Dear Joe,
Your column "Old Dogs and Hard Time" is the first piece I've seen that looks at the human consequences of getting put into a criminal category from which there is no redemption -- another Bageant gem! I can't compare my trivial sentence with what your friend and neighbor Stokes endures, but it drives home the point of what a profit center we felons have become.
On New Year's Day 2006, I celebrated by tagging a highway overpass, "Troops Out Now!" A couple citizens, eager to protect the homeland, got on their cell phones and before I knew it, five (count 'em) patrol cars, lights flashing, appeared behind my brother's pickup. A firefighter with a squeaky clean record, my brother was pretty nervous. But I'll shorten the narrative to assure folks he survived the strip search, the "spread 'em and cough" routine looking for small arms, and made it through the night without being raped, as I promised. After posting $3,000 bond and swearing we wouldn't become lifelong fugitives from justice, he noted that he'd met some "pretty decent guys," played some euchre, and signed a petition complaining of the jail's vile "food."
Since we were charged with two felonies each, including "possession of criminal tools" -- that would be the can of spray paint -- my brother was eager to plead to misdemeanors to avoid (a) losing his job and (b) losing his 22-year pension, which I guess is our legislature's way of making sure long-time public servants don't turn to crime in their golden years.
I decided to give my fellow citizens an opportunity to acquit based on my testimony against the war and their good consciences, but I started worrying when the jurors kept looking at their watches and my attorney "forgot" to explain jury nullification. With my description of the war apparently not horrific enough and a liberal Democrat judge not wanting to appear soft on terrorism, it was, as CIA chief George Tenet told Dubya, "a slam dunk." Guilty.
At sentencing the judge agreed with the painting contractor who testified for the state that it would cost $3,600 to paint over "Troops Out Now!" (reminding me once again I was in the wrong business), charged me something like $1,200 in fines and for the good prosecutor's time, plus two months electronically-monitored house arrest to assure the community's safety and a year's probation.
As the kindly probation agents attached my ankle bracelet, they informed me it came with a $40 "installation fee," and a $70 per month "monitoring fee" I later learned was shared with an Indiana company employing a bank of computers to monitor phone lines coming in from several states. The $30 I had in my pocket when arrested was $70 short of the nightly fee for enjoying the accommodations at the county jail. The collection agency still writes me for that one. My military service as a Navy Corpsman during the Viet Nam war and two terms on city council must have counted in my favor because I wasn't ordered to "drop urine" at weekly probation visits during house arrest and monthly ones thereafter. Lord knows how much "dropping urine" costs.
I began to wonder if there wasn't something more than simple justice at work!
But I cannot complain. I transgressed, was found guilty and am now apparently rehabilitated -- if indeed that's possible without finding God in jail. And I learned a couple important lessons: (1) the criminal justice system is more of a "poor people's control system" than anything else, and (2) a couple trips through it will do wonders for a body's respect for authority and love of society.
Mike Ferner
Ohio
http://www.mikeferner.org
Mike Ferner is the author the book Inside the Red Zone, based on his travels to Baghdad as a peace activist just before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and again a year later, as a freelance reporter, to cover the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. He offers a perspective on life in Iraq before and after the war, in the Red Zone, the area outside the protected zone from which most media cover the war.
