Let me be the first to say that I have been around some men who should never get out of prison. They should never see the light of day again. Let me further say that I have been around some men who should not even be alive inside of prison, let alone outside of prison.
There are men who are so depraved, warped, dysfunctional, and damaged that having them around women and children would be a huge detriment to society.
I am not advocating for rapists, child molesters, psychopathic killers to be let out of prison to roam the streets, but in times like these — when dormitories are going months without an officer inside the control booth — there should be a triage done by prison counselors, wardens, and chaplains who work around these inmates.
These people are more able to decipher who is best fit to get out of prison on parole, house arrest, and ankle monitor than anyone else.
As I sit inside the walls of the prison system for the last 21-plus years, I have found the last four years to be the most critical and dangerous times in the history of the American prison industrial complex. For the last four years, prisons have not been able to maintain, or retain, enough staffing to safely operate the prison system. If there was any time where a system wide triage was in order, it is now — as the correctional system is hemorrhaging staffs and is unable to logistically provide adequate food to feed its inmates or security to safely operate.
No one has the foresight to justifiably allow older men who have done 20 or more years to go home in an effort to alleviate the security threat that now exists. As men die because they’re forced to sleep in enclosed spaces and sleep next to drains that exude toxic gases, no one, especially the correctional commissioners, has the courage to prevent the hundreds of deaths that needlessly take place inside the walls of prison systems across the country.
The problem is that our politicians, correctional commissioners, and others in positions to make such decisions lack the courage to tell the taxpayer that the system is dying. Even as inmates die of stabbings without anyone to come to their rescue, our leaders lack the moral grace to call a spade a spade.
Newly arrived inmates enter certain dormitories where their property is taken from them — phone numbers and addresses confiscated by factions of gangs. They are often beaten, stabbed, tied up, and extorted while their families are on the phone listening, yet still no one will take the initiative to relieve the steam from the pressure cooker.
While they’re quick to use the violence in prisons as a means to lobby taxpayers for more state and federal funding, they will not admit that the violence is a direct result of a severe lack of staffing.
A politician should be able to explain to Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer that it’s better to relieve the pressure on an overcrowded, understaffed prison system than it is to run the risk of ten to fifteen prisons erupting in riots simultaneously or back-to-back.
I recall working as an emergency room registrar where I had to be able to collect vital information from patients who were either sick or had their loved ones who were sick, and do so in a prompt, professional, compassionate way that allowed doctors, nurses and hospital administration to better serve the incoming patient.
It bothered me to have to look someone in the eye and deflect a pointed question, but sometimes the courage it takes to give it to them raw was just lacking. You would understand my plight if you ever saw a couple rush into the emergency room after driving frantically behind an ambulance that was transporting their 3-year old son who fell in a pool and drowned. What kind of courage does it take to tell those parents that the doctors couldn’t save their toddler?
Another thing we had to practice every few months at the hospital emergency ward where I worked was a mass casualty scenario. This was long before mass shootings became a trend. I grew up in Miami where violence on a large scale wasn’t unheard of, but I was in prison when psychopaths with assault rifles were allowed to mow people down by the scores.
One of the procedures that I saw the nurses and doctors practice during those drills was the triage protocol, where the emergency health care professionals would assess every incoming patient, and would give them a number based on their likelihood of surviving whatever injury they’d succumbed.
As a layperson, I used to question the fairness of giving priority to one patient while ignoring the needs of a more critically wounded person. One physician assistant took me to lunch after the quarterly drill and explained that as much as it would be the right thing to treat and patch up everyone, in an emergency situation where supplies and resources were being used up quickly, it would be more expedient to put those resource to use on the person or persons that has the highest likelihood of surviving.
“Those who can make it, should make it,” she’d explained to me.
Like the physician assistant, someone should enlighten those ‘tough on crime’, ‘lock em up and throw away the keys’ constituents, that it is better to choose who to free than to run the risk of the wrong ones escaping due to lack of security personnel. Because it’s better for a drug dealer or a bank robber to be released under supervised conditions than it is for a rapist, child molester or a serial killer to be freed due to lack of proper security.
It’s time for States, especially in the south, to seriously consider a system-wide triage.
Roman Noel #0001141647
701 Prison Blvd
PO Box 339,
Sparta, GA 31087
One Comment
I don’t think the key is to let people out of prisons. You will still have more criminals coming in. We need to build more prisons, pay better wages, give 20 year retirement and have staff housing, Kind of like the military. Also the US is too soft on prisoners, hence why they have a hard time keeping staff. From 7am until 5pm. Prisoners should be working or in school. Any prisoner refusing should be locked up and giving sandwiches and a fruit for all three meals until they are ready to comply. Gang members should be sent to a super max and never let out of their cell, until they are fully willing to cooperate and drop out of a gang. We have to stop handling prisoners with kid gloves.