by TChris

A new book by Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (reviewed here), examines the problem of society's relationship with ex-convicts from the perspective of a woman who received a sentence of 20 years to life for her first offense -- selling cocaine in Albany, New York, exposing her to the unbelievably harsh Rockefeller sentencing laws. Elaine Bartlett was a young woman in Harlem "hoping for a quick score of $2,500, perhaps to buy some furniture and hold a nice Thanksgiving dinner for her family." Instead, she was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover cop, having been set up by George Deets, an informant who was allowed to continue his own drug dealing so long as he supplied the police with people who were easy to arrest.

[Deets] waltzed down to New York and lured the mark up to Albany County, making sure there was enough drug present for an A-1 bust. The mark sold the drugs to the cops, who were grateful for the collar, and Deets lived to traffic another day.

The book discusses Bartlett's sixteen years in prison (when she was finally pardoned), including her prison visits with her four children. Bartlett's experience exemplifies the sad reality that children of imprisoned parents often come to accept imprisonment as a normal part of life.

Her worst nightmare comes true when her teenage son, Jamel, who grew up in the visiting room, follows in his mother's footsteps and goes to jail himself. Jamel is visited inside by a 15-year-old girlfriend who is too young even to enter the gates but gets in with a fake ID. The girl becomes pregnant by Jamel, who has left jail briefly only to return, and the cycle begins anew.

But the book's focus in not on life behind bars, but on the new version of imprisonment that inmates face after their release.

Ex-cons are marooned in the poor inner-city neighborhoods where legitimate jobs do not exist and ... are commonly denied the right to vote, parental rights, drivers' licenses, student loans and residency in public housing -- the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford. The most severe sanctions are reserved for former drug offenders, who have been treated worse than murderers since the start of the so-called war on drugs.

The book offers further proof that sentencing laws need radical reform, but reform can't end there. We need to return to the philosophy that people who have done their time are entitled to a fresh start; that having been punished, ex-offenders deserve a chance to reform their lives and to make better lives for their children. With almost 7 percent of our adult population having spent time behind bars, and with 600,000 "angry, unskilled people" being released from prison each year, society's unwillingness to help ex-offenders become productive will only perpetuate cycles of crime.