Politics & Jail 2010

Saturday night -VOA detention facility in Indianapolis. My first Saturday here. Started working on my confessions. Needing a break from that, but too tired to read much.

I notice no one talks politics. No one watches the news except in the morning. ? The paper gets read but not discussed.

Of course, I may be missing such talk. I am on lockdown (this is a most interesting release on one's own recognizance) - I cannot leave the facility to even smoke a cigarette. But no one has been than formally polite to me. Only one of my fellow prisoners took the time to talk to me - and he suggested I not mingle, considering my charges.

So look at the voting stats and the rate of imprisonment stats. Does this not impact on voting rates?  

I know some felons who did not know they could still vote in Indiana. If I remember the statute - no voting while incarcerated, but after release it is cool.

Not that they could get enthused about voting. They thought all politics had nothing to do with them. Or about them, Or for them.

This year brings the first election I will miss since 1978. Well, I voted for Obama. That will now become my last election. Oh, do not hold that against the President.

Is not thinking about politics a survival technique - or an indicator of something else? I can still hope for change (even if the little dog yapping in my head called Tea Partier gives me pause.)

I do not expect to be a free man until 2030. That is, if I survive the violence of the federal prisons ( I figure I have only 2 worries for the next two decades - getting knifed or getting raped.), or the failings of my own body. I cannot imagine political concerns between now and 2030.

Hell, my only political concerns involve things that have chewed at my mind since maybe Fall. Some just picking up steam recently. Maybe I will get to them. No more law practice, no more writing about the law.

sch

[Reading these old notes may be as much of an eye-opener for me as for you. I did drop a sentence above because I could make neither heads nor tails what it meant. For the gap between imagination and reality, check out my post under Prison Life on the list to your right.]