Prison Glass: Part 2

Okay, now you’ve really, really got to read it. When I should have been working on something entirely different, I instead motored through Part 2 of the LA Times three-parter by Joe Mozingo called Through Prison Glass about the midwestern woman lawyer who married an AB (Aryan Brotherhood) kingpin—Robert “Blinky” Griffin—in 1984. He had been in prison since 1970. Pam, the woman lawyer, had met Robert when she was married to his brother.

[Here’s a link to Part 1]

In this installment, Pam fights, unsuccessfully, to get Robert paroled.

(Trust me, if people aren’t already drawing up cast lists for the movie version of this puppy, they will be in the next…oh…..ten or fifteen minutes.)

This is not, by the way, a sentimental, bleeding-heart tale. Thus far, there is a strong did-he-or-didn’t-he quality to Griffin’s supposed reform and redemption. We know that Pam Griffin, the lawyer, is sincere. But Robert starts out as a very bad guy, and the story is, to this point, still ambiguous about whether or not he is still leading a double life.

We await Thursday’s installment to find out.

In addition to the strength of the narrative, there are a couple of interesting issues embedded in the story.

For instance, it deals with the controversial policy of gang debriefing:

Because of his past as a shotcaller for the AB, Robert Griffin was placed in the SHU in Pelican Bay—the Segregated Housing Unit, solitary confinement—which meant he would spend 22 ½ out of every 24 hours each day in an 8X12-foot cell. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d had no disciplinary write-ups in years and that prison officials agreed that Griffin hadn’t appeared to be active in his gang for well over a decade.

But he wouldn’t debrief. In other words, he refused to inform on his former gang. Snitch. Rat.

For one thing, if you inform on a prison gang, is not usually a health-producing activity, for either you or your loved ones.

And a lot of people just won’t do it. Many are willing to leave the prison gang behind for good, but they simply won’t inform.

Yet, because of his refusal, Griffin was kept in the SHU for more than seventeen years until a judge finally decided in 2006 that keeping someone in solitary confinement for no other provable reason on than his refusal to inform on others, was “… tantamount to indefinite administrative segregation for silence — an intolerable practice in modern society.”

And how successful has the debriefing policy been in breaking the hold of the prison gangs in our California correction institutions? Here’s a hint: About as successful as the war on drugs.

It should be noted that the CDCR’s manditory debriefing policy was modified somewhat in 2005, after several lawsuits.

Anyway, there’s a lot more. So read it.

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PS: There is no question that something needs to be done about California’s big, predatory prison gangs. But, what is being done thus far, as hinted at in this story, has not worked. Moreover, too often it punishes the majority, to try to control a minority.

As to what might work better, that question remains unanswered. But it is a subject worthy of serious consideration.