By DAVID MARSH
CHANGE: some of it good, some of it bad, but certainly plenty of it to go around for all that are a part of our system of incarceration. On both sides of the badge. Something for everybody!
In H-Unit, lots of new faces. And the new faces are replacing all those inmates who have departed for the gates under the recently imposed new time-credit guidelines. Who is eligible? Still kind of murky on that issue, though Lord knows I am putting much energy into finding out for you.
The major problem with being an inmate reporter is the realization that you’re not entitled to lots of restricted information, and that there is no entitlement to the truth. Of course, in CDCR, what was yesterday’s truth is very often tomorrow’s harmless cage rattling, and never meant to have been taken seriously.
But back to the issue of change. Our teachers are gone! Avery negative change for us from which no good can come. Their loss is certainly part of a landslide of negative changes that the current economic climate has forced upon all of us.
Can’t lament the economic malaise as a whole, though, because most certainly the inordinate numbers of us who are heading out the gates of late can thank, in part, those very same negative climate factors for making this possible. If they could afford to keep us (i.e.- by building even more prisons), then it’s a safe bet that they most surely would. But they can’t, so for a lucky growing number of us, it’s home you go.
Gotta love this new, irrevocable parole. No technical violators! Certainly will have a positive impact on the state’s long-deplorable recidivism rate, as well as the overall numbers of prisoners. Good change!
More good change! Finally, they closed the gym and may, in time, return it to its intended, designed use: A Gym!!! A move under way to close bad-bed gyms in a number of the state’s 33 prisons that still have them. You simply gotta love the obvious effect that Federal Court oversight is having, slowly but surely, on the lives of California’s 160,000 plus inmates.
Change! Never fast enough to suit us, no siree! But change nonetheless. Some good, some not so good, but occurring now at a pace we can see, faster than watching grass grow.