What is the current relationship between wrongdoing and its reconciliation? These days the question is dwarfed by other larger issues endemic in the United States prison system. Disparities in rates of imprisonment based on race and class lines; cyclical patterns of criminality and habitual offense coupled with increasingly severe sentencing. These issues scar the face of the U.S. judicial system, so they are easy to point to. They are surface injustices. While it is important to point out the depravity of this situation, it avoids discussion of the very nature of imprisonment, of justice.
Collectively we would agree that to take a man's life, to prevent him from making so called 'free-choices' is of the worst aspects of human society. A sort of Machivellian inevitability that arises when human interests compete, and some are born into unfortunate circumstances where crime is a necessity for survival. Or where the only leaders, role-models or guardians are criminal. The mystique of the criminal reaches into all corners of a society however, from Thousand Oaks to Columbia Heights and Silicon Valley.
(unfinished)
(unfinished)
In a recent NPR report about organized dance routines orchestrated by Filipino prisoners at the Cebu Provincial and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu City, central Philippines, one inmate commented on this strikingly odd form of prison yard activity. "Before the dancing, our problems were really heavy to bear. Dancing takes our minds away from our problems. Our bodies became more healthy. As for the judges, they may be impressed with us, seeing that we are being rehabilitated and this could help our case. We are being rehabilitated in a good way." (" Filipino Inmates' Video Is a 'Thriller' on the Web". National Public Radio. August 9, 2007. Article available here ) This story was a marked contrast to more conventional "corrections" and interesting at least.
