have permission to take the girl's photo and called the cops. The photographer was arrested, tried, and convicted for production of child pornography. He was sentenced to prison for 15 years! Thankfully, his appeal was heard by a judge who wasn't as crazy as everyone else in this case and he overturned the verdict. But not before the photographer had served 2 1/2 years of his sentence.

I just finished reading a book that I strongly recommend you get ahold of. It's titled "Justice Perverted" by Charles Patrick Ewing. He is a psychologist who has dealt extensively with sex offenders of all stripes. He writes about the war on SOs that the states and federal government have declared. He says that sex offending is in decline, but prosecution of it has been stepped way up, giving the impression that the problem is growing. Most people believe that SOs are doomed to reoffend (even though only a very small percentage of them do) and that they do not respond to any kind of treatment (also false). The disparity of sentencing between the state and federal levels is enormous for the same offenses. If I had been tried by the state, I would probably be out by now.

He also says the registry does nothing to protect anyone, nor does restricting where SOs can live. The great majority of the molestations of children take place within the family. And when they don't, the molester usually travels outside the area in which he lives. This country is passing a lot of Draconian laws in which people's lives are being ruined. And once those laws are on the books, no politician is going to vote to overturn them. I learned from this book that, if I go back to California, I will have to wear a GPS ankle bracelet for the rest of my life even though I'm not a predator and have never harmed a child. This is part of a law passed in 2008 that also limits where I can live to the point where I can't live in any densely populated area.

All in all, it sounds like my problems will not be over when I am released. All I can do is dig in and try to live the best, most positively focused life that I can and whatever happens, happens. I do believe in karma. In doing what I was doing, I put forth a powerful amount of negativity that resulted in a hellishly negative turn in my life. I have to believe that positive thoughts and actions can have a similarly dramatic effect.

Time to bring this to a close. Thanks, as always, for hanging in there with me and being an island of solace in the midst of these choppy waters.

Love, Kent.

The first principle--really?

March 13, year 2

I just wrote you a couple of days ago, so consider this a P.S. I just read the sermon you sent, and it was right in line with something that has been bothering me. It happens that I have been struggling with the first principle for a while now. I reached what I would consider my crisis of faith a couple of months ago.

I was on my way back from the chow hall at night when I spotted one of the feral cats we have here eating something that someone had given him. He was right next tot he pathway. Suddenly, someone in my unit who was walking ahead of me took a running start and kicked the little cat right in the head. It scrambled erratically away and the guy and his friend laughed about it all the way back to the unit. The friend said, "That was a concussion at least!"

I was so upset and angry I could barely see. Part of me, a very uncharitable part, wanted to kick the guy in the head just to show him how it felt. In trying to deal with this, I thought about the first principle and how this was a fellow human being. But it didn't work. I had hate in my heart for this sorry sack of shit. I still shudder every time I see him.

Unlike Pat and Terry in the sermon, I have not been all that successful in trying to climb into the minds of others I live with here and see the world from their point of view. When I try, all I see is darkness, evil and ignorance.

I guess when I say the sermon sang to me, I mean that it addressed an issue I am grappling with, but it didn't really, in the end, provide me with any answers. The people in here are worlds beyond the PTA members who wanted to ban books or Terry's truculent co-workers. They come from a place where they think it's all right to take from others. They believe that hate is power and use that power to intimidate and instill fear. They bolster their own self-esteem by pretending to be superior to others. It's very difficult to try to walk a mile in their shoes.

Love, Kent