Little Frankensteins

Since the passage of proposition 21 in 2000, California’s youth offender population has been shrinking. Prop 21 was a tough on crime law passed which enabled juveniles as young as 14 years old to be tried and convicted as adults, and sent to adult prison. Since its passage, most violent juvenile crimes have been prosecuted under prop 21, and many youth now fill California’s adult prisons---many with absurdly long sentences, including life sentences.

The gutting of the California youth prison system has been spun as a success by the Division of Juvenile Justice. But the real story is that prop 21 has effectively reduced the role of the juvenile system to that of serving only those juveniles convicted of lesser crimes—like property crimes. The whole top-tier of juvenile criminals have now, for all intents and purposes, become adult offenders.

This has created a curious new juvenile prison environment---ironically, one characterized by increased violence, chaotic living environments, and the birth of a brand new youthful offender prison mentality.

My time in the system has coincided with this transition from the old youthful offender mentality to the new, leaner and meaner version. When I entered the system in 2003, the average age for youthful offenders in the older institutions (housing offenders between the ages of 18-24) was 21 or 22 years old. This majority set the tone for the older institutions, which was for the most part ordered and relatively mature. These older guys exerted a controlling influence over the younger guys, and kept them from running amok---which was the status quo in the younger institutions (housing offenders under the age of 18).

But as these older offenders went home, and as the new generation of younger offenders with less time moved into the majority, the environment became increasingly chaotic. Before, while the population still affiliated along race lines and gang membership was standard, there existed a chain of command that enabled conflict to follow ordered channels and manifest itself in predictable patterns (staff would work with the older offenders to address conflict, many times preventing prison riots). In this environment, non-affiliated people like myself could do their time with much less worry—could go to college and school without fearing random outbursts of violence, and count on a consistently stable living environment.

But as these older guys became a minority in the system, they could no longer exert the kind of control necessary to restrain the younger, more violence-prone generation. This younger generation began to exert its majority influence, and lacking the maturity and organization of the older more seasoned offenders, chaos began to become the defining characteristic of youth prisons. Racial tension, once checked by older, more rational offenders, began to spill out in chaotic spurts. Riots occurred at random, staff assaults increased, and the youth prisons became extremely violent---much worse because of their chaotic nature.

Now the transition from the old to the new is pretty much complete. And living in this brave new world is everyday becoming more and more impossible. Utterly random acts of racial violence are the norm, and one cannot exit their room without feeling in some degree of peril. It’s nothing like the streets of Baghdad, where such random acts of violence are usually fatal; but the stress that such constant fear produces has taken its toll on many of us---and the worst affected has been the non-affiliated offenders (like myself), who absolutely deplore the racial divisions, the violence, the gangs, etc. We’ve become easy prey in this new environment where it no longer matters whether you simply want to get your education, complete your Parole Board orders and get on with your life. Now, just the color of your skin can mark you as a target.

It has truly become the jungle.

The prison authorities have tried to reign in the chaos by segregating the units, school, and prison work positions by race, and staggering institutional movement so that offenders have only minimal contact with one another if they are of a different race. It has become commonplace to hear the staff on the other end of the phone ask when I move out from my living unit to work “What race is your ward?”

This segregation has only exacerbated things. Now tension builds up to a critical mass in multiple areas all at once---and when it erupts the prison descends into a kind of chaos I never thought was possible.

State of Emergency...

One issue that can be raised by the Governor's declaration of a state of emergency in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation this month (see the L.A. Times article on 10/5/06) is the problem facing the Department's parole services.

Why is the system fixating on out-of-state transfers as an answer to overcrowding, when the overwhelming number of parole violations that send criminal offenders back to prison are of a technical nature? If the majority of criminal offenders are not breaking the law to be returned to prison, then why not restructure parole to deal with technical parole violators with various community corrections sanctions regimes, including community service, electronic monitoring, drug treatment, restitution and fines, and intensive supervision?

The short answer is that the old solution—early release based upon a fixed formula, e.g. 85%, 50%, etc.---has failed. Incorporating parole into the structure of criminal sentencing across the board, without any consideration of parole readiness, spells massive parole failure. Parole, as a transitional supervision and support mechanism, only works on a discretionary basis. But as can be observed in the Juvenile System, it all depends on who is given these discretionary powers. The Youth Offender Parole Board (YOPB), comprised of political appointees, have no experience in correctional treatment, and cannot properly evaluate parole readiness because they are outsiders to the juvenile rehabilitative process. In this situation, YOPB parole discretion has become a tool to be held over the heads of offenders in order to coerce them into complying with institutional treatment. But since YOPB cannot evaluate treatment progress, and DJJ treatment is a mixture of incompetence and failure, it is clear that discretionary parole has its shortcomings as well, especially when tied to a flawed institutional structure.

Sad but true, only a restructuring of the parole system around a discretionary model that focuses on parole revocation prevention through services designed to support returning offenders will be able to permanently reduce the prison population in the only really viable way possible—through actually reintegrating offenders back into society.

In the meantime, of the approximately 170,000 inmates in the adult system at the present, many are parole violators that have not committed new crimes. In the juvenile system, nearly half of all commitments in 2005 were for parole violations. Re-releasing these people to the community would not be rewarding criminal offenders by early release. It would simply be releasing those offenders who have already served their sentence handed down for their commitment offense, but who are now taking up badly needed space because they failed to report to parole, turned in a positive drug test, failed to go to their treatment group, or could not find a place of residence. This hardly raises to the level of releasing early dangerous criminals who have yet to serve their time for crimes against society.

The devils advocate objects: hey, why can't these guys accomplish simple parole conditions? This exhibits a trend of irresponsibility that seems to be the underlying reason why criminal offenders can't be trusted and ought to be returned to prison.

I would reply: Parole conditions as they presently exist are ineffective and unnecessary. Parole conditions should be designed to prevent the recommission of crime, but also ought to be realistic about the limitations of criminal offenders, and establish conditions that seek to benefit and support parolees, rather than simply monitor and control them. If parole was responsive to the needs of returning offenders, its resources could be directed at ways to keep offenders out of jail, rather than on methods designed to send offenders back to jail for the slightest misstep. If parole services do not support offenders and make it their mission to keep them out of jail, then why have parole services at all? Why are we wasting our time and money?

Social Exclusion

The significance of contemporary spaces of social exclusion to the face of modern de-territorialized Muslims in their many contemporary cultural expressions and locales, as outlined in Olivier Roy's book Globalized Islam, got me thinking recently. My thoughts were further focused by Mike Davis' recent book Planet Slums, wherein he outlines with his signature starkness how spaces of social exclusion—from Baghdad to Los Angeles—have become one of the most formative elelments in the political, social and cultural landscape of the contemporary world.

Spaces of social exclusion are not new phenomena. The powerless, the have-nots, the marginalized, the Third World, the urban underclass, and the modern inmate all provide testimony to the multiple forms of social exclusion zones. Their histories, in fact, run deep and wide.

Michel Foucault's seminal work Discipline and Punish on the origins of the modern prison and its representation of the carceral nature of modern social structures, is an excellent example of an historical-philosophical excavation of modern forms of social exclusion, and in particular, of the way in which power/knowledge operates in the complex process of exclusion built into the institutions of the modern world.

I, of course, live in one of the most recognizable of these social exclusion sites—the modern prison.

As a lover of most things moderate, I have had a very hard time coming to terms with this very radical, though disturbingly accurate, representation of the social ecology of the modern world. I find it problematic to approach the subject along the lines of a Foucault or a Davis—Apocalypticism and nihilistic pessimism have never really appealed to my sunny humanistic tendencies. But I have come to learn to listen to jeremiads when their prophesies amount to real depictions of social phenomena.

The incomprehensible nature of the criminal is one of those perennial mysteries that seem to have plagued humanity from time immemorial. And yet, I have a hard time believing that any of the great sociologists and criminologists of the past and present have ever really taken a hard look at durance vile, the last of the great colonies, the subaltern within, the final resting place of the convicted.

Sure, they've identified its ecological profile and primary fauna—the poor urban-underclass minority. But they don't seem to really understand what they are looking at.

This profile should be a deeply disturbing fact. Crime has become a function of poverty and ethnicity (primarily Latino and African-American). The deep contradiction between the idea of criminality as antisocial conduct, and the reality of the criminal as a poor ethnic minority, ought to outrage us. Poor ethnic minorities are not congenitally predisposed to criminality—even the thought is abhorrent. But if crime is primarily a function of socioeconomic status, then is not the fact that the U.S. has the largest criminal class in the world an indictment of the most advanced, prosperous society on earth?

And how can a nation so concerned with the health of its economy, especially with respect to job-growth, continue to bear such an extremely wasteful, ineffective, economically unprofitable system for administering justice and controlling antisocial behavior?

With the nation focused domestically on the health of the economy vis-a-vis Mexican and Latin American immigration—the link between immigration, the socio-economic profile of the California inmate, and the health of the California economy is not being understood. The hidden costs of bad immigration policy is wrapped up in the cost of incarcerating poor ethnic minorities from overwhelmingly immigrant communities, especially in California. Disenfranchising immigrants from American society creates the conditions for urban-underclass criminality...not in first generation immigrants to be sure, but in their children.

Closing the border, building a wall and criminalizing and evicting illegal immigrants is definitely the wrong answer to this problem. Seeing the link between bad immigration policy and criminality focuses attention on the real issue, and points to a potentially viable solution—increased enfranchisement and economic assimilation can mean socio-economic opportunity for immigrant children—which is the surest way to prevent poverty related crime, and provide real incentives to buy into society and play by the rules.

The same solution can be applied to the oldest unassimilated immigrant group in America—the African American community. Indeed, the history of African American's in America since reconstruction is a case study in the wrong way to deal with immigrants (in this case, forcibly appropriated immigrants), and the consequences of a deeply flawed socio-economic assimilation strategy of exclusion and control.

The key to controlling criminality in America is a good immigration policy focused on socio-economic integration. A well adjusted immigrant family, whether first generation or fifth, addresses urban-underclass crime at its root, where socio-economic disenfranchisement breeds an antisocial response.

The Will to Reform

Reading the proposed reform plans recently published by the CDCR-Division of Juvenile Justice (look up the Safety and Welfare Plan, filed on December 1, 2005, which in the DJJ’s own view, is one of the most comprehensive of the Farrell Vs. Hickman inspired remedial plans, and outlines the department’s commitment to fundamental change), is a lot like reading a State Department plan on democracy promotion and the development of free trade in the developing world. The challenges and proposed solutions are nearly identical, since at question is the same basic problem: Institutional failure. Administrative inefficiency and incompetence, rampant corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, etc., are enumerated as the core problems to be tackled by a ‘fundamental’ re-structuring of the administrative and bureaucratic process, mainly through enhanced oversight and funding.


Prisons are indeed much like developing nations in many of their core characteristics, not least in the absence of respect for the rule of law. The irony of this statement, I hope, will be grasped immediately.


Recently I finished reading a book on the subject of rule of law promotion in the developing world, Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge, ed. Thomas Carothers. I was struck by the similarities between institutional development and reform in the developing world, and institutional development and reform in the California youth prison system (DJJ).


In Thomas Carothers’ view (founder and president of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment), historically, the biggest problems facing rule of law promotion have been “political and human. Rule of law reform [succeeds] only if it gets at the fundamental problem of leaders who refuse to be ruled by the law. Respect for the law will not easily take root in systems rife with corruption and cynicism. Since entrenched elites cede their traditional impunity and vested interests only under great pressure…Western nations and private donors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into rule of law reform, but outside aid is no substitute for the will to reform, which must come from within” (pg. 4).


This is an extremely astute summation of the core problem that confronts rule of law reform both in the developing world and in the prison system.


I am sure many of you saw the movie Shawshank Redemption. In my case, I was able to see it both before and during my incarceration. The second time around, sitting there in a prison classroom, I was amazed at how differently the film impressed me. Whereas I had focused on “Andy” before my incarceration, when I saw it a year ago, I became fixated on the prison warden. On a slightly different reading, the warden could be the main character of the story. Nearly every turning point in the main portion of the film hinges on the warden’s activities. His corruption and cynicism become the focal point of Andy’s covert subversion of the criminality of the prison-a criminality most apparent in the lawlessness of the prison authorities. Indeed, the irony the story weaves, of criminals guarding criminals, narrates the sad reality that, before I came to prison, I could hardly have believed was true.


Although the day seems to have passed when a prison warden can orchestrate and temporarily succeed in exploiting his power for personal enrichment, that same kind of flouting of the rule of law that is supposed to ground correctional institutions is very much alive today.


Perhaps it is the extreme disparity in the nature of the power-relationship between prison authorities and inmates that are at the root of this seemingly irrepressible urge to overstep both the letter and the spirit of the law.


Whatever the deeper reasons, for a very long time this rule-above-the-law has operated as the status quo in the California juvenile justice system.


But, since the Ferrell vs. Hickman settlement, a fundamental shift has occurred. The administrative levels of the DJJ have mustered the will to reform. Their change of heart has been truly shocking. They have been truly humbled (nothing like a pro-reform governor and a whole lot of bad press), and now they are listening.


So, what’s the problem?


In Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad, Carothers makes the point that frequently institutional reforms are stymied, not because of a lack of will from the leadership, but because of an entrenched culture of corruption and cynicism at the lowest levels (most clearly observed in many para-military police forces of the developing world). The California juvenile justice system now reflects this state of institutional dysfunction. For far too long, corruption and cynicism have marked every facet of the system; and even a change of heart from above has not produced the kind of trickle down effect relied upon in the reform implementations.


As far as I can tell, the face of this institutional corruption and cynicism is the CCPOA.


As I write, adequate structural and institutional reforms are being implemented by motivated administrations. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the lower levels of the system (mostly prison guards and counselors), are not possessed of the same purpose and will.


There can be little doubt that the root of this resistance are the vested interests and lassitude that for many, many years has leached into the lower levels of the system through the inordinate influence and proxy-management of the DJJ (the former CYA) by the California Peace Officers Association.


CCPOA is not only independent of public accountability, but it represents the exclusive interests of prison guards and counselors in the DJJ (as well as the much larger adult system).


How would you feel if your political representatives were unabashedly more beholden to their campaign contributors than to their districts? If your doctor published on his office door the fact that he was more concerned with your insurance coverage of the medication you take, than its safety and effectiveness to heal? Or, if the judge appointed to your case proudly sported a municipal police badge on the bench?


What kind of political, medical, or legal system would allow for such a deliberate undermining of their most fundamental guiding principles, “service to the people”, “do no harm”, and “equality before the law”, respectively. These are, if you will, the respective “spirits” of the laws of politics, medicine, and the legal system.


It is ironic that each of these principles has been proclaimed in years past and in the present reforms, as guiding lights for the juvenile justice system. It is ironic because it brings to light the extreme fragility of the institutions of the modern world. They stand or fall based on the content of their respective cultures.


It’s the people, people.

The forgotten 5 percent

“What we have here is a failure to communicate...” I have never appreciated more the irony of that statement until now, in the midst of my own prison term.

Throughout my incarceration, I have frequently said, “If only the administration knew what kind of allies they could have if they stopped focusing on controlling the 5 percent of inmates that are beyond hope, and would reach out to the 5 percent that have most of their own interests in common.”

It is probably not widely understood that in most prisons, the administration allows a relatively small percentage of the inmate population (usually the most violence prone) to dictate the entire structuring of prison life and activities. Indeed, evidence suggests that, when it comes to violence, a relatively small proportion of inmates are responsible for the majority of violent incidents in any given institution. Furthermore, it is probably even less widely known that there is a relatively small proportion of inmates that have absolutely removed themselves from violence completely, and are in virtually full sympathy with prison authorities with respect to the safety and security of the prison, and the promotion of a therapeutic environment (however idealistic these might seem given current prison conditions).

Prison populations are not homogeneous. In between the majority of prison inmates, which are more or less an admixture of the extremes, there exists a small group of inmates that absolutely embody and fuel the resistance culture that currently blights the prison system; but there is also an equally small group that completely rejects the prison culture and struggles to maintain the kind of pro-social norms and values that everybody wishes that the prisons could facilitate.

These diametrically opposite extremes represent, to my mind, the two potential focus points for prison administrators, and represent two possible approaches, equally opposite, to administrating the prison environment.

No one, in the current discussion, is giving appropriate attention to the other 5 percent.

True, at least in the juvenile system, there is a renewed focus on rehabilitative/incentive programming. But, although rehabilitative and incentive based programming does target inmates that maintain a positive lifestyle, the rest of the institution frequently remains for the most part entrenched in a disciplinary mode divorced from the incentive programs and developed to focus on the other violent minority. When this happens, incentive programming once again becomes marginal and is never fully integrated into the general program structure of the prison. This happens most frequently in institutions with high levels of violence (like the institution where I live). Prison authorities cannot ignore or make of marginal concern institutional violence, while incentive programming can easily be sacrificed or made marginal if institutional violence is so frequent that it consumes a large amount of institutional time and energy.

The challenge is to adequately address the 'safety and security' of institutions without defining the social structure of institutional life around the exigency of violence control. This is not the easiest path to be sure. The disciplinary and control model is much easier and probably more efficient. But we must remember that criminal justice is not a business, and prisons are not warehouses that operate on the maximal efficiency model for controlling warehoused goods. Prisons house human beings, and their existence, especially in the juvenile system, is premised upon providing a social structuring conducive to the development of pro-social behavior.

It is way too easy to fall into the dead end of making marginalized, extra-structural incentive programming the entire focus of the rehabilitative aspect of the prison environment. It takes creative commitment to envision a prison environment that structurally embodies and promotes pro-social behavior, and provides incentives for the demonstration of such behavior.

It also takes intimate, first hand knowledge of the current dynamics of prison life and culture. This is where the forgotten 5 percent come in. This group has the potential to be an invaluable resource to prison authorities.

Contrary to popular knowledge, not all inmates are uneducated, and not all the educated inmates are devious and manipulative. Many of them, in fact, are quietly living positive, pro-social lives in prison, but are forced to fly below the radar because of the overall disciplinary structure of the institution, which does not acknowledge their lifestyle as structurally and culturally valuable, and actually serves to entrench and institutionalize prison resistance culture.

And they know what is going on. The administrative-bureaucratic nomenclature may escape some of them—but in reality they have a quite sophisticated, objective understanding of their environment. If given the opportunity, they could bring an invaluable perspective and insight into the discussion.

A failure to utilize these inmates would be a serious mistake—a communication failure that could very well hamstring any genuine reform efforts.

Walls

When people build walls, at some point other people are going to throw things at them.

If you think about it, walls are one of the most defining characteristics of human civilization. Not only are they universal, but they also universally define human social relationships. As such, they have also indirectly influenced human identity.

The basic function of a wall is to separate. The decision to separate one thing from another, or to divide up this or that space, has much more social significance than one might immediately suspect. Throughout history, these decisions have defined family relations, have divided public from private space, have symbolically defined sacred space, have represented racial and ethnic distinctions, have defined nation-states, have designated battle lines, have represented ideological divides, and have differentiated the criminal from the citizen.

Many times the separation created by wall building produces or represents mutual resistance, causing (or indicating) changes to the cultures on either side of the walls. Some of these changes are imperceptible. But most are recognized within the cultures themselves. Frequently, the changes are known and embraced.

Which makes it all the more frustrating to recall the history of wall building—which is a history of conflict. More frustrating still is the fact that most of these conflicts have been irrational and in a profound sense anti-human. In retrospect, we wonder how in the world the German people could have participated in the Holocaust (preceded by the removal and confinement of European Jews); how the United States could have interned Japanese Americans during the Second World War; or how the Berlin wall could have ever been deemed a necessity by the Soviet Union.

Prisons, obviously, are all about walls. It is certainly true that we have come a long way from the days when the criminal would be pilloried or executed in the public square. As grateful as we are for the improvement, there are many of us who feel, nevertheless, that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. In the humanizing process that rendered the pillory and the hangman's noose obscene and obsolete, replaced by the confinement of the prison, the public context of criminal justice has been abandoned by the justice process. Public influence upon the mind and heart of the criminal has been removed. The face-to-face phenomenon that places the criminal in the midst of society, confronting him or her with the legitimate social condemnation and the necessary restorative conditions laid out by the public body, has ceased to exist.

The absolute separation of the criminal from the public space seems to be at the root of the anti-social nature of prison culture. Prison culture is a classic resistance culture, created within the walls of facilities breeding social ecologies that have developed in response to being alienated from the wider society and its regulative norms.

One must remember, laws, especially criminal laws, require widespread acceptance and adherence by a general culture that contains such laws as norms of social behavior. Without people who share a common culture, laws are not followed, much less respected.

A common refrain in prison is, “It may be like that on the streets, but this is prison.” That “but” contains the key insight to which I want to draw attention. The absolute removal of criminal justice from the public space has enabled an anti-social resistance culture to develop in the nation's prisons—a culture, the norms of which have developed in the course of resisting and opposing the laws of wider society.

Inmates instinctively understand this as they move back and forth between cultures, experiencing life on both sides of the walls. But I think we all would do well to understand this in connection with the history of the failure of all prison rehabilitation models—the object of which has always been the reconciliation of the criminal with society through reform of attitude and behavior—originally introduced in the prisons as a way of reconciling the criminal with society.

These models have literally been in a constant state of “reform” since the origins of the prison system approximately 200 years ago. (Many of us have been hearing about prison reform for as long as we can remember!)

Reforms repeatedly fail not because they are intrinsically bad (some are, but some aren't). Rather, they fail because they have been hamstrung by the very nature of the walls of the supporting system. The state of constant reform clearly testifies to this fact.

The penal model of absolute separation—physical, social, and interpersonal—seems to be responsible for the failure of prison reform programs, and the development of the resultant, and far more serious, anti-social nature of prison culture.

Obviously the problem is more complex than this. Criminals come to prison because they have already exhibited anti-social behaviors. But although a different set of circumstances and issues are needed to explain this original anti-sociality, the force of the fact that the absolute removal of the criminal from society is a primary factor in the development of anti-social prison culture, should not be minimized.

Absolute separation and removal is appealing because it is easy and convenient. Citizens enlist paid professionals to shoulder the hard work of criminal justice. But no professional force can ever replace the force of the public space. Its force is the force of the whole. And the whole must maintain a regulative role over the part, especially the errant part, so as to ensure that that part does not become of itself a whole in and of itself, with a resistant relationship to the whole. So that it does not begin throwing things at the walls.

Because the fact remains—most criminals come back. They re-enter society every day by the hundreds; but now as foreigners rather than errant parts. Prison, in many cases, has taught them social norms and values in direct opposition to those established in the wider society. They have experienced a kind of alienation and separation from society that they could never have experienced previously, even while engaged in their criminal behaviors. And this experience has in many cases further removed from the criminal the social norms and values needed for successful social reintegration. And like the foreigner who reverts to his or her native language and custom when confronted with adversity or resistance, at the first sight of trouble the criminal reverts to what he or she has come to know best, which is the attitude and behaviors native to the prison.

Our Telos

I am writing this from a small prison cell somewhere in California.

I am writing by way of introduction. We are two young men incarcerated in the juvenile division of the California prison system. We are opening up this forum in order to accomplish something that flies in the face of the current status quo in the relationship between the criminal and the citizen, between us and society.

Bottom line, we are just a couple of young guys sick and tired of the usual way of doing time: Isolated, voiceless, and misunderstood.

Our incarceration has forced us together. However, of our own accord we have come together with a common desire burning in our hearts: to find a way to begin a meaningful dialogue with society on the issue of criminal justice (particularly, juvenile justice).

Amidst the constant speculation about who we are and what is happening to us, we also want to say something about ourselves.

Let us be clear. We don't want to bicker and complain about the criminal justice system; we don't want to lobby for support; we don't want to talk politics. Rather, we simply want to talk to society directly. We want to open up our experiences and our understanding to the public space and begin the long needed dialogue between society (the legally free) and its Other, the legally incarcerated.

For too long, public discussion on the matter of juvenile justice has lacked the voice of actual youth offenders themselves, those who are living through the interior aspect of the process.

Without this voice, the discussion has never been and will never be truly effective.

I say interior because in reality the criminal justice process (and in particular the juvenile process) in multi-dimensional. Although criminal justice has developed to conceal and exclude criminals from the sight of, and participation in, society (for the completely legitimate reason of protecting it), the fact is that society and criminals are constantly interacting.

The law mediates this interaction. It is at once a common bond and a wall of separation.

And for both it is the classic love/hate relationship. The criminal and the citizen loves and hates the law for opposite (and therefore related) reasons. The criminal loves the law because it is basically just (especially in the West) and guarantees a sentence and therefore (in most cases) a release. S/he hates it because it is basically just and demands a sentence to be served for its violation.

The free citizen loves the law because it guarantees his or her freedom and offers its protection. S/he hates it because at some point it inevitably conflicts with his or her idea of what it means to be free and protected under the law.

Often in this dynamic roles are reversed, and identities are exchanged.

In other words, both at the same time love and hate the law because its formal structure both agrees with, but is not completely consistent with, their personal ideas of justice. It is at this point where the citizen and the criminal share a common ground and concern.

As a consequence of the historical denial of this relationship and common concern, public discussion on criminal justice has also for too long assumed that criminals and citizens cannot, or should not, engage in meaningful dialogue. This assumption is simply without merit.

What if both society and the criminal were to open themselves up to one another in a cautious but honest dialogue? What if both took the step of acknowledging and addressing the actual relationship that already exists? What on earth would happen?

Would the discussion simply descend into acrimonious shouting? Would they even care to talk to one another? Would the fear and the anger, the resentment and all the rest, be simply too much to overcome? The criminal justice establishment and the State of California has long taken this position; therefore it has been the position of the majority of citizens.

And maybe it's true.

Or maybe a space can be established where there might begin a serious conversation about what justice is and ought to be from both sides of the Great Divide.

The fact is that there is but one real choice: either acknowledge and address the relationship that already exists, or deny and conceal that relationship and allow it to continue to fester at the margins of society, in the shadows of communities, and in the forgotten recesses within ourselves.

We can either acknowledge or conceal another fact: that there are people inside California prisons who care deeply about the Great Divide that so blights our society.

Some of us, though removed and concealed from public life, understand this state of affairs and realize the need for dialogue. So, we've asked ourselves, why leave the definition and protection of freedom to others, when a forum can exist where both citizens and criminals can meet upon common ground and listen to one another? What is stopping us from reaching out to citizens directly?

Criminals are guilty of violating the social contract and the public trust. In doing so, they have not only violated the law, but other persons. In serving his or her sentence, the criminal does not apprehend the authority and force of the law, then he or she does not truly reconcile himself or herself to free society upon release. So too it ought to be with the personal aspect of crime. For crime has always been, and always will remain, a profoundly personal affair. Should it not also be the case with the justice that purports to redress it?

Argument and disagreement will ensue. But we are convinced that to truly remain human, and to bring a direly needed humanizing element to the process, we must reach out to, listen to, and respect the social—both the laws and lives which we have violated by our criminal actions.

Because, in reality, there can be but one humane objective for criminal justice: Reconciliation.

How to reconcile the criminal with society, society with the criminal? Put in this way, the issue may seem remote from the lives and concerns of many ordinary people. In fact, it cuts to the heart of society (and of what it means to be a citizen) itself.

Some famous words by Dostoyevsky come to mind (who was no stranger to prison), to the effect that a society's condition can be discerned by entering it's prisons. Upon the same logic, it seems that a voice from within the prison experience itself can contribute a great deal not only to discerning the present condition of the criminal justice system, but also to discerning the present condition of society. And only an accurate understanding of the facts on the ground can lead to viable solutions.

Reconciliation is the best definition of justice, both according to the nature of the law, and in terms of the personal relationship between crime and citizens. It can encompass many things, from personal remorse and forgiveness, to social reintegration. But most importantly, it is also the only viable option for those desiring a humane and realizable solution to the problem before us.

To that end, we have chosen to open this forum with a series of articles premised upon this framing of the issues. We hope that they will spark your interest, inform you about the lives we are living, and move you to respond.

And so the dialogue begins.