My health has greatly deteriorated, leaving me unable to do many things. I thought I had lost the ability to write, but something happened a couple of days ago that so bothered me, I decided to try.
I had never thought about where prisons are built. Why would I? I don’t hang around with criminals, and I’ve never lived in the vicinity of one.
Improving the lot of those less fortunate is important to me. Before my health drastically deteriorated, and life-altering changes affected my ability to focus, I was always working for the betterment of underdogs. I’ve had plenty of contact with individuals that most of us would consider of questionable character, so I’m not completely naive about why people end up in prison.
The reasons are as varied as those who commit the crimes that land them behind bars. A background so difficult that the person never had a chance. A poor choice made in the heat of passion. A youthful mistake that never would have occurred if only a few more years had passed. Out with a group of friends, who egg each other on. And the most frightening of those who are locked away from us are the psychopaths and sociopaths. Of course, there are an untold number of wrongly convicted persons who are also incarcerated. But their numbers are minute.
The vast majority of those currently serving time are in prison because they knowingly and willingly broke the law. Generally speaking, most of us are leery of those incarcerated for valid reasons. Certainly, we don’t want to live near a federal, state, or local correctional facility.
Until a couple of days ago, I had never given the locations of prisons a passing thought. In my defense, I’d had no reason to. I wish I could say my social consciousness was so strong that, of course, I’d considered this. But that would be a lie. What drew my attention to this now upsetting and concerning situation occurred purely by chance.
There was a death in my family. A cousin had lost her husband. They were from a small town, which was just over an hour’s drive from my home in Raleigh, N.C. However, I hadn’t been there in years and had never made the drive myself. An hour’s drive doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you’re always in pain and mobility is a constant struggle, anything extra requires more than casual thought. I decided to try.
I briefly glanced at online directions and didn’t see anything complicated. You know how sometimes you look at something like that on your laptop, but when you get in your car and pull it up, it’s not the same? That happened to me.
I’ve never driven anywhere like I did that day. Every road I drove on except one had double yellow lines. Neither have I made so many turns. Have you ever had a series of directions that told you to drive a mile and a half, then turn onto another road? That’s what I was dealing with. If I could drive three miles without turning, I felt like celebrating. A couple of times I could drive seven! Generally, the speed limit was 45 mph. And all of the roads were curvy.
These were the reasons I noticed so many things as I drove along. So different from my beltline, interstate, wizzing along. Almost all of the houses I drove past were small and in questionable condition. With few exceptions, everything just looked poor. Very rural. One or two tiny towns. I remember consciously thinking this was nowhere I would want to live. Then I saw one. A prison. I drove a little further, and I saw another, and another, and another. I counted four prisons within an hour’s drive of my home.
And you know what? There are even more than that. When I got home, I Googled how many prisons were between my city, Raleigh, and this small town, a couple of counties away. The answer was five or six. How could that be? I live in a nice area of town. Of course, I know there is a large state prison in my city. Raleigh is the capital of N.C. But it isn’t anywhere near me!
So how is it fair that I don’t have to ever see, or think about a prison being near my home, and all of the little houses I drove past along my route to the funeral are virtually surrounded by them? I didn’t have to think very long or very hard. Money. I live in a nice area, in a large, wealthy city. Those people don’t. Aren’t so many things in life like that?
If you live in a large, well-off city, you have your choice of wonderful hospitals a few miles down the road. Great schools, mostly in safe neighborhoods. Country Clubs are closer than the hospitals, even. Fabulous shopping and restaurants. Movies, just down the street, wonderful entertainment venues attracting world-class talent. Everything you need at your fingertips.
How can things be so different for me than they are for people who live only a few miles from me? I didn’t make these observations when I was halfway to my destination. I began to notice the differences within ten miles of the city limits.
If you don’t think there’s an imbalance between rural and urban America, drive a few miles out of your city. Not on an interstate highway. Take a rural back road and drive for an hour. Pay attention to the landscape and buildings you drive past. Maybe you won’t see any prisons. But if you open your eyes, you’ll see plenty of other things that aren’t fair. Maybe enough so that you will realize, as I did, why they build prisons where they do.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Ray Graciano Unsplash