>
> Hah. On lots of counts. I'm a criminal defense lawyer,
> among other things, and a professor who teaches
> criminal law, and I don't think you should romanticize
> or idealize inmates. Most people in prison are guilty.
> They mostly committed sordid crimes of greed and
> violence that most people do not commit even if they
> are poor and victims of discrimination.
Everybody I ever knew who spent any time in jail was there on drug charges. Of course one selects his acquaintances and steers clear for fear's sake from violent sociopaths, but still.
> Crime is not a revolutionary activity.
But, any revolutionary activity, even the most trivial (grafitti, e.g.), is a crime. How do cops treat citizens whenever there's a demonstration? Wearing a tee-shirt with certain words printed on it while walking in the right-of-way gets you not just harassed, chased, gassed and clubbed, but arrested and convicted. While the anti-social majority of (non-drug) inmates are nothing on which to hang revolutionary hopes, anybody actually revolutionary (Lenin, King) will almost certainly have a jail record.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net