Richard’s Rant: “Why are people with criminal records worthy?”

A weekly raving about the rampant injustices the criminal “justice” community faces. This week, Richard addresses the question of “worth.”

March 29 2021

By Richard Bronson | Watch this Rant live, only on Tha Yard

I can’t tell you how many times people ask me — often anonymously on social media — why those who’ve broken the law deserve special treatment. Why, they ask, should we try to help them get jobs? Why are they deserving of our support, much less human kindness.

Never mind the fact that if they don’t get a job, statistically there’s a 75% chance they’ll end up breaking the law again. Never mind that having done their time, they deserve the chance to move on with their lives, to take care of their families, to pay taxes, to vote.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece a few days ago, titled The Hidden Punishment of Prison Food. The author referred to a recent study conducted by the advocacy organization Impact Justice that discovered just how truly bad the food that is offered in prison is, food that’s high in fats and carbs and low in protein. Food that’s rarely fresh. And food, as many of our guests and my co-hosts have shared, that was never even meant to be served to human beings in the first place.

Most people in prison were brought up in environments where the was little healthy food available. If prison is meant to rehabilitate, shouldn’t part of their job be to release people healthier than what they were when first incarcerated?

Now some people will be quick to point out that prisons aren’t meant to be fine dining establishments, and maybe inmates should have thought about that before they broke the law.

Yes, maybe they should have, but since they apparently didn’t, does that mean that any treatment at all is justified. Does that mean that serving non-nutritious food that was meant to be fed to farm animals, in a prison environment which is a super-spreader petri dish of coronavirus, makes good sense. Or is even remotely moral?

Most people agree that the punishment should fit the crime. That means people smoking a joint shouldn’t receive a life sentence. Young kids out on a joyride shouldn’t spend years in solitary confinement.

And nobody should be fed dog food while incarcerated, for whatever they may have done. You gonna tell me I’m wrong?

That’s my rant, and I’m sticking with it.