Yes, I’m a felon.
Who knew that falling in love could be so closely related to committing a felony. However, prison, poverty and life in general transformed my naivety into cold cynicism, yet I resist because I’m no victim. I refuse labels. Instead, I’ve come to deeply appreciate the voice that my stigma has provided. If it were not for my crime in 2006, you would not see my thoughts written here today. Some might call me uniquely qualified. From my pedestal of privilege, I had looked into the cold eyes of hard men doing time. I witnessed first-hand the hopelessness of incarceration yet still crossed the line when love or fantasy compelled the unthinkable. I helped a convicted murderer escape, but that is another story.
This story we share today, is of America. Through the urgent stress of performing at work, raising morally acceptable children, chores, errands and feeding the dog, most of us miss another, bigger picture.
Statistics show one in thirty-five Americans currently incarcerated or supervised by our correctional system. Discounting the United States, the rest of the world stands at about one in a thousand!
This week, I read that Metro by T-Mobile made $1.8 billion serving almost nine million Americans while the prison phone system earned $1.8 billion serving two million incarcerated – a profit difference of more than four times per customer. We all know that families shoulder the entire financial burden for this travesty. There can be no more disadvantaged demographic than felons and their families. Lack of resources and education restrict paths to prosperity, while our broken systems syphon billions away from them and into the coffers of institutions like the for-profit federal prison, Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), now renamed CoreCivic.
Unfortunately, this most highly disadvantaged demographic, which are certainly exacerbated by self-defeating habits, garner little sympathy from the rest of us. Our turning a blind eye to basic human need has become intolerable as more and more of us fall victim to injustice and find ourselves or our friends or family behind bars. Statistically invisible, we can only estimate how many Americans carry felony records which is somewhere around one in ten.
One in ten! That’s close enough to effectively impact every family in America. When will this madness stop? Yes, we have multitudes of calamities, from drought, global warming, threats of nuclear Armageddon, inflation, asteroids, extreme weather, and many, many more. Worse still, imprisoning America is a problem which must be addressed by our representatives at the highest levels of government who certainly listen more to rich lobbyist platforms than to this article. And if your vote at the next election reflects the character of change, then perhaps employers would feel inclined to remove the question on application forms requiring potentials to reveal their criminal records. These two angles would provide the rest of us an opportunity to focus more on educating our children to the perils of poor choices. Lastly, I encourage felons from near and far to gather at my website, TobyDorr.com. The life you change might be your own. None of us is our worst mistake.
Bio: Toby Dorr, Best-Selling Author, Felon, Shame Dragon Slayer, and Difference Maker.
