It turns out, we’re the barbarians. It’s not often the mainstream corporate media broadcasts something so powerful it shatters preconceptions and calls into question conventionally accepted narratives. But on April 3rd, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a segment about how prisoners are treated in Germany that did just that. A man identified as the head of one of their state prison systems said two things that were eye-opening, shocking, really, because they simply could not be uttered by an American prison bureaucrat. The first, after being pushed by the correspondent, was, “No, the punishment is being in prison, there is no other punishment.”
Listening to this from inside a California prison cell serving life without the possibility of parole, a sentence that is literally against the law in Germany and all the rest of Europe, I had to catch my breath. The whole edifice of the prison industrial complex in this country, all of it, is based on the bogus premise that endless punishment, pointless suffering, and the ever increasing application of sanctions, will result in some kind of better outcome. Or, at least that’s the sales pitch to the public. The truth has always been that brutalizing people never results in better outcomes. It succeeds only in keeping prison cells full of broken people. Which brings me to the more profound of the two things said.
In response to a question about the philosophy of the German prison system, the official stated, “We believe that the lives of prisoners are as valuable as anyone’s life.” Now, as long term prisoners know, prison bureaucrats in this country, when cornered and trying to explain the latest outrage, occasionally say words to this effect, but we know they don’t mean it. Actions always speak louder than words. How we are treated, how our families are treated, how we are in reality, just things used to pad payrolls and elect the demagogues, all prove how little value our lives actually hold.
In the German prisons, the prisoners are not treated as things, but as human beings. They are assumed to possess humanity, to have a right to dignity and privacy, to be valuable in other words. Just in the short 17 minutes or so of the 60 Minutes report, it was quite obvious the words were backed up by actions – and results. German prisoners are much less likely to re offend after release- something that should not be shocking. The next day on the yard, I was talking with a group of my fellow prisoners, all sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, all forced to endure the daily abuse of life in an American prison; an abuse that will only end when we die. One of them said this, “You think of the Germans, you think of Hitler and concentration camps like they’re a bunch of barbarians. We’re the barbarians.” His words were no less profound than that German prison official.
As we reflected on the report, another thing became clear, all of us came away from it depressed. We’ve all done the best we could to make amends, to become better men, to accept responsibility; all of the steps demanded of us, a selective century and a half of American prison experience in that circle. But after watching that report, I think we came away feeling like we’ve been conned too. What if, instead of the narrative that’s been pounded into us at the business end of clubs and rifles pointed at our heads, we do have inherent value as human beings? What if our lives possess as much value as any other life, even if we’re guilty, even if we were adults when we committed the crimes that put us in prison.
And what if, more to the point, our country’s stubborn insistence on mass incarceration, on imprisoning a larger share of its citizens than any other ever in the history of the world; of its rejection of the growing consensus of all the rest of the democracies that brutalizing prisoners is both impractical and morally wrong, is in fact wrong? What if it turns out we’re the barbarians? I can only say this from deep inside the enforcement arm of our government: it is long past time to fundamentally, radically change the treatment of prisoners in this country. This is Kenneth P. Hartman, executive director of the Other Death Penalty Project from inside California’s prison system.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
