Welcome to my Prison Essays...

June 5, 2009 Rota, Spain
I've been meaning to start this blog for a long time because I've acquired some ideas over the years that I really need to get into circulation, especially in the area of criminology. Having spent years working in corrections and later serving on the Board of Prison Possibilities, Inc., I've kept my thinking focused on the seemingly impossible challenges of our correctional system.

I have three ideas that could transform corrections as we know it. Best of all, the first two of them cost almost nothing, do not require additions to government agencies (or almost none) and the cost to the taxpayer would be minimal. But I will get to those ideas in due course.

First I just want to welcome you and give you a little of my qualifications, humble as they might be. My education is a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Riverside followed by a year of law school. So I am hardly an academic. In fact, in the essays that follow I do not intend to be academically rigorous. My interest is to inspire and to sow the seeds of new ideas not yet current. To do that, I need to keep it short and readable. Those who find value in my ideas can easily enough pursue the further ramifications. Those who wish to invalidate me will find it easy enough. Then they can move on to invalidate someone else - no point in wasting their time with me.

My real education, at least for the topic of corrections, came to me courtesy of countless young men who I came to know in the Juvenile Justice System during the 20 years that I worked for the Los Angeles County Probation Department. Being less sophisticated and more open than they would be after they reached adult prisons, I found that they would open themselves to me if I could resist being judgemental and "preaching" to them. In many cases, they had never had the chance to talk deeply with an adult and generously shared their experiences.

Some of them actually made it out of the system - one, the former leader of a black street gang, actually made it through law school. The ideas that I will share with you are based on what I learned from them. These ideas differ from what I learned in my Criminology classes, which is why I feel the need to express them.