Maybe It Takes a Con to See the Con in ‘Three Strikes’ : Crime: Wilson’s election-year get-tough stance will only further brutalize the system.

I was doing time in a California prison for most of the last three years. Where was Pete Wilson?

Recently, Gov. Wilson has been on a crime-fighting rampage. He signed the “three strikes” law, which mandates that anyone convicted of a third felony must do a 25-year-to-life sentence.

Now he and the California Department of Corrections are telling everyone how plush it is inside the California prison system. They also have been complaining that the Prisoner Bill of Rights, a law enacted during the Jerry Brown years to protect prisoners from unwarranted abuses, prevents wardens from controlling the flow of pornography and racist materials into prisons or the way inmates wear their hair and clothing. The governor wants to bar inmates serving life sentences from the overnight family-visiting program. He claims that repealing the Prisoner Bill of Rights, or at least greatly watering it down, will allow him and corrections officials to correct these “abuses.”

As a four-time loser, having done time in prisons throughout the state system, I have a little better insight and perspective than the governor and a few things to tell the public that he has not.

First, the three-strikes law: While the concept is good--I agree that no one should be subjected to repeated victimization by violent offenders--the law should have been tailored to the third-time serious offender. As the law reads now, we will have hundreds (at least) of car thieves and check bouncers doing life at the taxpayers’ expense. Not good for anyone.

Further, will this law reduce crime, as the governor claims? I think not.

It is a well-known fact that most crime is drug-related. In the old days, when I was a “hope to die” drug addict, I did not think about prison, and I would not have been impressed by a sentencing law fashioned after a baseball game. All a drug addict wants is another fix, and believe me, he will do whatever it takes to get it. A dope fiend who has been up for three days on cocaine or speed couldn’t care less about the governor in Sacramento making political points by telling the public how bad criminals are.

I assure you, the governor and his laws have no impact on the drug offender, and three strikes will not reduce crime. It will, however, turn California into a prison state, with the taxpayers paying dearly for the governor’s election-year cravings.

The Department of Corrections has made repeated attempts to repeal the Prisoner Bill of Rights. These attempts are not about pornography, hairstyles or overnight visits. They are about power and control. They are about placing someone in solitary confinement for years at a time without having to justify it. They are about taking an inmate’s personal property and not giving it back to him for months. They are about taking away someone’s visits arbitrarily. No justification is needed other than the vague claim that the action is reasonably related to the system’s interests.

Now, I fully understand how some of the public may feel about this. So what, you say; prison is supposed to be punishment. Well, let’s give that attitude a little thought.

I can assure you that most of the people in prison belong there. But the public would be surprised at the hatred and resentment that builds within a person who sits in solitary confinement for months or even years only because prison officials have taken a dislike to him. And it’s not hard for anyone to imagine the hate a man feels who has lost his wife and children because the Department of Corrections has taken away his family visits and thus eroded the family bond.

Sooner or later, these hate-filled people will get out from behind those walls and will come out with nothing--no hope, no job and no one who gives a damn to try and help them get started on the right track. All this in the name of Pete Wilson wanting to be governor again. Is this beneficial to the public? Again, I think not.

There are numerous problems with the governor’s crime-fighting campaign. First and foremost, it is not sincere. Let us see it for what it is: politics, pure and simple. The governor wants to be reelected and has grasped our fear about crime and run with it. After all, it is highly unlikely that he just found out about the Prisoner Bill of Rights, or that inmates do not have to submit to haircuts, or that some of them receive overnight visits with their spouses and children. If all this really is news to him, where has Pete Wilson been these last three years?

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Under the terms of my parole (after serving time for perjury), I have to obtain the Department of Corrections’ permission in advance for anything I write for publication or say in a public speech. Initially, the department refused permission to publish this commentary on the grounds that it was “inflammatory” and “not in the best interests of the state.” The department relented only after Steve Fama, an attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office, threatened federal litigation to challenge this censorship.