To share a bunk with a man sentenced to life in prison without parole–when you are not–is a surreal experience.
Every moment, of every day, my bunkie must wrestle with the unfathomable notion that he is expected to sit, hunched on a hard metal bed, for an undetermined number of days, slowly dying by inadequate medical care, nutrition, and living conditions plagued by pestilence, amputations, social exclusion, constant emotional debasement, and otherization by a system designed for long term cruelty.
Instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, he is forced to quickly swallow a series of slop-like pseudo-meals three times per day, aptly nicknamed “chow,” as if we were pigs to the slaughter.
Even within the prison system there is a constant stream of propaganda–often espousing rehabilitation or deterrence–meant to justify base cruelty, assumedly so that those working in corrections can maintain their humanity. As if State-sponsored kidnapping, trafficking, warehousing, and coercion were anything other than the antithesis of restorative or redemptive justice. As if slow cruelty were somehow less torturous than a guillotine or lashes of the whip.
Prisoners serving life without parole have no measurable way to rationalize their sentence. Many of them, including my bunkie, would have only had to serve a handful of years if–instead–they took a plea offer over exercising a right to trial. Even though we all supposedly have a right to an impartial jury trial, that “right” is about as vacuous as the notion of lengthy sentences serving any meaningful purpose.
In point of fact, data compiled by criminologists over the past few decades show that there is no statistical correlation between long sentences and recidivism. Also, according to Senator Chris Murphy, in his recent landmark text on violence, there is no distinct relationship between mental illness and general violence. Given that both of those are verifiable facts, it is impossible to reconcile sentencing people to long periods of prison time with any argument about incapacitation, deterrence, or rehabilitation.
As a result, lifers are often stuck between three worldviews. First, they might choose to believe on faith or some legal remedy that they will eventually be free. Second, they might choose delusion characterized by habitual drug use. The final possibility and most tragic is that they hope for a swift demise. This schism among lifers without the possibility of parole is so pronounced that they regularly express support for State-assisted suicide.
It is unconscionable that our society would determine that methods of punishment such as lashing, the iron maiden, or public hangings are cruel and unusual, but life imprisonment is somehow not cruel or unusual. As if to be tarred and feathered were even remotely comparable to decaying slowly for 50 years or more–based on nil scientific data to directly support life sentences.
Interestingly, the only popular counterpoint meant to justify lengthy sentences–often conveniently deployed by law enforcement associations and lobbyists during debates about funding–is based on a single data point: crime rates have generally dropped across the United States for decades. The argument is that strict sentencing has accomplished our country’s relative, decades-long drop in crime. Unfortunately, the same trend in dropping crime rates has occurred in almost every industrialized country on Earth.
And, more unfortunately, the United States is the most incarcerated country in the world. Our State alone, Florida, has three times the number of people incarcerated per capita than China, Russia, or Cuba. These lobbyists might as well attribute the drop in crime to the rise of Mary Kay Cosmetics. Just because there is a correlation between the two does not equate to causation. Perhaps driving the point home, many of the other industrialized countries with similar declining crime trends have substantially shorter sentencing or bans on life imprisonment altogether.
This counterargument should be a source of embarrassment. The notion that we continue to torture people without a meaningful reason, despite data showing that more effective forms of sentencing exist, is a testament to how deeply embedded “cruelty as punishment” is in our culture.
We are incarcerating far too many people, with preposterously long sentences, for no practical reason. People serving life without parole are experiencing the worst possible version of a modern atrocity while the general public either turns a blind eye or endorses it based on State-sponsored misinformation intended to justify draconian punishment.
We must follow the leadership of other countries which have already made sweeping criminal justice reforms and proven their efficacy. We must end the practice of death by incarceration.
Christopher Salamone, Y71193
Suwannee Correctional Institution Annex
5964 US Highway 90
Live Oak, FL 32060
