Editorial:
One
Less
Prisoner
in
America
8/28/03
Phillip S. Smith, Drug War Chronicle Editor, [email protected], 8/27/03 I buried my younger brother today. He died in prison in South Dakota a few months short of freedom. Bradley Brent Smith was 46 when he died, and from the time he was a teenager, he was in and out of prison. The trajectory of his life, its sorrows and its joys, was intensely personal, but like all our lives, his was shaped by social currents greater than himself. In a kinder, gentler society, it is unlikely that Brad would have seen so many years wasted behind bars. His criminal record was a yard long, yet his offenses were not those of a dangerous criminal, but those of a man who developed a real problem with alcohol as grew older, drifting in and out of prison. He was first introduced to the tender mercies of the US criminal justice system not for any crime at all -- his "offense" was to be a child whom his parents couldn't control, an "incorrigible child." The state of South Dakota, in all its wisdom, decided the best thing for Brad was to go to reform school. He learned from that experience, but the things he learned were not exactly what the state had in mind. When he was 18, he made his first trip to prison. His crime? Selling a $25 bag of weed to a narc. After that, he never really escaped the clutches of the criminal justice system. Probation and parole violations kept him returning to jails and prisons, including such "offenses" as violating curfew or being caught drinking. And he began picking up new charges, a series of DUIs and reckless driving charges, drunk and disorderly, and the like. More jail, more prison. And the occasional real crime, always involving alcohol. He got drunk and stole a motorcycle once; he only made it 50 yards before he drove the bike into a ditch and passed out. Back to prison again. And the charge that has kept him in and out of prison for the last 12 years, a 1991 burglary conviction in Florida, was another drunken misadventure. The Florida conviction is worth talking about. He got a five-year prison sentence, which, with Florida's good time statutes, he completed in about 18 months, but he also received a probation sentence to be served upon his release. He left Florida for his home state of South Dakota, where he would work for awhile before being arrested for another alcohol-related offense. Throughout the '90s, whenever Brad got in trouble here, the state of Florida dragged him back to sit in a stinking county jail for a few months. In 1999, Brad got another DUI and served two years in South Dakota. But Florida wanted him again, dragged him back, and this time, re-sentenced him -- to more time than his original sentence. After two years in the Florida gulag, he managed to get transferred to a South Dakota prison, where he died, still doing time for Florida. The behavior of the state of Florida, and sentencing Judge Jack Johnson in Daytona Beach, seems inexplicable. Brad had moved 2,000 miles away, had no intention of ever returning to the state, and was punished for his new offenses by the state of South Dakota. Yet Florida insisted on dragging him back repeatedly, and Judge Johnson insisted on tacking on a new prison sentence. Florida's prisons are bursting at the seams, Gov. Jeb Bush is seeking $66 million for an additional 4,000 prison beds, and drug and alcohol treatment has been cut so that is available at only four of the 55 prisons that make up the Florida gulag. The way Florida dealt with my brother helps explain the roots of its prison crisis. This mindless turning of the wheels of justice, blindly grinding millions of Americans beneath them, costs big money. Florida, like the other states and the federal prison system, somehow comes up with the bucks to build and fill more prisons, but it does so at the expense of treatment, not to mention basic medical care. My brother, like tens of thousands of other prisoners, suffered from Hepatitis C. Florida did not treat him -- not sick enough, they said. (Of course, it will not treat those severely ill with Hep C, either -- too sick, they say.) But Hep C did not kill my brother, a ruptured aneurysm in his brain did. It may have been preventable. In the weeks before he collapsed, he repeatedly sought medical treatment from the prison for sudden severe headaches. He specifically asked for some sort of brain scan -- he got aspirin and Tylenol. A brain scan might have detected the aneurysm. If detected, it might have been possible to intervene surgically. We'll never know. What we can find out is what his prison medical records say. But the South Dakota Department of Corrections told me today that I would have to get a court order to see them. I will. And if the records show negligence or indifference, I will fight for justice -- not for my brother, but for those for whom it is not too late. My brother was not Everyman, or even Everycon. But his life and his interminable journey behind bars was representative of what has happened to a substantial number of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. They seek to make their way in a society that early on decided it had no place for them -- or more accurately, had only a prison cell. Three days before Brad died, the US Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics released figures showing that more than 5.6 million Americans either had been or still were in prison, and that if current trends continued more than 6.5% of Americans will go to prison at some point. (It is far worse for blacks and Hispanics than whites, of course. My brother is a white guy, but this is South Dakota and we have few minorities to oppress, though we do pretty well with the Sioux.) Dostoyevsky once wrote that you could judge the character of a society by how it treats its prisoners. I might add that you can also judge it by the number of its members it finds necessary to lock up. By either measure, what happens in the United States criminal justice system is a disgrace, a moral scandal. We lead the world in imprisoning our own. Where are those patriots who are always shouting "We're #1" now? My brother didn't die doing time on a drug charge, but drug charges played a huge role in his criminal career. The never-ending, never winnable war on drugs is a key part of the "tough on crime" policies that have ravaged this country since Richard Nixon, and it got my brother early. He was one of the millions arrested on drug charges in recent years, and some percentage of them have followed paths like his. And that is a true tragedy. I have been in prison myself -- on a marijuana charge -- and I have experienced for myself the mind-numbing sorrow, loneliness, and futility of prison life: the gradual falling away of girlfriends, wives, friends, and all too often, family; the severing of connections with any community; the despair, the depression, and hopelessness; the sheer cruel idiocy of prisons full of nonviolent offenders. In my case, I was old enough and mature enough emotionally and politically to turn the experience into one that steeled me instead of one that broke me. But too many other prisoners do not have those tools or life experiences. My brother certainly didn't when he went to prison at 18 over a bag of pot. I want you to know that Bradley Brent Smith was not, however, merely a prisoner. He was a welder, mechanic, and construction worker -- and by all accounts, a good one. He was an outlaw biker. After one prison stint, I invited him to come stay with me in Austin, and he spent most of the '80s happily there, riding with the Outlaws and Bandidos, fixing his bike (hey, it was a Harley!), and working and paying taxes. I'll always remember him, tattooed and long-haired, wearing his leathers and riding with his biker buddies through the Texas Hill Country, the roar of the massed choppers filling the air. He was in his element then. And like the rest of us, he wanted to love and be loved. He tried to be a family man, but that was tough, with alcohol wrecking some of his relationships and being gone to prison wrecking others. He left behind two young sons with his last serious other. I always accepted his collect phone calls, and he always talked about getting back to those boys. Now he won't get to. Now I take over for him. Little brother, it is a bitter thing that you died in prison. You were only a few months from finally being reunited with your boys. My heart breaks for you and for them. And for all the others who died alone behind bars, and for all those who will, especially those who never did anything to anybody, and their name is legion. Little brother, the work I do, I do for you. I'll miss you.
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