preview of my 5th book:POD PEOPLE
INTRODUCTION
The County Jail is a place; a place to stay. Some of the inmates don’t have another place to stay; some do,… but that place may not be a better place to stay. Some will eventually be sent ‘up the road,’ to a facility that is definitely a worse place to stay, and since those days spent in the County’s facility will be subtracted from those remaining to be served, they are in no hurry to speed up the process leading up to a trial or some sort of plea agreement.
Some will spend inordinate stretches sleeping both day and night; they need to ‘recharge their batteries’ where it is safe to close your eyes; where they are in out of the rain, the blankets smell clean & there aren’t any bugs. In short order, they can regain their ‘fighting weight’ on three squares a day. Medications are administered that they need not purchase. Add soap, a hot shower & a clean towel… you have just defined what, to most any citizen of a third world country, is an unattainable paradise.
If you are at all like me, you would not see anything like whatever you may have imagined, when your ‘vacation’ from the free world begins. The longer the time spent looking at what you will see, the clearer your sight becomes; a better focus on what you’ve been observing and much more that remained unobserved, though taking place in plain sight.
If a platform including ‘planks’ labeled JUDICIAL REFORM can be more than election-year rhetoric, then Federally-funded programs must be administered by public servants with some idea of the deeply-systemic nature of the problems, that create the odious symptoms. Most of the funding ‘thrown at’ these alarming conditions, quickly becomes salaries paid to newly-educated social workers that remain clueless; the ‘clued-in’ spend check day tabulating the huge Bank deposits, that pay for the physical symbols of the ever-widening pay gap.
The facts ae these:except for a very few notable exceptions, all those awaiting their appearance in Court can be cheaply and efficiently ‘supervised’ by law enforcement, while remaining in their homes; no chickenshit place like Dougherty Co./Albany, GA(approx. 90,000 people[2000 Census]) needs a facility to house nearly 1000 detainees.
In my prison-inspired fantasy, every door in the facility has had its lock removed; the perimeter fencing torn down & recycled. Livestock now graze where inmates once mowed; gardens have been planted to fill the kitchens with fresh vegetables each day. There are 1,088 beds for SoWeGa’s homeless; B-200 has been refurbished to house residential staff; there is an improved/expanded infirmary; a much-needed mental health facility occupies both the former intake area & the probation-supervision facility across the street. The operating co$t$ have been reduced by a whopping 50%, while serving the needs of eighteen Counties. DON’T WAKE ME UP!
I think that you will clearly see that Pod People was not written to inform the public about the conditions existing in the jails, & conditions existing in the Courts that are keeping them filled. In the beginning, a fictional account of an undercover agent, assigned to work inside the jail faciity, while gathering evidence of corruption and fraud, for a Federal Case, was intended to attract other inmates willing to participate(becoming either informants or willing characters in the narrative) in the publishing process; learning that things could end badly for the administrators & staff personnel in our story, brought a faint ray of hope into an utterly hopeless and powerless social group’s immediate environment. The writing process has definitely been therapeutic por moi.
As the months dragged on, this fictional Agent begins to recognize that he has also become just another victim of the unjust system. This metamorphosis is accompanied by some confusion in the text itself; frequently, my reader can become confused about whether the ‘speaker’ is the undercover agent, who has been deceived by his Government, or the(non-fictional) voice of the author who is ‘rotting in jail;’ simultaneously, the other characters in the pod, seem much less-fictional, and the charges faced by the protagonist grow more ominous.
During the publishing phase, great care has been taken while editing the text, to preserve the original condition of the manuscript(ms), as if it were an artifact, discovered among some anonymous inmate’s personal property. Published also, are images of supporting documents, and some stock photos of the facility. We represent here, the evidence that the writing process actually occurred during those long months, between MAR 3, 2015 and SEP 13, 2017.
Some will spend inordinate stretches sleeping both day and night; they need to ‘recharge their batteries’ where it is safe to close your eyes; where they are in out of the rain, the blankets smell clean & there aren’t any bugs. In short order, they can regain their ‘fighting weight’ on three squares a day. Medications are administered that they need not purchase. Add soap, a hot shower & a clean towel… you have just defined what, to most any citizen of a third world country, is an unattainable paradise.
If you are at all like me, you would not see anything like whatever you may have imagined, when your ‘vacation’ from the free world begins. The longer the time spent looking at what you will see, the clearer your sight becomes; a better focus on what you’ve been observing and much more that remained unobserved, though taking place in plain sight.
If a platform including ‘planks’ labeled JUDICIAL REFORM can be more than election-year rhetoric, then Federally-funded programs must be administered by public servants with some idea of the deeply-systemic nature of the problems, that create the odious symptoms. Most of the funding ‘thrown at’ these alarming conditions, quickly becomes salaries paid to newly-educated social workers that remain clueless; the ‘clued-in’ spend check day tabulating the huge Bank deposits, that pay for the physical symbols of the ever-widening pay gap.
The facts ae these:except for a very few notable exceptions, all those awaiting their appearance in Court can be cheaply and efficiently ‘supervised’ by law enforcement, while remaining in their homes; no chickenshit place like Dougherty Co./Albany, GA(approx. 90,000 people[2000 Census]) needs a facility to house nearly 1000 detainees.
In my prison-inspired fantasy, every door in the facility has had its lock removed; the perimeter fencing torn down & recycled. Livestock now graze where inmates once mowed; gardens have been planted to fill the kitchens with fresh vegetables each day. There are 1,088 beds for SoWeGa’s homeless; B-200 has been refurbished to house residential staff; there is an improved/expanded infirmary; a much-needed mental health facility occupies both the former intake area & the probation-supervision facility across the street. The operating co$t$ have been reduced by a whopping 50%, while serving the needs of eighteen Counties. DON’T WAKE ME UP!
I think that you will clearly see that Pod People was not written to inform the public about the conditions existing in the jails, & conditions existing in the Courts that are keeping them filled. In the beginning, a fictional account of an undercover agent, assigned to work inside the jail faciity, while gathering evidence of corruption and fraud, for a Federal Case, was intended to attract other inmates willing to participate(becoming either informants or willing characters in the narrative) in the publishing process; learning that things could end badly for the administrators & staff personnel in our story, brought a faint ray of hope into an utterly hopeless and powerless social group’s immediate environment. The writing process has definitely been therapeutic por moi.
As the months dragged on, this fictional Agent begins to recognize that he has also become just another victim of the unjust system. This metamorphosis is accompanied by some confusion in the text itself; frequently, my reader can become confused about whether the ‘speaker’ is the undercover agent, who has been deceived by his Government, or the(non-fictional) voice of the author who is ‘rotting in jail;’ simultaneously, the other characters in the pod, seem much less-fictional, and the charges faced by the protagonist grow more ominous.
During the publishing phase, great care has been taken while editing the text, to preserve the original condition of the manuscript(ms), as if it were an artifact, discovered among some anonymous inmate’s personal property. Published also, are images of supporting documents, and some stock photos of the facility. We represent here, the evidence that the writing process actually occurred during those long months, between MAR 3, 2015 and SEP 13, 2017.
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