- The last picture taken of my brother
The lawlessness of the 1860’s through the 1890’s, wrote criminologist Cesare Lombroso “is an American phenomenon with no equal in the rest of the world.” Statistics of the period – if not- entirely reliable – appear to substantiate his claim. In this period the crime rate rose 445 percent against population rise of 170 percent. Dominating the record was, of course, the West, where the gun happy barbarity was damned by observers both foreign and native for producing a “great dismal swamp of civilization.” The lawlessness of the cities was less romanticized, but its perils were even greater to the common citizen. Penal philosophy in the latter half of the nineteenth century did not advance with technology. Prisons were strictly for punishment, which was carried out with medieval excesses. Public opinion as a whole supported this view and criminals customarily were treated as a subhuman species. Although there were some lawmen like Captain Sam Sixkiller from the Oklahoma Indian Territory, who supported and promoted prison reform, unyielding repression was the rule. The very worse prisons in the Old West could be found in Texas. Men there were chained in iron collars. A boy of fourteen sentenced to five years for only being in a whisky shop where a man was killed, was slapped in handcuffs that cut deep into his wrists. Owning to the corruption and incompetence of the court system, the prison housed many who were innocent of crime or mentally deranged. And upon these unfortunates penal barbarity had it most crippling impact. Nothing much has changed since the days of the Old West. I’ve seen first hand a man slowly go from one who could walk and run with no difficulty to one who can barely stand and hold utensils to feed himself. His eyesight is failing rapidly and he has no teeth. There is no one in the penal system of 21st century that does anymore than those from the 1860s. The idea that there are “white collar” prisons are a myth perpetuated by motion pictures and television shows. The one I knew as brother is all but gone now. I found out the week of January 16, 2012 that the proscecuting attorney trying my brother’s case accused my brother of trying to escape to California. I had him visit me for a week in order to help him through a difficult time and that was all there was to it. Just one more lie the proscecuting attorney told. I won’t rest until the real criminals are confined to the same life Rick was wrongfully assigned.
