Monday, November 20, 2017

“Delusional people build castles in the air; Schizophrenics move into them and pay rent!” - Anonymous


From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
 19 November
LIFE IN PRISON, PART TWO
Let’s look at the position of the inmates in my prison classroom a little closer.
Almost by definition he’s young so has virtually no perspective. So when he eventually hits the streets he’ll end up getting locked up again - and think it's no big deal. After all, as they say, "everybody's doing it." (He DOESN'T think "only losers are doing it" because his friends are included, and they're no more losers than are yours and mine, right?) Anyway, he’s back where he’s come to feel comfortable - life on the streets, frankly, is actually scarey since it forces him to provide just about everything for himself (food, shelter, a future, everything) whereas back inside prison he can rely on three hots and a cot.
So the process is launched (without him realizing it); he gets, say, a two-year sentence, then gets paroled and inside the space of a baseball season either gets a new beef or violates his parole and he’s back for 18 months. Next thing he knows he’s 56 and, looking back, he counts up a total of 9 months he’s spent on the streets since he was 15.
In short, he’s going to do a life sentence, drip-drip-drip, on the installment plan.
Talk about
delusional!

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