Hold the Sheriff Accountable Event – 8/24

August 22, 2019 by J. Nelson

If you’re like me and you suffer from severe voter’s remorse for having chosen Alex Villanueva to replace Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell – or if you’d like to learn why so many Angelenos do – join us on Saturday, August 24, from 1–3:30 pm, at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

ACLU SoCal, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Community Coalition, LA Voice, Youth Justice Coalition, and others, are hosting a community discussion on the 33rd Sheriff of LA County. It will be an informative, thought-provoking forum on Villanueva, the country’s largest sheriff’s department and its attendant controversies.

And that sure is putting it mildly for a department referred to as the largest mafia in the U.S.

Apple’s Grapple

February 29, 2016 by J. Nelson

Creation of Homeland Security not enough?

Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day?

Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?

Did D.A.R.P.A. go dark?

Has the Patriot Act pooped out?

Nope. Nor have the corporations and power brokers of the surveillance state yet tapped out American taxpayers.

In other words, the FBI does not need the Genius Bar.

From Feds to street-corner cops and home security companies, law enforcement has more than enough control, technology, and boots-on-the-ground for continued counterterrorism success. And probably lots of fun civil liberties secrets, too.

The FBI has all the tools it needs and plenty more to keep American citizens safe. And when I say “safe,” I mean relatively safe, just as we’ve been since September, 2001. Stuff will happen; that’s just the trajectory of history, especially when we’ve been messing around with it as much as we have. But in trying to force Apple to write new software that will help them unlock an iPhone belonging to the perpetrator of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, the Bureau is overstepping its constitutional bounds. Apple worries that, if they comply, anyone who can grab or mimic their software will have access to every confidence Americans hope to keep electronically secure. Read more

A Felon, Just Like Me

February 13, 2016 by J. Nelson

Having written fundraiser remarks for disgraced LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, and having been big-bro bear-hugged by him after confessing to teleprompter typos, it’s hard to hate the man who ran a law enforcement mafia.

He hugged me because he was relieved to be offstage. Fifty-cent words weren’t easy for Baca, I’d been warned, and this was a big night. Just before he’d taken the podium, I realized I’d failed to yank one word in particular, and sure enough he flubbed it. Regardless of how I felt about his Men’s Central Jail deputies — or anything else related to that American flag-wrapped night at the Beverly Hilton — I was the show writer. I had to tell him it was my mistake, not his. Read more

Prison Escape Powerball

January 29, 2016 by J. Nelson

Welcome to Apocalypse Hoosegow 10, the Lotto jackpot of potential prison escape movies (and the impossibly straight faces of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department).

Man, this story has got it all – and it ends in the parking lot of novelty grocery store, Whole Foods.

Killer convicts chipping their way through steel and concrete – check! Laughably low estimates of escaped prisoner capabilities – check! Brutal cellblock battle to distract guards – check! Cougar-teacher helping misunderstood love interest – check! Tied together bed sheets and socks and stuff – check! Months in the making, mistake-free master plan – check! Violent terror-inmates on the loose in conservative county – check! FBI dudes elbowing local badge bumblers outta the way – check! Adam-12-era hoosegow gettin’ last laugh on OC budget dorks – check! Incredibly straight-faced cop brass asking for public help in catching penis-severing Muslim blowtorch monster – check! check! check!

Ooh, and don’t forget: District Attorney’s office infighting – check! Unauthorized D.A. office statements made public – check! Open criticism – check! Gorilla-goons scratching their heads at escape hole – check! Magic gnats flying out of inmates mouths like in The Green Mile – ok, not that, but Range Rover-driving, Islamophobic blondes blessed with new hero – checkity check! Read more

De-institutionalization (and your Tax Dollars)

January 16, 2016 by J. Nelson

Some see de-institutionalization as prison reform’s black hole. We neither think about nor understand it much, until we see how much it can swallow.

Yet redirecting, rather than just recycling, offenders begins and ends with the most common form of second chance behavioral therapy of all: showing individuals the potential in themselves they can’t yet see. I’m certainly a product of it, and there are countless other second chance cases even more deserving of the right mentor than I was.

In such an inexcusably crowded prison system as California’s, wringing Yard life from offenders can devour solar systems of resources, and profoundly institutionalized individuals are difficult people to be around on a good day. So for both plucky and grizzled corrections professionals working with offenders and parolees, resolve and past re-entry successes are crucial. So, too, are faith and funding – or at least the delivery of funds previously promised. Read more

“Rape, Riots, and Rotten Food”

April 23, 2015 by J. Nelson

Rape, Riots, and Rotten Food – Relearning Life Behind Bars

The sooner the public learns that it’s been chumped by the media into thinking it knows what offenders look like, the sooner the heart and humanity that also exist behind bars can be tapped in an effort to redirect –not recycle– offenders. And whether it’s the people themselves that matter to you or the countless billions of taxpayer dollars we can save by fixing this problem, it’s about time we get started.

And what do I propose? As a former inmate of the California Department of Corrections myself, my mission is to help change the public’s misperception that all inmates are illiterate, tattooed, Nazi-worshiping, meth-mouthed man-rapists. This is what Where Excuses Go to Die is all about, defying the caricatures and stereotypes that make it easier for us to believe that incarcerating our way out of crime is viable. Read more

Daughter Ignored

November 26, 2014 by J. Nelson

Happy Gratitude Awareness Day; please consider a Turkey Day re-post

Excuses, Dishonesty, and Tragedy
A daughter’s collect call from jail interrupts Thanksgiving dinner

Originally posted, Saturday, November 30th, 2013

To look at Everett and Ella, you’d never know they’re the parents of a troubled, incarcerated daughter. They’re both successful in careers they love and they both espouse the family values with which they were raised, albeit modernized ones. Their home, where my wife and I were guests for Thanksgiving dinner, sits on a nice street in a neighborhood just about any set of young parents could happily work with.

When the phone rang the air at the table thickened slightly, as if a fly had entered the airspace. If the fly knows what’s good for it, it had better not land. A second ring offered a perspective on what it’s like to be the fly, buzzing in during dinner, which for Everett and Ella is a consistently early evening affair.

It was their old-school land-line ringing, and because, like the rest of us, they live and work by their iPhones, that meant that whoever was being ignored was family. Who else, besides mom and dad, first dials a land line these days? Regardless, ring number three provided satisfaction in the parental example they were setting for their four-year-old boy: no matter who’s buzzing around, during dinner, nobody touches the phone or the television. Read more

When There Are No More Holocaust Survivors

February 24, 2014 by J. Nelson 1 Comment

None of us know life without living, breathing Holocaust survivors

I’m far from a historian — or even all that well educated — but I don’t need a degree to wonder how the tools and materials used to teach people about the Holocaust will change when no survivors remain to tell their stories.

The easy answer is film, video, family, Shoah Foundation histories, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, but none of these can match the power of personal interaction with a death camp survivor. There is no experience in the world like simply being in the same room with someone who has lived and breathed such a range of human nature, who has faced such evil incarnate and, well, survived.

While you yourself may never have gone out of your way to speak or even listen to a Holocaust survivor, until now we’ve all at least lived with the ability to do so. Taking advantage of the opportunity doesn’t make us better people, but it is an addition to one’s soul. And now our chances to interact with survivors are narrowing – too quickly.

Remembering Joe Strummer – August ’52 – December ’02

December 22, 2013 by J. Nelson

Strummer was a rock ‘n roll hero tailor-made for a sinner like me.

“The toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that’s much tougher than beating someone up. That’s what I call tough.”

“When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don’t learn nothing…”

“I’d define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.”

Joe Strummer – August 21, 1952 – December 22, 2002

Check out Jail Guitar Doors, an organization created “in the spirit of justice and public service” to honor the life of Joe Strummer, to bring music and other educational and vocational programs to inmates, and to raise awareness for prison reform issues.

The Year I Drove Around with “FUCKER!” Carved into my Door

April 9, 2012 by J. Nelson 1 Comment

A whole year! Couldn’t go anywhere without catching people’s double-takes and obliging demands for backstory. This is what my “get character or become one” philosophy is made of. I didn’t have the character to resist cheating on my girlfriend, so I became – for about a year – the jerk with “FUCKER!” carved into the door of his Jeep Cherokee.

At the time I had no idea what any of it meant, other than that I’d been caught and my girlfriend’s response was excessive and crazy. It took a while for me to get a clue. But from that year behind the wheel my biggest takeaway turned out to be a giveaway – and you’re reading it. Read more

Creation of Homeland Security not enough? Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day? Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?