What a Prison Sentence Really Means

by Jeff Goodman
MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, December 30, l998
 

When I was sent to prison, the judge mentioned just the length of my sentence.  Had he 
included the entire scope of my punishment, he may have said it differently:  Mr. Goodman, 
I sentence you... to live in a maladaptive, alien environment that defies description.  
You'll be stripped of your work skills, your self-worth and your humanity while at the 
same time face the daily threat of assault, rape, false accusations and unjustified punishment.  
You will live like this for seven years.  If you manage to reenter society as a productive 
person, some will say prison was just what you needed.  If not, others will say, "I told you so."  

Because of counterproductive prison policies, you are sentenced to live in a world of cruelty 
and indifference that engenders the very behavior it purports to alleviate. If you share this 
with those outside of the prison system, you will be called a liar; most won't believe that 
millions are spent on the proliferation of facilities that perpetuate harm, not repair it.  

You are sentenced to consume $150,000 in taxpayer dollars for your prison stay.  While 
lawmakers cite the ever-growing cost of incarceration as a public necessity, you will learn 
that 10 percent of that amount goes towards your daily needs, while the other 90 percent pays 
for a bloated prison bureaucracy immune from any cost-benefit analysis.  These tax dollars 
will be siphoned from school programs, child care and job training, all of which do make our 
communities healthy and safe and save millions in the process.  Despite the media frenzy that 
portrays society as seething with crime, you'll learn that relatively few prisoners represent 
a danger to our communities; we're mad at most felons, not scared of them.  So you'll wonder 
why the majority of prisoners aren't on home arrest, a logical move that would save millions 
of dollars and obviate the need for more prisons.  

Practical education programs, universally proven to drastically reduce recidivism, will be 
almost nonexistent. In fact, you will be disciplined for possessing more than 10 books.  
Therefore, you will live in an environment where recidivism it tacitly encouraged, a fact not 
lost on those who want to run prisons for profit.  

It is true that there are some counseling programs in prison and some people will benefit 
from them.  Yet, if you attempt to describe the futility of a therapeutic environment placed 
within an atmosphere replete with dehumanizing policies, you will be told that your intentions 
are distorted and without merit.  

You are sentenced to bear the wrath of a misinformed society. While you're experiencing 
everything I just said, you will be told how easy you have it.  The media will find your 
Christmas meal more newsworthy than the damage caused by lawmakers who jostle for the next
"get tough" policy at the expense of society's well-being.  Your privilege to have this 
once-a-year meal will be presented as so outrageous, a debate will ensue over which 'luxury' 
to take away next.  Politicians will focus on violent sociopaths and pronounce their horrific 
crimes as a yardstick to measure the innate danger and incorrigibility of all law-breakers, 
including you.  

Finally, as perhaps the most perverse component of your sentence,I hereby prohibit society 
from ever listening to you.  Your comments on crime and punishment will be ignored.  You, 
as well as others, will see the big picture, but few will care about the politics of crime 
and its role in our growing prison population. You will know that most prisoners are guilty 
of breaking the law, but only a few need to be separated from society.  You will know that it 
is the reporting and sensationalism of crime that has skyrocketed, not crime itself.  
Unfortunately, though you will one day return to society with firsthand knowledge of our prison
system, few will care; most see only the door leading into prison, not the one leading out.  

Therefore, if your opinion ever gets printed in a newspaper, you will not only be perceived 
as just another lawbreaker unable to accept the consequences of his actions, but of being 
manipulative as well.  Society will know this to be so because you once broke the law.  

You are hereby sentenced to be a messenger whose message will be forever perceived as tainted, 
self-serving and disingenuous,regardless of its veracity and accuracy.  No one will believe you.  
You have been sentenced to be a criminal. 

(The author, Jeff Goodman, is a software engineer who received a seven year prison 
sentence as a first-time, non-violent offender)