I’ll be fair and say that Richard Michael Rossi, author of Waiting to Die: Life on Death Row
Prior to his death, Richard Rossi did not feel that he deserved to be on death row. He reportedly had a miserable childhood and became addicted to cocaine and crystal meth as an adult. Rossi was convicted for murdering another man in 1983. He was spun out on drugs at the time and trying to sell his victim a stolen typewriter. He implied that he was sorry about all of that in his book, but I think he was more sorry for himself that he got caught.
Rossi published his book while facing his last appeal. Rossi had a college degree when he entered in prison and claimed that he became a paralegal while he was incarcerated.
Rossi spent most of the book describing how prison is an unhappy and cruddy place where death row’s inmates are issued motel-style bar soap (oh dear, that’s a real violation of the 8th amendment!). Rossi also had the audacity to compare himself to the terminally ill because it was very annoying to him that he had to sit around and wait to be executed.
I’m not a big fan of North America’s “War On Drugs”. This does not mean that I think we should just put crackheads in rehab when they kill people. If they’re just being crackheads, fine, give them a round of rehab and see if they respond to it. But if they can’t be crackheads without trampling on the rest of us, I think that we should put them away!
Insincere memoirs by prison inmates are a popular genre with prison abolitionists. However, I have yet to see a prison abolitionist adopt and rehabilitate parolees on a mass level. If you know of a case, please bring it to my attention.
Speaking of locking living things up….
I read Derrick Jensen’s Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos
It’s my impression that Jensen does not feel that any animal at any time should be in a zoo or a park. He used pictures taken at poorly-funded zoos to try and convince us why all zoos must be shut down and their animals must be returned to the wild. Jensen refers to animals as “wild nonhuman others.” He compares zookeepers to loggers, vivisectors, SS guards, pornographers, and pimps. He apparently failed to notice that his photographer, Karen Tweedy-Holmes, associates with imprisoned horses (see the book jacket).
Jensen offers no alternative solution to habitat destruction, endangered species, and other conservation issues. He just wants us to know that zoos are bad and we are bad for allowing them to exist. I’d like to write him a letter about how going to the zoo as a child sparked my interest in animals and that I never mistreated any animal while I worked at that same zoo, but he seems to be one of those people that believes he is always right.
Hysterical extremists like Jensen make it difficult for the rest of us to do what’s right for both people and “non-human” animals. I do not advocate irresponsible, harmful, or stressful captivity practices. It is not impossible for zoos OR people to be humane.
