Prison: Wondering What It Must Be Like

Living into your 60's gives one the chance to to know and have known people who have found themselves punished by establishment. Some of these acquaintences have been jailed or will be jailed. Some have been ordered to pay substantial sums of money for conduct determined to have been committed and determined to have been wrong. Some are caught in the system are waiting for the system to set out their worldly fate or waiting for the system to start a round of prosecution.

For the most part we do not think much about these people once they have been punished, once they have been sent to jail or made to pay. In fact, sometimes we stop thinking about them when a case is filed against them or a prosecutor commences a prosecution. Though we do not come ou and say it, we think they deserve what happened to them and therefore no longer need to be thought about, cared about. They have been sent away, exiled, sent to Siberia, sent to a relocation camp for future disposition by the authorities. Or they are about to be sent away.

For the most part, we think of these people as generally evil. And, since they "evil" there is no reason to have much regard for them. We say, "they are not like us." We view them as objects which we can forget.

One function of this exclusion is to protect ourselves from having to acknowledge our own many errors, our own wrongs. We were not punished or excluded. We know our secrets, and hope to be able to get away with what we have done.

If we were to think of those who have become involved in the establishment's powers of punishment or imprisonment in a humane way we would have to think of ourselves as wrongdoers. Our illusions about our innocence and perfection would be put at risk.

Our lack of honesty about ourselves and our humanity keeps us from being human to those our establishment punishes and imprisons.

Will Mississippi Change the Social Ethic of Its Legal Culture?

The leaders of the social ethic of the Mississippi legal culture are handing out accolades these days. For instance an award was given recently to the Circuit Court judge who became an agent of the federal government who entrapped people in a judicial bribe which he had proposed.

The United States District Court judge who handed down punishments -- prison and fines -- to the people who got caught in the sting is being congratulated for his hard bitten personality and the severity of the punishments given the limitations the judge was under due to plea bargains. He is also being congratulated for speaking for himself and not necessarily for the court.

So what do we have from all this? We have heroes and villains. The good guys are congratulated, bad guys are in jail. The good guys are really good, and the bad guys are really bad.

Case closed, the Social Ethic of the Legal Culture of Mississippi has been cleansed. Now everything can proceed as usual. I would not bet on this. Things are more complicated than they seem. What we have witnessed in the Scruggs Matter is only an emanation of a social ethic of the legal culture of Mississippi.

Scruggs Matter and the Oedipus Complex

The Scruggs Matter may provide food for understanding and speculation about the Oedipus Complex.

The Oedipus Complex has to do with the love - hate relationship of the child to the father or father figure. Freud, as I recall, speculated that the boy child wanted to replace the father in the affections of the mother. Maybe, but the Oedipus Complex in my mind has to do with relations of any person who seems to have an unusual affection for and veneration of persons in positions of power or who give the impression of power.

Of interest, of course, is the amount of respect almost awe some of the main players in the Scruggs Matter dialogue seem to have for "judges", lawyer fathers, and mentors. And, at the same time, seem to have, or at least show, great sentimental concern for animals in distress and fathers long gone. That is to say on the one hand some of the players can be downright mean and on the other downright nice to small critters in distress. I can understand the latter but do not understand how it can co-exist with the former. But then, in America one encounters this on a daily basis, especially in hunting country. (Reminds me of the young man I met while staying at the warden's house at the Minnesota Penitentiary (what a nice name for the place) in St. Cloud. He was in for "statutory rape" he said. On one of his arms he had a tattoo his buddies had done for him using a needle, thread and India ink. It said, "Mother.")

Maybe more on this topic and my approach to the Oedipus Complex at a later time. I will have to see if it captures my interest more than in a passing way. Right now thinking about it is better than listening to a book while I go about my business. What I seem to be seeing in the matter is enigmatic. It has been impressing me for the last four hours.