What is the point of prison?

The Chicago Tribune passes along the fascinating story of James Verone, whose tale provides some incredibly intriguing insights into the current state of our union.

A man in Gaston County, N.C., was jailed after holding up a bank for $1 -- but the crime was all part of a larger plan, according to the robber. 

Richard James Verone is 59 and was unemployed with multiple health issues before the crime. Verone says he robbed the RBC bank in order to go to prison and get treatment -- he said it was the only way he could get healthcare. 

Verone has an undiagnosed growth in his chest, two ruptured back discs, and a problem with his foot. 

His medical ailments made working difficult after his 17-year career as a Coca-Cola delivery driver ended a few years ago. He tried living off of savings and part time jobs, but still came up short. He applied for Social Security benefits but only received food stamps which did not help his medical problems. 

When Verone robbed the bank he presented the teller with a note explaining that he was robbing the bank and only wanted $1. He did not want to scare anyone and was not doing it for the money. After receiving the dollar, Verone told the teller, "I'll be sitting right over here on the chair waiting for the police." 

When they arrived, the police found Verone sitting on a sofa inside the bank.

There's all sorts of angles that you can take in analyzing this story--the economic side, the health care side, the welfare side, even the "screw the banks" side if you feel like stretching--but I'm mostly intrigued by the prison side. I think that we rarely think about what the actual function of prison is in our society, even as we're spending ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars to take care of incarcerated people.

It's remarkable--and yet rarely mentioned--that with only 5% of the world's population, the United States nevertheless boasts 25% of the world's prison population. The question is, why are they there?

For much of our nation's history (and especially the last century or so), we have been caught hopelessly between two completely mutually exclusive views of what prisons should be--prisons as rehabilitation centers and prisons as crime deterrents. It should be quite clear that prisons cannot simultaneously serve both roles, and increasingly it seems that our nation has leaned toward the "rehabilitation center" side of things.

That's what leads us to the curious case of Mr. Verone, who like many prisoners saw jail as the best of several poor options. It doesn't speak well of any society that any individual--let alone many individuals--would rather be incarcerated than live out their lives on the streets, or in the ghettos, or worse.

Therefore, we ignore Mr. Verone's story at our own peril. What does his story say about our society? What does it say about our prisons? What does it say about our hospitals? And what if health care some day becomes so expensive that a significant portion of Americans choose the same route that he did, out of sheer necessity? Will we then end up with a back-door socialized health care system after all? Food for thought.

[Chicago Tribune]