Crass Incarceration

Posted on by J. Nelson

Eligibility for a second chance begins with being taken seriously.

Crass
• adjective: lacking in discrimination and sensibility, blundering, asinine

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?__Where Excuses Go to DieOkay, here it is: the mentally ill in California prisons are far more likely to be subjected to harsher treatment and longer sentencing than other inmates. That’s a criminal lack of discrimination and sensibility. Of all the inmates who occupy facilities up and down the state, roughly 30% are mentally ill, making the California Department of Corrections a de facto mental health treatment provider. Now there’s your blundering and asinine.

According to the Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, “The average sentence imposed on defendants suffering from mental illness is longer than the average sentence imposed on defendants who do not have mental health diagnosis but who committed the same crime.”

Shane Bauer of Mother Jones claims there are ten times more mentally ill people behind bars than in state hospitals, and many of those inmates have severe illnesses like schizophrenia. Furthermore, solitary confinement can make it harder or even impossible for the untreated mentally ill to re-enter society. Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel for the ACLU National Prison Project says “it’s a risk that can’t be condoned. They come out such ruined human beings. It has essentially harmed them in such a substantial way they can’t ever return to the community or society.”

The Coldest Iron_Where Excuses Go to DieThe passage of California’s Prop 47 was important to me personally because of the smiley Nicaraguan we called “Hey,” to whom my book, Where Excuses Go to Die, is dedicated. Hey’s chapter is one I read a lot at book signings and other events, because even without shocking statistics it powerfully demonstrates how narrowly the public has been trained to recognize what prison and prisoners look like. Where Excuses Go to Die exists to defy that recognition. Read more

Fitness & Stuff with Jimmy

Posted on by J. Nelson

I abhor the pretend comfort of gyms. My alternative is much worse. 

PLENTY OF CLOWNS TO MAKE THE ROUNDSWeekday mornings, my wife and I are up at 5:50, wishing we could hide behind our excuses. Our destination is a nearby gymnastics academy, where we attend workout classes that are held before the facility opens for training. The hour-long sessions are similar to those at other fitness bootcamps, yet ours seems to lack an expectation of polite behavior – and that works for us just fine. We sneer at the uniformity, the schadenfreude, and the peacockish know-nothings that inhabit the world of franchise fitness.

Kooks of a different stripe are the smart-asses our alternate choice tends to attract. We get misfits, irregulars, and the godless.

Fitness buzzwords and cheerful slogans don’t get thrown around our class, but insults, gripes, and taunts certainly do. Some of us do manage to refrain from using the word “retard,” which is interesting, because as ethnically, culturally, and socially diverse as we are, it’s the only taboo word no one seems willing to reconsider. And nothing beats “fatso” for the most commonly heard.

And it’s still better than a gym membership. Read more