Penal Enhancement

No hemming and hawing today - this post speaks of assholes. We begin with Jack Abramoff. Here's an article (via HuffingtonPost and ThinkProgress) regarding his interview in Vanity Fair. Check out the quote at the bottom: "Let me teach English, history, music. Or let me sweep floors at the reservation. Instead you'll be paying to feed me to sit in a jail." Frankly, I don't want this guy teaching English or music and especially not history. ("Lesson One: Influence and Power are parthenogenetically derived from Money") It's the reservation comment I laughed at; he swindles Indians out of millions and thinks they'll be willing to forgive? To let him live in their community? Achilles Abramoff - nice sounding, no? Abramoff is right in one respect: it would be stupid to throw him in prison. It's stupid to throw anyone in prison - the American penal system is an aural double entendre of the worst kind. None of this is news to anyone likely reading this blog. But Abramoff might be on to something beyond the scope of his glib comments.
Andy Fastow, former CFO of Enron, is currently testifying against his old buddies Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling about bilking employees and consumers out of millions of dollars. Fastow has already pleaded guilty to a number of charges in exchange for reduced sentences and delivering his bosses to the state. Personally, I'd like to see them all get a wicked punitive boot. Abramoff has provided me an idea: all these white-collar criminals should be punished by putting them to work on Indian reservations. Nothing cruel, mind you - many of these men are in their 40s and 50s, after all - but there are few places in America in need of infrastructure more than Indian reservations. (South Dakota, anyone?) A 9:00 to 5:00 routine of mixing cement and laying down good roads, building better houses than tin-covered lean-tos, and laying cable for electricity and internet wouldn't be a bad start. In the process, we keep these white-collar criminals under the jurisdiction of Indian security hired and trained by the most upstanding and noble of our police forces. (The movies Crash and Trainng Day notwithstanding, I do believe our law enforcement tries to adhere to good ethics) Of course, many of these deposed CEOs or Wall Street hucksters are unlikely to know what makes cement harden, let alone how to mix it or pour the stuff. So, we teach them! I cannot for the life of me understand why prisons focus on brutal negative reinforcement as much as they do; don't let the prisoners work out, just make them work! Since many of the white-collar criminals stole away with millions that they get to keep (I'm looking at you, Lay, and with more than a touch of malice) let's make them reinvest that money in communities they then help build.
Sure, my rants are grounded in a sort of Darwinistic utopia in which everyone suddenly realizes that to do good for the community is to do good for oneself, but this isn't way out of line, is it? Prison reform needs to happen as a pincer attack - the worst prisons need to be turned into decent, clean centers of rehabilitation and the best prisons (where guys like Fastow and Abramoff invariably go) need to be made slightly less comfortable and provide more tangible benefit. You really think Andy Fastow is going to put up a fuss when you tell him it's either ten years with some malcontent nicknamed the Diddler as his roommate or drywalling on a mesa in New Mexico? I don't.