Obama Prison Visit A Reason For Optimism
By Derek Gilna
For those
facing long, or perhaps life sentences, it is often hard to develop or maintain
a positive mental attitude about anything.
Negativity and hopelessness can easily creep into your psyche when
proposed sentencing reforms do not address your particular offense. However, for
even the most hopeless prisoners, the President’s scheduled visit to El Reno
Prison, in Oklahoma
Finally,
the President has begun to address issues of concern to his core political constituency,
mass incarceration. Although the
American criminal justice system is clearly racist, as pointed out by former
Attorney General Eric Holder, its injustices are not limited just to people of
color but to economically disadvantaged or abused individuals of all races..
This dysfunctional system can only exist as
long as American society is ignorant of its existence and impact on their daily
lives, and realizes that this problem can no longer be ignored. Visits like
this one will only draw needed attention from members of the general public and
the mass media. The buzz is growing.
I’m sure the BOP
is NOT looking forward to this visit, even though you know they will clean up
that prison (and put palatable food in the chow hall for at least one day) and
do their best to keep the President and his handlers from seeing how prisoners
really live. Nobody in the far-flung, poorly
supervised BOP likes to see their boss come
to town, especially not the big boss.
That’s because institutions like
the BOP are not used to doing business in
daylight, and do their best to hide behind “correctional necessity” in avoiding
publicity. (Only recently, PLN won a
major lawsuit compelling the BOP to answer
FOIA requests for prisoner lawsuit data doing back TEN
YEARS.)
Most importantly to the
incarcerated, both House and Senate Justice Subcommittees have promised prompt
hearings on pending legislation for prisoner relief, and my prediction is that
the news out of Washington will only get better because of the political
momentum beginning to build. And once
that train of prisoner relief builds up some speed and the public learns the ugly
truth about what has been hidden from their view for so long, the American
criminal justice system will never be the same again. Let me know when you are ready to punch your
ticket.
Derek Gilna, 113 McHenry #173, Buffalo
Grove , IL
dgilna1948@yahoo.com
