re: Visited the Angola Rodeo and Craft fair and was amazed what I saw. Can good come from bad?

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Interesting fact: The inmates at Angola built the casket that Billy Cannon in buried in.

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Another kinda interesting fact: the inmates that died in Angola used to be buried in a cardboard box until one fell through the bottom of his box and Warden Cain decided to let them start making coffins.

I can meet you halfway on the general idea that we as a society shouldn't "lock em all up and throw away the key", that some folks can be reformed and that it should be one of the goals of incarceration along with punishment.

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Good post, agree with everything you say except one. The reason we put them away is to punish them for their crime. Rehabilitation is a bonus, and offered. They can choose to take it or ignore. But they are primarily there to be punished equal to the crime committed.

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While I appreciate that's accurate for the majority of laymen, it's not true, at least as far as the law is concerned. The Supreme Court has outlined the following reasons for incarceration:

- Retribution (what you're calling "punishment")
- Rehabilitation
- Separation (from society so that the individual is unable to commit further crime)
- Deterrence (to discourage others from committing the same or similar offenses)

All are to be balanced based on seriousness of the offense, risk to society, possibility of rehabilitation, etc.

Prices?

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Now ask yourself, a guy is jailed for 20 for molesting kids. Do you believe in the ability to reform these guys enough to have him babysit your kids upon release?

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Can we all reach a consensus that child molesters, baby eaters, nun rapers and the like should just be crossed off the rehabilitation list? With an axe?

how much was the ship?

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Prices

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You negotiate that with the inmate face to face. They usually have a price marked, but if you can negotiate them down, you are free to.

Once you come to a deal, the inmate fills out a piece of paper with the item number and his ID number and the agreed upon price. You go to a cage, give them the paper and pay for the item and they write down who sold what item and what was paid for it and give you a receipt for your payment and mark the sheet the inmate gave you "paid". You bring the sheet back to the inmate and give it to him and he gives you the item. I assume that after the rodeo, the inmates turn their sheets and unsold items back in so the prison can account for everything to make sure nothing shady went on. You know, stuff like making sure that the items that didn't sell at the end of the day equals what went out in the morning minus what was sold. If everything checks out, the prison then puts the money they collected for that inmate into the prisoner's account.

The strangest part to me is that for most of the inmates in the craft area, there's nothing separating them from the visitor. You are literally IN the prison, as you pass through the gates to get into the prison, drive like a mile to the rodeo area, park in the field across the road from a blockhouse and the warden's house, then pass through a checkpoint to get into the rodeo area. Once you're in, you're in there walking around with the inmates trusted to attend the rodeo. You can shake hands, talk to them, etc. There's a caged run where the less trustworthy ones are separated from everyone else and their items are on your side of the cage so you can inspect them, but the negotiation happens through a cage. Most of them, though, just have a table set up that they display their items and do business across.

If you want the REALLY good mastercrafted stuff, like clocks, rocking chairs, bassinets, etc., you'd better be the first one through the gates. That stuff goes QUICK.

My step-sister (I don't really communicate with her. Not because there is bad blood, she is 10-12 yrs older than I am. I might have spoken to her 2 or 3 times) built a new house a few years ago and bought just about every piece of furniture there.

My mom was telling me about it. They built a couch that pulls out like a bed (you don't have to remove everything then unfold the bed to convert it. It's an extension that just pulls out). I don't know if you can get them to build custom items or what, but evidently they do amazing work.

Yes those in there did something pretty bad to get in there, but I still think a person still deserves the opportunity to find something in their life that allows them to contribute to society. You can just leave people caged up for the rest of their life. That could make them even more violent.

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Thinking that perhaps there’s a better way to punish crimes and reform people doesn’t mean I support clown world. There’s room to be tough on those who are truly evil and still reform a broken system.

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Mental health is a huge unconquered frontier. We could and should be doing more to discover ourselves. There is a killer in each of us given the right circumstance, and the world in which some of these men were brought up is more than most of us can imagine. It’s a shame that the psychological field and science in general is being tainted by leftist ideology; if we cannot be honest and objective about our conclusions, it will be our undoing.

I’ve driven past neighborhoods where babies are being brought up in trap(drug) houses where life and death is a daily struggle and you are put in impossible circumstances in order to survive. Doesn’t make it right, but it gives context to better understand the situation. They never see what we think of as normal, so how can we rightly expect them to act normal.

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Bucky Lesseigne

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