North Carolina voters will soon decide if criminal defendants will be allowed the option of a bench trial. Under the proposed Amendment, which passed the state House and Senate with only a single dissenting vote, suspects can choose to have a trial judge determine the outcome of the case instead of a jury. Opponents of the change will have a hard time gainsaying the new law because it saves time, money and 49 states and the federal government already use bench trials. In other words, this option is only new to North Carolina and voters should consider why it has taken this long to catch up with the rest of the country. Why have defendants been forced to rely on juries despite all of their problems?

I envy the legal systems of states utilizing bench trials. The defendants who got to have a judge decide the case don't have to worry about racial bias in the selection of jurors, nor will there be any concern the trier of facts is ignorant of the law, unfamiliar with crime scene contamination, falsified confessions, statistics, serology, DNA and ballistics reports, psychiatric diagnoses, the fallibility of witnesses, and other expert testimony. That's because the judge is an expert in the practice and knowledge of the law, and he or she is well qualified to deal with anything an attorney brings up.

Juries, by contrast, are generally ignorant of the law even when given uncomplicated instructions about a very small part of it. Jurors are typically the last people to know anything about a case, unless they've researched it online or otherwise heard about it prior to selection. As a collection of "peers" it can only be said they are human beings who are susceptible to suggestion, lies, personal bias, and the misfortune of being forced to do their civic duty. The very last thing an ordinary member of the community should be is a trier of facts in a court room, but this is the legal system we have in America.

It's a shame, really, that attorneys must rely on this group of lay people to comprehend their arguments. Some jurors try real hard to pay attention to the facts, but a savvy prosecutor can manipulate emotions and command the jury's allegiance without ever referencing the truth. No matter how twisted the logic or histrionic their actions, emotional appeals to the unwary work under most circumstances. Take, for example, DNA evidence. It requires expert testimony to interpret laboratory results but a jury will only hear what a prosecutor screams or objects to. The DNA expert is subject to be ignored in the wake of a fiery "I OBJECT!" A judge might better understand the nuances of a particular science, but the jury? Forget it.

If a judge were asked to consider a death sentence as a possible punishment, but first they must determine guilt or innocence, I believe he or she could compartmentalize each phase of the trial and remain impartial. Ordinary citizens (let's stop calling them peers) who think about bills, lost wages, childcare, and a thousand other things besides the facts in a case, are unlikely to pay attention let alone remain impartial. They are not trained jurists, merely victims of a bureaucratic lottery that provides the illusion of fairness on imbalanced scales of justice.

Juries area critical problem plaguing the criminal justice system, a fatal flaw upon which is heaped the most responsibility in the courtroom. Even a barely competent defendant has a better chance of understanding the process simply because he or she has a vested interest. The bailiff, who is little more than basic security, likely knows more about trying facts than any citizen juror unless they've had prior experience. If such were discovered during voir dire the potential juror would be dismissed. Well meaning jurors are supposed to be ignorant, but intuitive enough to listen and be critical of both sides while carefully weighing the facts as they apply to the law. I would rather take my chances playing Russian roulette with five bullets and one empty chamber.

Fortunately, jury trials are not that common. About 90% of criminal cases never go to trial, instead plea bargains are struck to save time and money while keeping the bowels of the system loose. For the unfortunate percentage forced into jury trials they must undergo the farce that is an understanding and impartial jury. It doesn't have to be this way.

The best solution is to eliminate forced jury trials and grant the option of a bench trial in every criminal case -- especially those involving capital murder.

If I am to be compelled into a situation where my life and liberty depend on who is paying attention to the arguments in a case, then I want an expert to decide my fate, not a group of strangers who may not mean well and will probably think of everything but the facts. If whether or not I spend the rest of my life in a prison cell or die by lethal injection depends on what kind of person my trier of facts is than, please God, give me a bench trial every time. At least this way, with one qualified judge, I stand a better chance of receiving justice rather than the mythical version that is the jury trial.

A jury. As a teenager I vaguely understood this to mean a group of people who would decide if I was guilty of murder and whether this meant I should die for the crimes. My understanding of the process began and ended there.

Jury selection for my capital murder trial was odd in that way getting picked to play dodge ball in grade school is anticipatory of a winning and losing team. Each choice made at the beginning seems measured as you go for favorites and hope the other guy doesn't eliminate the ones you want. In voir dire you have to hope the potential juror who looks and sounds reasonably objective is not secretively some ultraconservative fundamentalist. If he or she is reasonable you also have to hope the DA doesn't use a preemptory challenge. Sitting at the defense table with a bailiff nearby and attorneys bookending the seats to my left and right, it seemed all of the reasonable people were absent or removed for cause or excused by the prosecution.

For those who don't know, the preemptory challenge removes a potential juror from the pool without needing to justify the removal. Both the prosecution and defense are allowed 14 of these free rejections during jury selection.

I was under no illusion this would be a jury of my peers in the sense they were like me, unless living and breathing and human were our only similarities. It was apparent from the pool most of these citizens with jobs, families, and opinions about the case knew nothing about me as a person. They likely did not care what I thought or felt. I could only hope we picked at least six people willing to listen -- even if such a hope was naïve.

The selection took about a week. This one heard about the case and formed an opinion, that one knew a cousin of a friend who went to school with one of the victims. I have to support my family of five, your honor, besides, he looks guilty. The guys in jail for a reason, ain't he? Kill him. He don't need a trial. It's against my religion. I get these really bad migraines. I can't leave my dogs alone for a single moment or they'll be sick with worry. It'll create an undue hardship on my family, your honor . . . . The excuses were many and for those not quick enough with a plausible lie or actually interested in doing their civic duty the first obstacle in their selection was cleared.

Being removed for cause just meant there was a legitimate reason a potential juror could not sit on the jury. In this circumstance it's the judge who agrees to excuse the person from service. Not all of the reasons sounded ridiculous. I was glad at times because the hatred, fear, disgust, self-righteousness, apathy, or anger and cruelty were plain to see on the faces of many -- like war paint or poorly drawn clown faces with mean looks and bulbous noses. One woman was absolutely against the death penalty and all for building more prisons. "Why your honor, if I could," she said "as soon as they arrest a person it's obvious they're guilty so why not put them in prison and leave us honest folk alone?" The scary and discouraging part is considering how many people thought such things and worse, but kept their mouths shut and were picked as jurors.

I guess for juries, "reasonable" means some fantastic ideal that doesn't exist in the sphere of capital murder trials. Not even when the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt" is used. I should have lowered my expectations. Hope is a foolish thing when you sit at the defendant's table selecting a jury, but you couldn't have convinced me without providing a glimpse into the future.

Once the obviously unsuitable candidates were eliminated the real selecting began. You don't want him - he's a Mason. Or her, she's too eager. Or that one -- he's too white collar. We don't want that one -- her brother's father in law is a cop. The standard my attorneys used to pick jurors was simple: anyone rejected by the prosecution is somebody we want, but since we can't have those we will take whatever we can get. In the end none of it really mattered because the DA had the final say so.

With twelve jurors and two alternates ready the trial was set to begin the following Monday. Both prosecutors wore smug looks the way people accustomed to getting their way do. My attorneys studiously ignored me, talking about where they would eat lunch as they packed away loose papers. Me? I sat dazed and quiet, dizzy from the cocktail of medications prescribed to me by a jailhouse shrink. All of my thoughts and emotions were smothered as if by a thick layer of ice over a deep lake. A small bit of optimism tapped at the barrier preventing me from breaking the surface of that frigid water. It was the faint hope present in anyone who doesn't know what awaits them but keeps their fingers crossed just in case it isn't quite as bad as they suspect it will be.

Potential is such an important idea. If one lacks it, the future can be limited and dim. With potential anything can be possible, worlds of opportunity open to anyone willing to struggle and fight for their dreams. It can be difficult to envision the possibilities of a given set of circumstances, especially when one feels powerless. If you lose sight of how daily decisions affect future outcomes then it may be a punitive environment is needed to restore your sense of value; thus this prison.

If it hasn't been lost already, prison strips us of potential and forces a narrowing of one's concerns to basic needs and the will to live. Not that living is physically difficult in purgatory, but a will to survive demands a desire to exist beyond the restrictive nature of the prison. Living outside of this box means leaving behind petty, hateful, selfish concerns and degraded thinking. It means leading by example, sharing empathy and understanding, and striving each day to be a better person. This goes against the central purpose of incarceration.

To create significant choices in a very limited life there has to be comprehension of what it means to have free will. There is no need to live and think like an animal even as the state accuses us of being one. Old ideas of what is or isn't deserved treatment have to be replaced with a sense of personal responsibility: this is my life and I am in control.

The freedom to think in terms of what "could be" is a crucial skill one must develop on a daily basis. Without it, considering the future and recognizing one's potential is impossible. Only our awareness of this power can spare us from squandering it.

17 years ago I would lie in bed for most of the day, getting up only when my meals were delivered. I would lie in the sweat and the funk of my stale mattress, covered by a tattered old blanket as the cockroaches crawled around me.. Often, the nasty insects would drop from the walls and ceiling into bed with me, but I would only lie there in a vain attempt to sleep my time away, wishing that one day I might wake to find myself somewhere else -- home, dare I hope? -- and the nightmare would be over.

That cell at C.A. Dillon School, the odor, the roaches, the chaos in my mind dulled to an annoying din with Haldol and Cogentin -- this was my personal teenage hell. I celebrated my 16th birthday there. When most boys my age were newly licensed drivers, dating, and looking forward to the prom, I was languishing behind a steel door, broken already when I hadn't yet begun to live.

My closest friend at Dillon was Kevin Martin. The two of us were housed on the same wing -- Wing 1, I believe it was -- for a while. We would be the only two left behind in our calls during the day while the other kids were at school, and he would talk to me from behind his door and try to rouse me from my drugged, lethargic dream world. At one point we were going to break out. When one of the staff members entered the hallway to let us out of our cells for showers we were going to jump him and take the big brass key that would open the door at the end of the hallway. Once outside we would climb the fence and sprint away to freedom.

It was a stupid idea and I was in no condition physically for fighting, climbing, or running. Staff caught wind of our plan (they likely heard it from us as we had to yell to hear each other) and came to move me to another wing so Kevin and I would be separated. I armed myself with two sharp pencils, fully intending to stab one or more of them when they stormed my cell. When the door opened they came fast, rolling in four deep, and though I tried to bury a pencil into the neck of the first guy, he somehow managed to grab my arm. Before I could bring the second pencil into play, the second staff member had my other arm and they were both bending my wrists in painful ways while yelling for me to drop the pencils.

When I finally relented and dropped my weapons, the four of them carried me by my arms and legs to a cell in Wing 3. Once they'd succeeded in locking me in I immediately stood up on the bed and pissed on the wall, and then, having relieved myself, I stepped down and proceeded to bang my head against the door repeatedly.

Five minutes later when they returned with the heavy canvas strait-jacket, I could only laugh and hold out my arms as they slid it on and fastened the straps in the back. Already exhausted from the earlier struggle, there was no way I could resist now.

When fully strapped in I realized the strait-jacket is just an ingenious torture device, probably invented by the same person who invented the rack and thumbscrews. My arms were wrapped tight around my body and held in place by a vertical strap along the front of the garment. The sleeves were pulled around back and strapped in place along with a number of other straps, but most painful of all was the strap pulled up between my legs and buckled tight in back so it dug into my crotch. Aside from the obvious pain in my groin, the combined pressure from the tightly cinched straps bent my lower back in a way that made any movement painful.

For the first 15-20 minutes I stood there singing old Pink Floyd songs, pretending not to be bothered at all, but slowly the pressure and the pain began to build until my groin throbbed and my spine felt as if it might snap. After a couple of hours of this torture they finally removed the strait-jacket. I was moved to another cell -- one that didn't reek of piss -- and there I promptly fell into bed and went to sleep..

Looking back on these events from within the confines of yet another cell, I feel a profound sense of sadness. At that point in my life I knew only rage, a white-hot inferno that no modern pharmaceutical could quench. I wish I could travel back in time and talk sense to that angry, screwed up boy in that strait-jacket. The medicine he needed the was not Haldol, restraint devices, or locked doors and fences. What he needed was real talk combined with a heavy dose of love and understanding.

Timothy White

The analogy is obvious, so much so that it seems trite to make the comparison. Yet, nothing better describes what it's like to be imprisoned, stripped of the ability to explore the complex sensations, sights, sounds, and scents of the outside world. The mere idea of such expansive freedom brings drool past the lip.. It's only a thought though, one dimensional and brief, without any anchor in reality. Rather, memories of such liberty are the detritus of the past rolling across the floor like dust bunnies, shed to collect in cracks and corners of the concrete. Best left forgotten.

It's easy to forget the link that makes me human is the same one dividing me from the community and putting me behind a fence. Inside of this pen my days are like that of any dog. Whenever it's time to eat the glands in my mouth secrete saliva in a Pavlovian response to the call for chow.. Chow, what a disgusting word that brings images of flies feasting on uneaten, unclean morsels discarded on the floor and tables. Filth and grime and . . . I loathe it and this very human thought ends with a curled lip and silent snarl.

Gone is the link and it's back to the cage. The difference between whether I am treated as a man or beast is ephemeral -- sometimes it reminds, teases, and torments -- then it doesn't. Is this how a scent rides the wind? Here, then not. There again in stinging, pungent clarity -- no. That is another odor, a different stench.

When they open the door to the yard, my pulse quickens. Exercise . . .playtime. Barking and chasing squirrels, snapping at birds and cats, growling at other mutts and sniffing other curs like me. There is only the desire to expend as much energy as possible until my tongue hangs and breath pants. For a moment there is no comprehension of "I", no separateness or isolation, only an increasing need to run as fast and far as my legs will allow. Until they call me back in. Come back. Back inside or you will not be fed. Back to the cage where there is no running or tail wagging or even a half-remembered pat on the head. Or the ultimate: a belly rub..

There are no belly rubs or bones to gnaw in this place for bad dogs, abandoned and neglected dogs. There is only sitting, laying standing, pacing, and waiting in this place that stinks of emptiness and hate. What awaits us besides punishment and reproof? Adoption? Escape? No, something dark awaits and there is no way to understand what it is. Many have been taken against their will. A leash had to be used, their hind legs dragging down a corridor smelling of fear and despair. Some whine, others growl and bite, but as I sit on death row it is my fate to contemplate how much in common I have with a dog in a kennel. Won't somebody save us?

Is the hole torture? This was asked of me several months ago in a ten minute writing exercise and the response I gave was disjointed and confused. There have been times in solitary where it felt like torture, but at others it was not so noticeable. After 17 years of imprisonment as an adult, the hole has taken on different meanings in my life. I try to avoid it, but prison is a place full of pitfalls and even the smartest or wiliest get pushed into the hole. It's a fact of life you prepare for and harden yourself against much like a car accident -- it's all about damage control.

The first time I experienced solitary confinement was a 2 week stint at the Maine Youth Center when I was 16. After stealing a disposable Bic razor from a staff member's desk a kid try to earn a home pass caught me and told staff. As punishment for the theft I was taken to a darkened row of cells that stank of mildew and cleaning chemicals. They stripped me of everything but my underwear and slammed the door shut. There were no books, magazines, television, or radio and my only relief from the monotony came in the form of self-mutilation with sharp rocks, singing half-remembered songs from school and church, and defiance. They were two very long weeks but enduring the hole as a teen was more like a scary right of passage, one that clings like a nightmare.

A year later, back at the youth center for running from a cop and violating my probation, they put me in the hole for a month because I dared to flee. This time the hole was harder because I knew just enough to understand the guards were not my friends. They in turn proved this by shutting off the lights during the day and serving meals at varying times. Showers and our 1 hour of rec out of the cell were sporadic. One kid tried to kill himself, and because he was unsuccessful, was tormented by staff for his failure. This was in 1995.

By the time I was charged with capital murder in 1997 my familiarity with the hole prepared me for the twenty months I would spend on 23 hour lock down at the county jail. The time became the hardest of my life for more reasons than being confined in a cell. Though I had access to books and magazines the emotional impact of being charged with murder, the doubts and suspicions of friends and family, and the thought of spending the rest of my life in this tiny space broke me.

I grew so angry during this period I punched the steel mirror upon seeing my reflection, or the wall wishing it would crumble. My hands stayed swollen a lot. I cried for the lives that had been lost -- including my own. Eventually I tried suicide, and when failure brought me back to the same cell I died inside. The cell became an extension of my thoughts and they ended in its cold corners.

I have not spent years in the hole like some of my friends, but the signs of their long ordeal are apparent. Everyone I know of who has spent a minimum of two years in solitary confinement displays some form of dysfunctional behavior. Obsessive cleaning, sleeping fully clothed, talking to themselves, fits of rage --whatever it is they do we prisoners as a group can tell who has left a part of their mind in the hole. Even the most defiant can break eventually.
Yes, the hole is torture, but the asker already knew that, and so did the people who designed the practice and implemented its use in the penal system. The question that needs to be asked is: why is the hole still used if we know it's torture?

As a prisoner on death row I am in a position where many people believe me to be civil dead -- a person with few or no rights and of negligible relevance to the world beyond a convenient target for revenge. Does this civil death, sanctioned by a jury of 12 strangers, preclude my humanity? Or is the vestige of communal attachment I feel like that of a missing limb; a ghostly remnant of no real importance to the body of society?

On April 15th 2013, a breaking news bulletin informed viewers there had been a bombing of the Boston Marathon. When my shock wore off I felt much as I did after the 9/11 and Newtown attacks: angry, appalled, saddened and desiring justice. I felt for the victims and their families and suffered with the rest of the country as it mourned. However, underlying these emotions was this dissonant sense of being an outsider, a pariah whose thoughts, opinions, and sympathy are unwanted and scorned.

While incarceration may equate death for some, and a death sentence is certainly meant to result in this, prison is only a figurative end. Life does go on. Imprisonment involves a process of self-decay in which identification with and connection to the outside world is eroded by the institution. Rules and obedience replace freedom and independence, other prisoners fill the gaps left by family and friends, and one's community becomes a group of convicted criminals. The world of the prisoner contracts to a cell block and housing unit where everything beyond this social microcosm seems imaginary.

If the dispossession of an inmate's former life is absolute it becomes difficult to avoid the apathy and detachment that follow. The world beyond has discarded the prisoner, so why should its events matter? In the darker moments of my imprisonment I struggle to remember what it's like to be free. Then something occurs in the world that is of significance and I feel connected to humanity. I am reminded that life is immeasurably deeper and more complex than my experiences alone. I pick up a newspaper or Time magazine and read about the world beyond my own.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and again in 2012 I had trouble stifling my excitement over the momentous occasions. I couldn't explain why, since his elections change nothing in my immediate pocket of the universe, but this didn't stop me from feeling the same sense of hope and satisfaction those who can vote received. I share their vision for change and, for a moment, I felt like any other American citizen. The same held true as I watched Michael Phelps in the Beijing and London Olympics and when Osama Bin Laden was killed. There is nothing to prevent me from enjoying these victories or feeling like a member of society at my core. No one told me my citizenship has been revoked, only that I am to be punished according to the will of a jury.

A death sentence speaks volumes about what a small portion of a community has been led to believe and it is due to this I struggle with my regard for the rest of the country. I try to remember a 12 person jury is not a representative sample of a city or state, let alone the rest of the U.S., but this matters little. My relevance to and interrelation with the free world is diminished to the point where I'm like a ghost awaiting a resting place or final transition to the netherworld. Unlike such apparitions though, I'm not so disconnected from life or unaware of its complexities as to be incapable of empathy.

Spectre, civil dead, or condemned prisoner my sentence and conviction divide me from society but fail to suppress my connection to other human beings. Imprisonment is not so punishing and absolute that it eliminates all thought and sentiment for life beyond the walls -- it just seems that way. This is one veil the criminal justice system -- prosecutors, legislators, authorities, and others -- uses to rationalize the incarceration of millions of Americans.

The end of my former life may have been inevitable, but in its place is a half-life where I'm something of a second or third class citizen who continues to feel like a human being. As inaccessible as the free world may seem to the incarcerated this does not preclude an emotional attachment to its people or events. There is no need for me to feel like an outsider when my belief in a religion, bond with family and friends, agreement with a political party, and sympathy for a loss demonstrates my fellowship and connection to humanity regardless of where I live.

It does little good to write about the problems with the criminal justice system and not mention one of the potential solutions.

What is restorative justice? When a friend asked me this the other day I was unsurprised by the question for a few reasons. First, violent offenders like my friend and I are rarely given anything but the harshest sentences. Second, when restorative justice is used in a case, it is usually in conjunction with low level juvenile offenders. Third, restorative justice is uncommon in our overly punitive society because it's seen as a liberal, social welfare experiment that coddles criminals. Restorative justice is the idea that the legal system can strike a balance between punishing the criminal act while maintaining an individual's ties to his or her community. It works to repair an offender's relationship with the victim by opening a line of communication, educating the involved parties about each other's point of view, and stressing the need to resolve the problem.

There is more to punishment than the element of retribution, but it seems the U.S. has forgotten this. Rather than seek a way to fix whatever contributed to the criminal act the system punishes as harshly as it can and does little to break the cycle of incarceration once it begins. Anything less than a long prison term is thought of as unacceptable -- criminal even. This mode of thought is so embedded in our culture that if a child commits violent crime he or she is tried as an adult in most states, despite the fact a person's mind is not fully developed until the age of twenty-one.

The senselessness of trying juveniles as adults underlines the core problem within the criminal justice system. Restorative justice attempts to offset this imbalance rather than throw away a child's potential to fulfill an unthinking need to punish criminals. It's an uphill battle. Only in the last decade has the U.S. Supreme Court decided death and natural life sentences for juveniles are cruel and unusual punishment. How long will it take them to determine a child is a child and should not be punished as an adult? How long will it take the system to figure out "if you can't communicate, you can't solve problems?"

Restorative justice will never have a place in our society as long as talionic prison terms are considered acceptable punishment for juvenile offenders. So long as there is inconsistent use and knowledge of restorative justice methodology, recidivism rates will continue to rise with the growth of the prison population, and the school to prison pipeline will become a raging river.

If there is to be a transition from a strictly punitive system to one that relies on educational programs that teach kids to give back to the community, it must begin in the courtroom. Attorneys, prosecutors, and judges have to consider that this "offender" is a child with a story. Restorative justice requires court officials to care about the impact they have on future generations, rather than being too willing to discard the youth of America. However, the more difficult proposition, and by far the one that matters the most, is convincing the public they should not trade their children for what can only be assumed are safer streets.

Charles Dickens, aside from being an iconic literary figure of the 19th century, was also one of the first critics of the American penitentiary. On a tour of the U.S. in 1812 he visited the newly converted Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia -- the city of brotherly love -- and expressed his concern for those put in prison. At the time, Pennsylvania sought a more humane way to deal with criminals than capital punishment in many cases -- the penitentiary provided that outlet. A lot of states were pulling away from corporal punishment and limiting the death penalty to the crimes of rape, terrorism, and murder.

William Penn may have envisioned a method of punishment that, if utilized judiciously, would reform the way criminals were dealt with, but he couldn't have foreseen being responsible for planting the seed of America's "incarceration binge". Dickens, a man of keen insight, was perhaps more aware of the danger. He remarked:

"I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony that this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers . . . . . I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be dramatically worse than any torture of the body."

Over time, sentences handed down by the court have lengthened across the board and grown complex and arbitrary in their application. The crimes have changed very little, but the system and public's interpretation of how these crimes should be punished has become unreasonably oppressive. Capital punishment has become radicalized in an effort to make state-sanctioned murder seem humane. Instead, this lie the public tells itself hides an inner ugliness dating back to lynch mobs, punishment parades, and the butchery of condemned criminals and innocents alike. All in the name of "justice".

Prison sentences have become varied and erratic, their inconsistency amongst the wide spectrum of crimes difficult to understand. Dickens noted over 170 years ago that calling incarceration a better alternative to execution invites a culture where torture is justified as a necessary evil for being tough on crime.

Evil is never necessary, it's the excuse we use to avoid harder choices involving reform of the criminal justice system, the kind that is sweeping and permanent. In the past, reform has taken many shapes, becoming more lenient and redemptive, then more restricting and punitive as political races and demands from "voters" dictate. The system does not improve so much as it relaxes. Similar to a man being water-boarded, penal reform cycles through periods of pressure, with the courts increasing the amount of water poured over the mouths of convicts with harsh, unending sentences or death. While this torture is underway, the people beneath this flow of justice become enemy combatants and slaves -- nothing more. When the courts relax their stance, the flow stops, the towel is removed, and prisoners gasp for air. Release and redemption are possible and we become people again. For a while.

Dickens was not speaking of how a sentence is applied to a crime so much as the time one must spend in prison -- specifically solitary confinement, since that was the basis of the first penitentiary. While the two are certainly interwoven, he was more concerned with the nature of a place meant to break the will of human beings and impose suffering.

Prison is much more than suffering 24 hours a day even if Dickens didn't state as much. As a social control the prison system is meant to incapacitate criminals and protect the public. Its primary purpose is to reassert authority over law breakers. What is often overlooked is that prison is also about re-education of the offender.

On his visit to that first penitentiary, Dickens concluded with this: "Those who have undergone this punishment MUST pass into society again morally unhealthy and diseased."

Of course prison was designed to be punitive without resorting to physical torture. It couldn't be helped such a design would be flawed, but the psychological effects of solitary confinement were not well understood back then. There was also this idea that rehabilitation of the prisoner would occur given enough time and quiet contemplation. Incarceration forces us, whether we want to or not, to reflect on the past to such a degree it can be unhealthy and agonizing. To Dickens, a free man in love with liberty, this seemed horrendous, but supporters of the system thought it a brilliant achievement, even if it was misguided. To the convicts this time to reflect was necessary to return to the community as "reformed citizens", not "morally unhealthy and diseased".

Under America's current incarceration binge the element of rehabilitation has all but disappeared. Many offenders were never equipped with the morality and ethics needed to function in a free society so even if rehabilitation existed in any significant way these men and women would lose out. For the most part the penal system is uninterested in reforming offenders because it costs too much and is not in the interests of being "tough on crime". When a prisoner does get released little incentive or training induces the felon to stay in the community and "do the right thing" because now they're stigmatized as "ex-cons". Parole in most states has been replaced with mandatory minimums, probation is usually a bad joke, restitution is just a special tax for offenders, and pre-release programs are more accurately catch-release-catch again programs. Finding a reasonably waged job is really impossible, so too is getting a loan or supporting a family. It forces government subsistence so the high recidivism rate is easy to understand.

For those prisoners given longer terms or "living death sentences" as a life sentence is often referred to, reform and rehabilitation are unrealistic or empty goals. Within the prison, most meaningful work and educational programs are reserved for offenders who may actually return to the street. What remains is a lot of empty time with little to occupy the mind. There are exceptions, of course. Some states maintain programs geared toward helping prisoners rebuild their identity, not for re-entry (if the possibility even exists) so much as to teach why he or she should want to improve who they are and live above the label of "inmate".

The cycle that is prison reform can only be described as cruel, since there is nothing at all unusual about it. The point has been reached where much of the free world views the "American love affair with incarceration" as this unhealthy, morally repugnant way of not dealing with our domestic issues. U.S. prisoners cannot wait for lawmakers to stop pouring water and give them a chance to breathe. Building more prisons, eliminating education programs and funding, executing more people, failing to train re-entering citizens, spending little or no money on programs designed to help communities support families of prisoners, making it harder for ex-cons to be productive citizens -- these actions contribute to the prison epidemic. It's time for some solutions.

Lyle C. May