Neal St. Anthony wrote the moving story "Near death to new life for manager" (June 28), telling us how one impressive and brave man changed his circumstances from addiction to celebrated success as a hotel manager. But let's think about the story behind the story: Why was this man sentenced to hard labor as a young man for selling marijuana, a drug now legalized in many states and making many people significant money? And the hero of our story was sent back to prison for "hanging with former convicts and testing positive for alcohol and marijuana." But what are the chances, given the significant incarceration of Black men, that a Black man in poverty is going to have friends, acquaintances and neighbors who have also been sentenced to time in prison? And drinking alcohol is not a crime that otherwise lands someone in prison. Incarceration has also proved itself ineffective at helping people overcome addiction.
We have built a system that punishes poverty and addiction. How many men did not survive such misguided public policies to be able to emerge from this system against the odds, and what does that mean for the talents and skills we as a community have lost?
Deborah Schlick, St. Paul
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In a perceptive June 29 letter ("Punishment only," Readers Write), the writer accepts that life in prison will probably be "sheer torture" for Derek Chauvin — and a fully justified punishment for murdering George Floyd. But she also harbors "a vision, perhaps even a fantasy" of "a repentant Chauvin and a forgiving judicial system" that would result in a transformed Chauvin working in the Black community and speaking out against racism.
This "fantasy" is, in fact, encoded in the name "penitentiary." As envisioned by reformers such as Jeremy Bentham, who designed the model for modern prisons called the "panopticon," and championed by Quakers, imprisonment was a relatively humane alternative to corporal and capital punishment. In this view, prisoners living like monks and nuns in monastery "cells" would meditate on their crimes and seek redemption. The common nickname "the pen" sums up the whole sad history of this reform movement. Rather than treating convicted criminals more humanely, we pen them up like animals and forget about them — until they emerge, in many cases, worse for the experience.
This isn't inevitable. One of the many reasons for pride in my alma mater, Iowa's Grinnell College, is their almost two decades of working with the nearby Newton Correctional Facility in a program they call "Liberal Arts in Prison." I've listened to testimony about the success of this program, which offers a year of undiluted college-level courses to inmates. You can't miss the almost magical impact not only on the graduates of the program but on the faculty and students who provide the courses. During the pandemic, the program continued remotely, offering anthropology and other classes. In a recent Zoom panel, I heard a veteran of 18 years in prison say his first nine years were a dark and hopeless time—until he discovered the Grinnell program that transformed the remainder of his time.
Most of us live in denial that "but for the grace of god" we could have been the person under Derek Chauvin's knee. Even more of us deny to ourselves that we could have been in Derek Chauvin's shoes but for grace or, if you prefer, circumstance. At the heart of the idea of a "penitentiary" is the idea that while no human being is perfect, no human being is irredeemable.
