Thoughts about America’s prisons
We’re heading back to Oregon today. We’ll need one motel stop in Santa Nella, California, then make it to Gold Beach by tomorrow night. It’s been a great trip and I’ve been able to do lots of magazine work thanks to my laptop and the ability to keep in touch via internet with editors, writers, and staff for both the print issue and internet site. We’re in pretty good shape going into the two-week print issue deadline period.
We logged about 6500 miles on this three-week trip. The energy show was a big success, and the get-togethers with Lenie’s relatives and my daughter Annie’s family were very enjoyable. But I’m anxious to get home. I’m not a natural travelling kind of person, preferring instead to stay at home and enjoy my place in the Oregon mountains.
My magazine batteries have been thoroughly recharged from the energy show in Wisconsin. I have a better understanding from meeting many readers first-hand of how important BHM is to a lot of people, and I’ll do my best to keep the quality of content high. Plus, I have a lot of thoughts I need to explore in future writing. For example, I can’t get the plight of Bradford Metcalf and thousands of other prisoners out of my mind. Every time I drove by a prison on this trip, and there are many prisons in this “land of the free,” I thought of all the average Americans who are locked away on convictions that I believe are not justified. I travel freely for 6500 miles and they languish in prison.
BHM, in my mind, is basically a magazine about freedom, garnished with lots of self-reliance information. But it’s freedom we are all really after. Hard core criminals and violent people need to be locked away, but not Americans who have technically violated laws but who are really no threat to society. Sixty percent or more of our prisons are loaded with drug offenders. Our prisons, in my opinion, are the modern gulags. But how do you get reform for a prison system that is now the livelihood for hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats and guards who administer them. This giant bureaucracy makes its living by incarcerating their fellow countrymen. Unbelievable!
July 10th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Dear Mr Duffy,
I agree with most of what you have said about the US prison system in that there are a lot of people locked up who really do not need to be there. ( I think over half the laws on the books in our country are there just to keep the prison system going) However i would ask that people not look to harshly at the guards who work in them (as i am one) most of them work there because there just is no where else to go. A good number of them, my self included hate the job but are forced to stay because their is nothing else around. incidentally the name above this comment is not my real name simply for the fact that i could loose my job just for commenting on your article. we as a whole have our rights stepped on every time we come into work, every thing from searching our cars to even being strip searched at “random”. If we have a member of our family that has been imprisoned we could loose our job just for that . Just thought i would give you an idea of what life least for us is like. i enjoy your site keep up the good work