But this is at least a fairly simple instance of a business, which can be controlled in a simple way. Rather than money trickling into the prison economy, which could make trouble, any royalty payments could just be put into a bank account, even earning interest, until the guy gets out.

But there always seems to be, when looking from another continent, a mean streak in the running of American penal systems. It's as if they want to block every hope of going straight. Right now, we can't know if he'll be a successful writer in 15 years, or still an habitual criminal. But the state of North Carolina seems to want to destroy any hope of redemption. They want to see him come back; they prefer to accumulate crominals.

Separately, the idea that prisoners should be kept impoverished (not to be confused with the related issue of whether a prisoner can profit from his or her crimes by writing a memoir) is rather horrifying. I can think of few wthings that would better contribute to recidivism than ensuring that all paroled felons are broke on release.

My father does a lot of volunteering with guys who are about to get out of prison and have just gotten out. He teaches them how to look for work, how to deal with a job interview, where to go to get job training, how to pay bills and manage money.

These are guys who went into prison when they were teenagers and never learned how to deal with life on the outside. The volunteer organization is the only thing that keeps them from just being dumped outside the prison with no clue.

And it can only do so much good. Most businesses won't touch someone with a criminal record, even if they're only hiring a burger flipper. So a lot of the guys my dad works with end up dealing drugs again, because they can't see any other way out. Then they go back to jail. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For writing?

If he were a murderer making money off of selling the rights to his account of a killing, there might be a case for victims getting the proceeds, but this is just insane. Thank goodness for the ACLU.

And there is a "mean streak" in the US prison system. Prisoners are intended to suffer, non-prisoner citizens are socialized to hate them, and want them to suffer, and the government is complicit in the message.

What disturbs me most about this somehow is the claim that it involves prison safety. It makes it seem like part of the far broader, pernicious phenomenon of describing things authorities don't like, which don't threaten anybody, as "dangers" -- such as photographs, as have been discussed here before. A creeping authoritarian mindset that's very worrisome.

Obviously, if there's concerns about money in the prison, the suggestion above to simply hold the money in an account is the answer. But I suggest that the real reason is the sense that someone who's succeeding (in any way at anything) isn't suffering; and prison is supposed to punish. It's supposed to hurt. That, and not anything remotely resembling rehabilitation, is the likely motive here.

The government saves money by having fewer people in prison, so it's to their advantage to promote rehabilitation. Private industries make money by having MORE people in prison, so it's to their advantage to promote recidivism. Which of those two goals is to the advantage of society as a whole?

Me? I think it's mostly bullshit.

Not only not allowed to profit from crimes (acceptable) but not allowed to profit from anything.

Shameful.

And as Teresa pointed out, since he's been published by a small no-advance publisher and hasn't sold that many copies, there isn't any money from his books yet. (Although with the publicity from the prison's seizing of his manuscript, he may actually end up selling enough copies to earn something.)

Besides O. Henry, there have been other prison writers. Frank Elli's THE RIOT was written in prison (and made into a movie starring Jim Brown and Gene Hackman). There was another writer -- spacing out on the name; Johnson? -- who did a number of prison-set hard-boiled paperback novels -- in the Gold Medal line, iirc -- back in the 60's, while serving time.

(And I was thinking that John Ehrlichman wrote THE COMPANY while serving time on his Watergate conviction, but checking the dates, he probably wrote it while waiting for and appealing his sentence.)

And then there's Boethius, who wrote The Consolations of Philosophy while in prison.

It really is in the best interests of the prison industry to prevent people from making a life for themselves on the outside. The profit motive is a powerful one, and appears to negate any conscience the motivated person (or people, which is the rub) may have.

I'd like to see a law forbidding prisoners from being shipped out of state when they're convicted under a state law. The Texas prison industry, one of the harshest in the nation, is making a killing from the lack of this law. Also...forbid any state from expanding its prison system, or overcrowding prisons.

That way, when the prisons are full, in order to incarcerate someone they would have to release someone else. A "least harm" system could be used to determine whom. In fact, all prisoners would be ranked in order of releaseability, taking into account the seriousness of their offenses, whether they present an ongoing danger to society, and the time remaining on their sentence. Then each time the state wants to incarcerate someone, the person at the top of the queue is released.

States have gotten away with this enslavement scam for too long.

This is truly disgusting and so much like too much of this nation.

Love, C.

St. John of the Cross wrote the Dark Night of the Soul while in prison.

I'm sure more examples will spring to mind shortly.

OTOH, since "soft on terrorism" is the new "soft on drugs", it might be possible to unobtrusively get some of that legislation repealed now.

In other words, I know my solution would require extensive changes in the law. A state that wouldn't change its laws would have to stop incarcerating any more people. The first release of a violent criminal under these laws would lead to an outcry. Trust me, some of those drug offenders would find themselves getting pardons.

I hope this guy's book wasn't shredded or trashed.

I'm skeptical of a conspiracy to encourage recidivism. People relapse perfectly well on their own, and always have. On the other hand, good old-fashioned class snobbery is always an institutional favorite.

The whole Norman Mailer/Jack Abbot parole incident was quite the media spectacle at the time, and I suspect it may be informing the current situation.

A New Orleanian rapper recorded an album in prison -- on his cell phone's mic, or something like that. he wasn't supposed to do that. His lawyer smuggled the stuff he needed in and out. It went #1 in NO.

Love, C.

I think he should start Cell Block Storytime, and gather all the little criminals around him right before lights-out, and tell them a chapter a night.

That's neither here nor there from Mr. Martin and his plight - just something that piqued my curiosity.

I think he's an important addition to the list.

I don't suppose it matters now, considering how much water has gone under that bridge, but Paul really invented a whole new religion which had very little to do with what Jesus had been preaching. (And Acts is not a reliable account of Paul's life, either.)

This is way tangential so feel free to ignore me, but I'm reminded of a recent Guardian story -

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2288192,00.html

The fact that a spent conviction should be held against you for the rest of your life seems wrong to me, but I'm willing to accept the situation described in the Guardian article is nuanced.

It's all too common. It's why most employment applications and school applications ask about convictions - and it hits the poor the worst.

After all, what are the odds that the ex-prisoner will end up in the same prison rather than enriching some other prison owner?

I suspect that what's actually going on is that it's cheaper to supply a sterile, brutal environment, and that prison owners are in American culture, which means that they're likely to be self-righteous about the value of making prisoners miserable.

Meanwhile (the News and Observer is my daily paper), for a look at what's been going on in the state while Mr. Martin was writing his novels:

The mental health reform program implemented in 2004 has failed and has cost the state big bucks. The new state mental hospital is too unsafe to house patients (too many opportunities to commit suicide). The head of the mental hospital used money from the patients' vending-machine profits (supposed to go toward their recreation) to commission a large, very flattering portrait of herself to hang in the hospital. She's been fired and the portrait is in storage. A delegation including the governor and his wife went to Italy to recruit business and tourism for North Carolina, and they rented "a daily chauffeured luxury Mercedes-Benz sedan and a van" for the governor and his wife @ $52,000 a day. Speaking of the governor's wife, a college professor of something making $90,300 per year, was moved to a new post paying $170,000 per year.

The governor should have resigned after 7 years. This eighth year has been a beaut.

Pretty good. These aren't mom and pop businesses we're talking about--if wikipedia is to be at least slightly trusted on the figures (and they do seem well-cited), there are three companies that together own over 75% of the private prisons in the USA. It's like saying "what are the odds that if I turn on a commercial radio station, it'll be owned by Clear Channel?" It's not a certainty, it's probably not even 50/50, but from their perspective, it's not a bad bet.

Of course we should be sympathetic to victims of crimes, and criminals absolutely ought to be responsible for their actions. What bothers me is when people haul those arguments out to short circuit discussion of whether our treatment of prisoners is just or not.

Don't know that it would, but sure would like to think so.

didn't we just? Golden moments. Still worth a a guffaw, now and again.

Brenda@43: $52,000 per \day/? Surely there's a decimal point (or period) misplaced somewhere in that? Not that NC is unique in kind -- many public executives seem to think they must make a grand presentation, even in MA -- but that sounds like enough to \buy/ a limo and rent a platoon of 24/7 footmen.