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A nation behind bars: Lozoff tells the story of U.S. prison woes
By Amber Smith
A man walks into a room dressed in all black carrying a guitar and an idea. His voice is low and grumbly - a symptom of singing and speaking. He wears a large silver belt buckle fashioned personally for him by one of many former convict friends whom he met on one of many prison tours.
Bo Lozoff, director of the Human Kindness Foundation and author of numerous books including We're All Doing Time, is not Johnny Cash. And he is not singing in Folsom prison circa the 1960s, but speaking in Tallahassee's Progressive Center on a quiet Sunday night in January.
"America locks up more of its population than any other nation on Earth. . . . In 1970 there were fewer than 200,000 prisoners in the U.S. Now, thirty-some years later, California alone has nearly that many." Lozoff's Prison-Ashram Project began in 1973 as a way for one man, as Lozoff says, "to offer spiritual support to people regardless of their circumstances."
Today, Lozoff has visited over 500 prisons, written six books (not including those translated into Spanish and French), and reached out to countless inmates trapped in what he believes to be one of the most barbaric, terrifying environments a human being can be found - much less placed intentionally.
Throughout the evening Lozoff toys with the scheme of intentions. A criminal intends to commit a crime but not get caught (a 60 percent chance of which the crime is drug related). A victim intends to punish his or her assailant but not get involved (deriving no real benefit from the convict's misery). Lozoff intends to alert a nation of people of the destruction caused by turning our backs on those who need us the most (the most overly-stimulated, violent generation any nation in history has produced, according to Lozoff).
In the two hours Lozoff addressed his listeners, many shocking statistics come to light: 1 in 136 Americans have been to jail; 58,000 inmates are released into society per month; 70 percent of U.S. prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes; 240,000 brutal rapes occur within our current prison system per year; and in Florida, a 14 year old can now be convicted for life with no parole.
Some other seemingly unrelated facts Lozoff touches on: there are 5 times as many cell phone related car crashes as alcohol related; over 90 percent of U.S. prisons are strictly non-smoking; 10 years ago the word "school shooting" did not exist in the dictionary.
Lozoff believes that consumerism, technological over-stimulation, and America's Manifest Destiny belief in entitlement has made today's generation weak and irritable.
He drives home his point with irony, pointing out that inmates across the nation were forced to quit their smoking addiction cold turkey, while smokers on the outside cannot kick the habit with the help of gum, patches, hypnosis, nor therapy. Behind bars Lozoff has found the nation's healthiest and characteristically strongest people because, as he says, "[they are] sheltered from our lazy, superficial society."
Prisoners are stripped of all material possessions and money and sentenced to any number of years of simply waiting. Lozoff wants prison to be a place of restoration, not retribution, comparing what it is to what it could be.
"In the East, an ashram is a place where people live for some period of time in order to strengthen their spiritual practice and self-discipline," he says.
Instead, in the U.S., violent and nonviolent offenders are housed together, forced to sleep on floors, in gymnasiums, or three or four to a one-person cell. Lozoff compares the conditions he has seen across our country to constantly being on the frontline of a war, unarmed and waiting for something horrific to happen.
"Prisons are not scaring offenders away from crime; they are incapacitating them so they are hardly fit for anything else," Lozoff contends.
He asks the room of listeners what convicts can expect upon their release. The consensus is: $100, no real job prospects, and callous judgment from family, friends, and strangers who know they have been in jail.
Lozoff is not asking for any money.
Prisons already have enough of that in over $5 billion spent annually by taxpayers. He is not asking anyone in the room to accompany him on his quest to change the outlook of thousands of imprisoned men and women. Why would he need help when he knows they are the people most welcome to change in our country? What he is asking for is what "every great spiritual, philosophic and religious tradition has emphasized: compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness and responsibility."
Thirteen people attended Bo's discussion at the Progressive Center, a testimony to Lozoff's concern of a lack of concern. Having attended Jefferson County Jail earlier in the day, Lozoff announced his next stop to be Wakulla County Jail. He is currently continuing his 2007 tour of prisons, public talks, and concerts in the Northeast.
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