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Tuesday 1 December 2009
The Prison that Follows Prison

Further, even when felons do try their best to change their lives, more hurdles are put up criticizing they and their benefactors. I lived in New Mexico when former house speaker Manny Aragon helped a felon from his community who was released from prison by hiring the man to work for his business and providing him with a home until he could get on his feet. When an article on this appeared in the paper, Aragon was visciously attacked by Republicans who saw an opportunity to ‘get’ the speaker, and called it ‘coddling a criminal’ for this act of good faith towards his fellow man. Right now, here in Arizona, we have the case of a man convicted of murder in Tucson in 1974 named James Hamm being opposed by a coalition of lawyers and others in terms of his application for a law license. Now, I understand that what Hamm did is the ultimate crime, and that no matter how remorseful he is, his victim won’t come back, but if society collectively believes that the years he spent in prison were not punishment enough, then we (collectively) had the chance to sentence him to a more severe punishment— a longer prison term, or even death. But he was not sentenced to any of these. Instead, he became one of the vanishingly few who not only became rehabilitated, but earned a law degree (turning his life around as much as it could be turned around). This isn’t the first time Hamm has been in the paper either. A couple of years ago, Hamm had been approved (based on his college credentials) to teach a class at Arizona State University. A barrage of critism caused the University to revoke the contract. Apparently, some people believe that a felon has the right to seek employment, except when they actually get hired, when they should be punished further for their past by being fired

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