You want to keep someone in prison in America, ask anyone
familiar with Michigan’s parole board. They will tell you that any of these pat
constructions might do: “Doesn’t take responsibility… Shows no change… Shows no
remorse…” or the old stand-by, “Poses a threat to society.”
These responses uttered over and over, thousands of times,
continue to send prisoners and their families hurtling backward into America’s
prison system. And they are words not based upon facts, but rather dependent
upon a type of subjectivism that is devoid of substantive content. (If you’re going
to give a 66-year-old man like me another five years in prison, it should be
for substantial reasons.) They are words – words that carry such weight that
they effectively deny prisoners and their families the most precious commodity
America affords – freedom. That those words leave prisoners with little ability
to resist must challenge the notion whether this is truly the “Land of the
Free,” at all. And, considering no one steps forward to champion these most
deprived of Americans, it certainly calls into question whether this is the
“Home of the brave.”
This parole board routinely asks prisoners, “Have you
changed?’ The prisoner responds, “Yes.” How can a prisoner know if he has
changed when he has been in a controlled environment for the past 20 years,
shielded from the temptations (and corresponding emotions) that drove him to
prison? This is an example of a system that would keep a man imprisoned who
hesitates to answer that question, as I did. I hesitated because I wanted to be
careful to speak the truth.
The parole board, too, speaks the truth and then struggles
with that truth when it clashes with their official narrative. Of course, this
parole board gets “wide discretion,” which is code for a license to obfuscate,
cherry-pick, an even create auras of prescience, (which must convince the
public that the parole board hears things and sees things in defendants no one
else can hear or see.) In other words: They become unimpeachable. The problem
with that: In America, no one should be unimpeachable. That dubious distinction
must be reserved for despots in distant lands. Yet, watch how Americans cover
their own heads when others are denied their freedom.
Injustice is not a force of nature; it is a force of man.
John Brown did not stand up and rage at the moon. He stood up and raged at men
and their unjust laws. Harriet Tubman did not challenge earthquakes and
tornadoes. She challenged laws that said one man can own another man. The Michigan
legislature recently passed a law, and the governor signed it, that allows one
group – prosecutors and victims’ families – to appeal a parole board decision,
but the group most directly affected by that decision – the prisoner and his
family – cannot. In the face of such blatant injustice, where is the outrage
that should be in the DNA of all true Americans?
Where legislation is passed in America that insulates any
agency of the government from equal and accountability, then it, in itself, is
an open door to discrimination. Yet, what do Michiganians do about it? They
collect their paychecks, repair to their safe homes, and turn their backs to
these injustices; albeit, not before advising me to “conduct yourself well”
over the next five years in prison.
First, I do not conduct myself well because I am hoping to
get parole. I conduct myself because that is how I was raised. Second, at the
time my parole was denied, I had zero disciplinary points – a prime indicator
of “good conduct.” That is a real reason to parole a 66-year-old prisoner. But,
what does such good conduct matter to a parole board that prefers prolonged
incarceration?
This nation has lost its way, and with it, its soul. Where
are the men and women of guts in this America? Where are the John Browns and
Harriet Tubmans of today? Who are the Lincolns? Not you, not you, not you…
