It’s been brought to my attention that, of my letters to editors now coursing through Idaho, one printed in the Lewiston Morning Tribune has been considered among my contacts as a little too alarmist.
The feedback is noted and very much appreciated. It’s helpful when I hear back on my efforts, and always a win when others are involved.
Especially because I’m neither qualified nor able to represent everyone’s viewpoint. Nor am I capable of pretending the solutions are all known. I’m just a firm believer that more conversations are needed. And that being able to act obligates me to try.
But if my letters this month turned you off from discussion, it’s an obvious failure that needs publicly recognized.
So how about some suggestions on how I can improve?
And is it inappropriate of me to ask: Will you consider following up my letters to your local representatives and media with a letter of your own that expresses your concerns?
Please know that I’m not trying to ruin anything for anybody. I’ve sent over six hundred letters to our focalists in Idaho–which requires some time and a bit of expense–all in the interest of improving one forgotten piece of desert that many families find themselves now unwillingly a part of.
Of those letters, I’ve heard back from ACLU Idaho, Senators Burgoyne, Winder and Wintrow, Representative Moon and Lt. Governor McGeachin. But I really haven’t heard back from anybody else. And that includes multiple requests for information and assistance from all six Idaho chapters of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (which, if I’m being honest, rEally KinD oF sTingS).
So, yeah–this time I tried a little something different, hoping to inspire enough curiosity for folks to take a chance on an eye-opening speech or the newsletter that I use to help present some thought.
Here’s how it worked in my mind:
Dear Reader,
I recently presented at the U of Idaho Video Law Symposium. The audience appeared shocked to learn that IDOC’s most problematic inmates are being released back into their communities without programming or supervision. This after compounding their defects with extended periods of isolation. One must simply watch as I unravel while speaking before a small nationwide audience to understand the effects our correctional deficiencies place one one’s being–effects that, left unaddressed, pose significant danger to your local community. The video is available; I’m the second speaker.
Thank you,
Patrick Irving 82431
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With any luck, I figured, because it’s worked for me before, at least a few dozen will click on the video or the visit site where I prepared for them this:
WELCOME to the May edition of First Amend This!
Brought to you by The Captive Perspective and made available at bookofirving82431.com. This publication provides an insider’s look at issues affecting the Idaho Department of Correction community.
If you wish to assist this effort, share the link, cut and paste, or print and send a copy to another.
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GET INVOLVED
IDOC will be holding monthly Townhall With Leadership meetings all through 2021. Submit your questions to brightideas@idoc.idaho.gov using the subject line “Q’s for leadership,” and be sure to attend the meetings to keep the conversation going.
Offender friends and families interested in networking concerns are encouraged to join the Idaho Inmate Family Support Group (IIFSG) on Facebook or contact them at idahoinmate@gmail.com.
Our legislature is interested in hearing from you. Did you know they answer their own calls and open their own letters? View their contact info here.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
It’s important to acknowledge that there’s progress in Corrections, that the current administration is exploring new ideas, and that the community is becoming much more involved with citizens able to return from their Sentencing.
But we can’t let that distract us from where there are still deficiencies. The fact is, for too many residents living in our facilities, corrective opportunities are often nonexistent. The majority of our programs are only offered in a rush to the few we’re permitted to cram through the gate. The others, ineligible for parole, are lucky to find a seat in the classes prescribed for reform. And when their sentence expires we release them unsupervised, all our resources invested in their parole-eligible counterparts.
One has to believe there are better uses for our facilities, more ways to engage our residents and offer them reform. Our problematic inmates need more healthy opportunities, not more time in isolation to amplify all their defects.
We can’t keep treating these ideas as inimical concepts. Our residents need processed in ways that better utilize their time.
In addition to the assets on the street being added for reentry, we need more counselors, teachers, and mentors in our facilities. More efficient use of our existing structures, more classes and training for those with and without parole.
We must also consider how punishing those who engage in nonconstructive behaviors when they’re placed in facilities that offer nothing constructive only exasperates the need to continue building prisons.
I bring these issues to your attention not as an employee of the Department, but as one of many residents the Department’s hopes have passed.
For those of you new, we thank you for joining us, and we hope that if you haven’t yet viewed the video of Chris Shanahan and myself speaking at the U of Idaho Video Law Symposium, you’ll find some time in your week to try and fit it in.
We appreciate your audience.
And that’s the thing with theories: sometimes their flaws aren’t realized until they’re put into practice.
So let me just assure you, I understand that more work on me is needed. And, halfway through the 2010 college textbook “Introduction To Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture,” I’m sure that you’ll now be able to rest comfortably knowing the matter has been taken into my own hands.
Allow me to also just mention again that a little assistance fixing my deficiencies would be incredibly appreciated at the level of human.
A point I’ll reinforce with an excerpt from today’s correspondence, before thanking all again for the time that they give me:
Speaking of concerns, I want to acknowledge your concerns with my letter to the editor. I realize yours may be a reaction felt by others. Which is why the broken link was so frustrating. Because when one unpacks the information the video provides, the feeling runs contrary to that of the initial shocker. Though I have to admit, I didn’t expect that instead of considering the benefits of parole (the benefits of supervision), people would prefer just holding others for forever. Makes sense, I guess. Because it’s Idaho. Again, I do appreciate that feedback.
It’s awfully difficult working in the dark. And trying to approach Conservatives and measure their response can be quite a chore. I’m of the mind to think you need to make Idahoans consider the financial and not the human aspects of our incarceration problem: “Either better utilize your systems of Corrections and Parole, or build more prisons that we can’t even staff. How should we spend your dime? By making people more ruined, desperate and dangerous, or by salvaging what we can of the repairable human resource?”
The abolitionist approach is just a nonstarter here. And I have to come from weird angles so as to not appear angry or entitled and indifferent to my crime. So many variables. Ugh.
One of the things I’ve run into, with letters like those, is that, like this time, I had to handwrite 200 in the hopes of reaching just a couple lawmakers and one editor and being able to convert their curiosity towards the video or my newsletter, where I go into more detail to address that initial shocker.
Obviously it takes a lot of time, and the objective is to inspire discourse or redirect their attention to other resources, points, logical trains of thoughts, etc. Improving my system is always my goal.