Tower of Babel AI

Our Incarceration Pandemic: Part 1

• Todd Francis

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Americans make up 25% of the global prison population.  We live in a virtual pandemic of U.S. citizens who live their lives in 6ft. x 8ft. cells.  Is this a crime against humanity or a strong commitment to keep law abiding citizens safe?  

On this episode we will talk about the real-time components, ambivalence and de facto-ambivalence, that make crime management in America an abysmal failure.  Then we will talk to a former gang member about his experiences, which have consumed more than half of his adult life.

#incarceration #prison #criminaljustice #rejuvenation #legalsystem #crime #communitysupport #addiction #recovery #illegaldrugs #gangviolence #massincarceration #parole #selfcare 



SPEAKER_01:

Hello everybody, welcome to this next episode of Tower Babel AI, the podcast where we in fact do challenge reality. How's the framework in which you see the world doing? Challenge it. Feed up some new info. See what your mind is doing. Today we're going to be talking about incarceration. I'm not going to say mass incarceration because we're going to let you make up your mind where and how that term should be used. We're going to be talking about is the voluminous way that people are in prison today. When one out of four people are people, one out of four people in prison globally are Americans. One out of four. It's not a police state we live in. It's not Russia in the 1970s. It's not China in the 1980s we live in. But yet we have a very serious problem here. There's a very important part of our dynamic, which involves a high level of people behind bars. There's classism, there's hatred, there is socioeconomic realities for a nation that isn't designed for full employment. There's human history, the human history of development of societies that is imperfect, that in this culture has caused a lot of people to be classed as beings that need to be removed from us and put in cells. So you have this malevolence and hatred, lack of concern, and then you also have ambivalence to all of this, aware of the crimes against humanity, or just aware of the excessive amount of people who are imprisoned, but not aware enough to speak about it, to talk to anyone about it, or even put it in your conscious mind. That's a sort of spiritual ambivalence. Does this affect your spirit? Knowing that so many people are in prison? Did the police intimidate you? Then there's de facto ambivalence, which is all of the things, all of the things that come together to produce a kind of stasis where nothing is done to alleviate the hard situation in which we live regarding imprisonment. So some of the key dimensions of de facto ambivalence, the first one would be public safety versus the effectiveness of incarceration. Imprisonment has a limited contribution to improving public safety. Crime rates and incarceration levels often do not correlate in a straightforward manner. So this conflict that's in our minds, public safety versus the effectiveness of higher incarceration, produces this de facto ambivalence. Another factor of de facto ambivalence will be how we're how crime is visible to us. That we the public were often exposed to media narratives that sensationalize crime and call for harsher punishments. Broad and sensational view of crimes that are being committed and the people and the persons that commit them. Stereotypical, non-actualized, unconcerned people for anything other than committing crime, destabilization for others, and evil. Really? With the day-to-day realities and hardships within prisons, in the legal system, and for people who have not yet been caught committing a crime or falsely accused, all of these realities remain out of sight and are very different than what we see in the media. The large in the media we see large abstractions of what crime is all about. And it makes us detached from human suffering and the social costs that are involved. So in the end, we have a poor definition of who these people are because of the way that we see them. Another point of ambivalence is the incoherence of the law. There's a gap between the law and the actual practice of enforcing it. 87% of drug-related crime is not violent, yet it's still enforced so strongly that it causes human suffering, disproportionate to the crimes committed. Mighty to water at a minimum. The enforcement is good and it's bad, and we're l willing to live with it. The conflict between the desire for justice and the actions that we take to enforce the law are unjust. Certainly in respect to the crimes that are being committed and the people committing them. Disparate forces need to be brought together to discuss things openly, those willing and concerned to do so. So now I want to bring on a friend, and I want to bring on someone who has experience with the criminal justice system, who's come out of it, making a lot of great strides, doing well for himself and for his community. Let's bring on Mark. Let's see what he has to say. So I'm here with Mark, who is a manager of a recovery center, substance use center. He's also a certified recovery coach. How are you doing, Mark? What up, Todd? Not too much. Doing well today. Now you're also um you support adults with mental health challenges at another facility. And you refurbish cars and promote parties, and you're also a Facebook influencer. Am I right? Yes, I do. I do a lot, Todd. I do a lot. He definitely keeps it moving. Definitely keeps your you're using your talents, that's for sure. And intellectual abilities. Now you've also you have spent some time incarcerated, right? In prison?

SPEAKER_00:

I certainly have. Over uh 12 years, in and out on the installment plan, as I like to call it. What does that mean? So uh basically, uh, you know, I started my um, I guess, criminal career around the age of 18. Um, you know, I was selling narcotics, um, using drugs at the time. Um, ended up catching, you know, my first charge at the age of 18 for sales of narcotics. Um you know, went to prison for a little bit, got out, and decided that I was pretty much going to do the same sort of thing over again, but just maybe in a different way and not get caught this time. And well, that didn't work so well. Um you know, there were multiple times throughout you know my first uh well, the last two decades where you know I would continuously repeat bad decisions. Um I was trying to reinvent the wheel, and it just simply wasn't working. And time and time again, you know, regardless of you know how the situation played out, the end result was always incarceration.

SPEAKER_01:

So I guess what was there anything was there anything ever exciting about it?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely, and you know, part of that I think is kind of what kept me uh going back to making those bad decisions, right? So a lot of the the choices and stuff uh you know that I was doing, there was a purpose behind it, right? It it fulfilled something for me. Um, starting off in my you know earlier years, I was kind of just looking for, you know, maybe social acceptance or praise, maybe you know, some of the stuff that I wasn't really getting at home in my family life. Um and so, you know, doing drugs, being in that sort of social circle, um, it gave me that acceptance, it gave me that that pleasure, that that that feeling of belonging that I was looking for. Um and then, you know, things kind of sort of progressed, and I, you know, I was using drugs on a regular basis. Uh and at first it was just kind of recreationally until you know it turned into more than that. Again, it fulfilled a purpose. Um, it gave me relief, it gave me pleasure, it made me fit in better in social circles. Um, and so even though like I knew what some of the consequences were, the benefits seemed to be greater to me at that time. And so I continued to repeat those same decisions and behaviors. Furthermore, like I kind of got accustomed to that lifestyle. There was something sort of exciting, I guess you could say, about you know, being in that atmosphere, being in the streets, uh, you know, hanging out in a trap house, making you know, handover fist money. That was sort of appealing to me. I I guess at that point in my life, I didn't really have any goals um that were outside of that. I really didn't know anything different or better. And so what I thought what I was doing, I was doing it the best that I could do. Um, and there was definitely something appealing to that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, and then also uh then substance use, did that get involved? I think you said that it did, your own.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. So I mean it did start out sort of as a recreational thing. Um you know, growing up, I lived in a single parent household. My mother was extremely strict, um, extremely demanding, very controlling. And so I didn't really have the option to really make a lot of choices on my own. Um, and because of that, I really didn't learn what consequences of bad decisions were. And so I ended up leaving my house, probably right around the age of 16. Uh, my mother caught me smoking cigarettes, and she said, either that crap is going or you're going, but I'm not having that in my house. And so I took option B and I ended up leaving, thinking I had all the answers. Um at that point, I I quickly realized that, well, not only did I not have all the answers, but it opened me up to a world where I could now make choices of my own. And at first, those choices seemed great. I thought I was living my best life. I thought, you know, this is what everybody has been doing, and I have just been missing out because I've been living this sheltered life that was controlled by my mother. Um, so okay, okay, so question.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, because you're you're you're doing a lot of good stuff right now, helping people, yourself, and uh just living a very positive life. Question is for you is what do you say to people out there who believe that rehabilitation is a waste of time and money, and maybe even wrong for people that have been in prison. What do you say to people like that?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, first of all, I laugh at them a little bit, and then maybe show them a picture of my mug shop and give them one of my business cards, which can completely negate their whole theory in the first place, right? And so, you know, a lot of people may say, well, you're just an exception. Um, and to an extent, I you know, I may agree to that. However, I think anybody is um capable of recovery to an extent. However, people tend to think that recovery is supposed to look a certain way. And one thing I've learned, um, not only from my own experience, but just from working in this field, is that there's probably about as many pathways to recovery as there are people. So my recovery path may look completely different to the next person's recovery path. But as long as I'm living a good life, that I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm thriving, I'm surviving, and being a productive member of society, being a productive member to my family, that's what recovery looks like. Um, and there's a lot of things I think that go into recovery. Um, people, I think a lot think that you could just go into a treatment program and they're gonna fix you up in 30 days, and when you leave, like everything's gonna be great again. That's not the case. Recovery has so many different aspects. It's it's like a bicycle wheel. If you take one of those spokes out of it, you're not gonna be riding right. And when I say spokes, I'm kind of referring to like, you know, that that's a social life, um, therapy, um, groups, um getting involved in activities that are uh supportive, finding some sort of purpose in your life, whether it be a job, volunteering, having children, all those things combined together are what supports a person's recovery. And quite often we find that when people continuously relapse, um, they don't have a lot of those social those supports in their recovery. Those spokes are missing from their wheel.

SPEAKER_01:

And as far as um rehabilitation for people incarcerated, what do you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_00:

So for me personally, I mean, I don't wish incarceration on anybody, right? It's not a pleasurable experience as it's not meant to be. Um, but it's also not a very conducive environment to recovering. Um, there's a lot of negativity, um, a lot of just people in mindsets that you know you're surrounded with that don't really want to be productive, that don't want to change their behaviors. They're just serving their time and moving on. That being said, though, I literally had to be removed from my environment in order to make the decision to change. Left alone to my own means, I would have never come to that decision on my own. I was so caught up in my addiction and the world that I was living that I couldn't get out of it. I literally had to be placed in prison to gain that clarity. Once I gained that clarity, I was then able to make the conscious decision, like, hey, you need to start doing something different now. Um, and while there are, you know, resources in prison, they are somewhat limited. A lot of the programmatic stuff that they offer, um, I think is done, you know, so they can check a box and say, yeah, we gave them programming, we tried to rehabilitate them. Um, but it kind of really lacks in substance. And so my recovery, it it was really kind of self-guided in prison. I had a I made a choice, and then I pursued that by any means necessary, whether it was signing up for school, going to some of these programs and stuff that they offered. But really, it just came down to my mindset and just wanting something different for myself.

SPEAKER_01:

I I see that um it may be just wanting too much from society, but to me, it seems as though kids, youths, there should be more interdiction before that happens, like even from police, the courts. Do you feel like you were giving any support prior to really becoming a regular law-breaking person? Did you think that the society could have done something more for you to sort of guide you, guide you to a better path?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, as a matter of fact, like I remember my first arrest very clearly. Um, Crankman, I was putting myself into um some positions where you know I knew I was doing wrong. However, the police officers that ended up arresting me arrested me for charges that I didn't commit. They um filed police reports and wrote statements that were completely untrue and fabricated. Why? Why? Um, I I think you know, their duty in their mind was to get a criminal off the street um by any means necessary. Their their long-term goal wasn't let's fix this individual so they don't continue to commit crimes on the street. It's just let's just do our job and get rid of this individual for now. Um, there was really, I don't think there's really much you know follow-through on the thought on that one, right? And so basically I was arrested by any means necessary. Now I get introduced into a system um that really isn't designed for rehabilitation. I'm put into you know this negative, hostile environment as an 18-year-old man and expected to come out of that situation a better person. The thing is, I don't really know where that expectation comes from because everything inside of prison and leading up to it doesn't support somebody living a happy, healthy, normal life. It doesn't provide the tools and stuff that that person needs. In fact, it does quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so um then what do you think someone could have done to possibly guide your way? What just possibly, what could someone have done to help out?

SPEAKER_00:

I would have I I personally would have loved to see, you know, whether it be a court or um, you know, just members of my community, maybe just trying to get me that help. Um it would have been great if maybe they, you know, offered me some sort of program or treatment or something to, you know, help me. The reason I was committing crimes was because I was addicted, not because I actively just wanted to commit crimes. Those crimes were done out of desperation caused by addiction. Until you solve that underlying problem of the addiction, I don't care when you leave prison, it could be six months, a year, five years, you still have that same problem that you went into prison with when you leave out, if nothing was done to address it.

SPEAKER_01:

Seems like there's so many, and there's like a lack of concern out there too. Like I was reading, I think half of the half of the half of the people who go to jail, there's something drug-related, but only 10% of those drug-related crimes are violent crimes. Um what about in prison? In prison, how did that work in terms of dealing dealing with people who you know had were uh violent versus most people who weren't? How how does that work exactly?

SPEAKER_00:

So prison's definitely an interesting place. And real quick, just to add to your statistics, too. I um I believe I I don't quote me on this exact number, but I believe it's about 90% of incarcerated individuals, regardless of what their crime was, also suffers from um substance abuse and addiction issues.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, I believe it was up to 90%, which kind of says a lot, right? Um so what was your question again for me, Todd?

SPEAKER_01:

Just dealing with there's so many different types of people that are in prison.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's definitely an adapting period, right? Um, because you always hear people tell you too, you know, well, when you go in jail, don't drop the soap and always, you know, just punch the biggest guy first so nobody messes with you. And to an extent, you know, some of that is true. Um as an 18-year-old uh white boy inside of the prison systems. Um there were definitely points where I felt that you know individuals in there were trying to take advantage of me or look for weaknesses. Um, you know, prison is a game of survival of the fittest. A lot of people in there don't have uh, you know, family members sending them money, uh any type of communication or social support. And they've been living a certain lifestyle for a certain way and taking advantage of other people just to be able to get ahead for themselves. That you know, this follows through right into the prison environment. Um and so you do have a lot of individuals in there that are prone to violence, right? This is the life that they have been living for a long time. Um and so you go into that environment and you you almost you do have to put on somewhat of a facade. You have to um stand your ground and have boundaries. And sometimes that means physical altercations, whether or not that would have been, you know, your initial reaction or not, sometimes that's the only reaction that actually works.

SPEAKER_01:

Who who did you fall in with then racially?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so I was actually a gang member uh starting in I want to say 1998. Um, and so when I was in prison, I was kind of accepted by uh my family at the time, which was the gang. And that did come with a certain like level of protection, so to say. But there were also times where you know, me as the white boy, they would send to go on these missions, and uh, you need to go uh you know handle that and you need to go and do this. And there's really no regard for you know how consequences might affect you or anybody else. So black black gang you're with? Uh black Puerto Rican, white, so I was part of the Los Alidos at the time, um, which is predominantly uh Spanish, um, but they do accept members that are black, white, and everything in between. Okay. And surprisingly enough, prison the prison population has changed quite a bit. Um, you know, a long time ago, it used to be predominantly um black and Puerto Rican. Would you believe it if I told you that the majority of inmates are now of the white Caucasian race? I wouldn't be surprised.

SPEAKER_01:

It's yeah. Yeah. All right. Um so when you were when you first started to realize that you might be on the other side of the law, like what were you telling yourself?

SPEAKER_00:

Um I would justify it um a lot of times. Um especially throughout my addiction, right? There was there was the the major component of it all was was desperation. Um I I I by my choices, I put myself into situations where I was desperate. I either needed money for drugs, for rent, to eat, whatever. So most of my crimes, they were really in the pursuit of getting money because I had none, and I had an addiction that was crawling on my back that I needed to feed.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh how do because you you're a manager of a uh substance use facility now, and other other things going on. How do you what does that how what does that do for you in your work, life experience? Um, how does that help? Or just your talent, life experience, your your history, all that. What what do you think that brings to you in your work now?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think so. This is uh it's really probably the biggest component of my life right now because it gives me purpose. Um you know, the first, well, not the first, but from between the ages of 18 and almost 40. I thought that was a chapter of my life that I needed to forget about, that I needed to put behind me, and just start from scratch. Um, it was looked almost like like it was a waste of time, right? I now get to take that period of time in my life that used to be a very kind of dark place, and I get to use that for a purpose. I use it every day with every interaction. It is now been the foundation upon which I stand on. I wouldn't be able to do the jobs I do today effectively had I not experienced that trauma and that pain.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so the public they don't always react to this kind of thing that well. So when you get into your story, um substance use and incarceration or whatever it is you're talking about, um, what what do you do to help to educate people who are not really f familiar with this issue or used to being accepting of people who have had struggles?

SPEAKER_00:

So I think a lot of it just it has to go to um education, right? I think um a lot of people we have our own bias and we place judgment based upon what we know, um, based upon our own experiences. Um we may have had a family member that stole from us uh because they were getting high, or you know, we might have had a father that went to jail all the time. And so we take those experiences and we project them on other people. And for a long time, and even still today, you know, addiction was kind of looked at as a like a moral failure or a weakness, or that you know, individuals just aren't um motivated, and we have the choice to change if we want. But a lot of individuals don't really understand, you know, the brain chemistry that goes uh behind all that. Um the the role that individual trauma plays in addiction, the way that the brain works once it is actually addicted to something, and where you know rational thought processes no longer work the way that they're supposed to. Um so I think a a big portion of it is really just educating individuals so they can then form a new opinion based upon educated stance.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, one more little you know, you're not just working, you're doing more than a lot of other people are in their past. You also you have a side hustle happening with the cars. How did you learn to break down a car and put it all back together? You are you a genius? Did you what's going on with that?

SPEAKER_00:

No, listen, it it came out of necessity, God, right? Like again, it came out of that desperation. When I was younger, I didn't have a father around, I didn't have money, I barely could even afford a car. So when the car broke down, I didn't have any money to go and pay somebody to fix it. So I learned to figure it out on my own, right? Um, again, just out of necessity. And so it just kind of um, you know, it's some skills that I sort of picked up along the way, and I'll I still continue to learn. Um, you know, working on the car I'm working on now. I'm watching YouTube videos and I'm just figuring it out.

SPEAKER_01:

You are doing a lot, you're doing a lot. And it's a lot of uh a lot of time and energy you're putting into it. How how how you how you holding up?

SPEAKER_00:

Um be honest with you, it's a it's definitely a little bit stressful, juggling, you know, the work life, um, all the other extracurricular activities and stuff I do, and you know, just kind of dealing with uh, you know, stuff that happens in your personal life. Like I'm dealing with a mother that's aging right now and stuff, right? Um, and so I I really have to make an effort to practice self-care. Um, and sometimes that means just turning my phone off or you know, having healthy boundaries and telling people, hey, no, I'm sorry, I I can't help you with that right now. Um and just doing stuff that's like enjoyable for me to to to kind of maintain that balance. Balance has been absolutely important. Um, it's something I never really had before and has kind of been a little bit difficult to manage, but I I think I've kind of got a grasp on it right now.

SPEAKER_01:

You know. What nothing for love for you, man. You're gonna be just fine. We're gonna bring you back on again, if that's all right. And and and see how you're how how it's going. I'm sure you're gonna have absolutely Glum reports again soon. So Alright, appreciate you, my brother. Appreciate you too. Talk to you soon. Alright, my man. Take care. Bye. So much talent out there, and he's fortunate to be able to use be using some of it. And the people around him all look and understand that that's a really intelligent, talented person that they're that they're looking at. And do anything for you, shirt off his back type of person. Quiet is kept. Probably wouldn't have people to know that, but he is. So I don't know. Hats off to Mark. It was a pleasure speaking with him. Get to work with him quite a lot, so it's uh that's uh more power to me. Uh hope all's well with you today, and we will see you next time on Tower of Babel AI.