There are people in this country, as President Trump has said, who will do nothing with their lives but rape, maim, and murder. They cannot be rehabilitated, they cannot be saved, they cannot be coached into some better way of living. They are always going to hurt. They are always going to steal. They are always going to attack. We need a place in this country where we can send people to visually demonstrate the total separation from society—the fact that they are not going to live among us and will never live among us.
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff
I don’t know Stephen Miller, but so far as I can tell from his innumerable public rants, he believes in everything I do not. I do not begrudge him his bombast, and trust that it comes from a place of deep insecurity. He strikes me as a man for whom we should feel great pity. Not because he is so frightened of a world that every day spins farther out of his control, though that is indeed pathetic, and not because he tries to meet this world with cruelty rather than wisdom, though that is tragic and self-defeating. He arouses pity because he may never witness redemption.
The occasion for Miller’s latest eruption was an interview on FOX News, where he celebrated the idea of re-opening the federal prison at Alcatraz. One should not attach too much significance to the invocation of Alcatraz itself. For the Millers of the world, it is simply a place where the administration can dump the trash. They long for a place where they can cast pariahs, a domain symbolically beyond human concern (which is also why they go to such lengths to demonize those they fear). Today it is Alcatraz, yesterday it was El Salvador (or Libya or Rwanda), and the day before it was Guantanamo. These are not so much places on a map as they are set pieces in a purification ritual.
What matters, therefore, is not Alcatraz, but Miller’s obsession with purification, on which I will have much to say. For now, I will focus on his vision of prison and those who live and die there. I could be wrong about this, but I doubt very seriously that Brother Miller has ever spent much time in a maximum-security prison. This ignorance is what allows him to pontificate so assuredly about people he does not know. He believes in monsters. Worse, he feels sure he can spot one, even from a safe distance of space and time. To Miller, a person is what they once did, no matter how long ago and far away. We should forgive him this arrogance, for it is nothing if not widespread; a lot of people look at him and entertain the same mistaken belief.
I hope Miller fills this gap in his moral education. I have chosen my words with great care. He doesn’t have to leave his White House desk to fill the gap in his knowledge of the social science literature, which demonstrates convincingly that people who have committed the most serious crimes have the lowest recidivism rates upon release. But I mean something more profound, something he cannot get from reading articles. I hope he goes to prison. Not as a convict—I would never wish that on anyone, even his boss—but as a student and teacher. I hope he comes to see what I and tens of thousands of others have seen. I would never say that prison works, but if there were one sentence I have heard more than any other from people who have served decades for godawful crimes, it is this: “Prison saved my life.”
When people have said this to me, they are not commenting simply on the self-destructiveness of their former life. They are not saying, in other words, that if they hadn’t gotten off the street, they would’ve killed themselves with drugs or alcohol, or been killed by someone in their circle, though for some people that is likely true. Instead, they are making a statement about something that happened inside the walls, something more than the mere fact that they have gotten older and matured, though that too is part of it.
They are referring to the change that occurs when a person who has done a great wrong fully comes to grips with the pain they have caused. This means a great deal more than acknowledging it as a fact, which is all the law usually has in mind when it speaks of accepting responsibility. It means immersing yourself in the knowledge that you have irreversibly and inexcusably ruined another person’s life. It means allowing that realization to wash over you, again and again, in waves of guilt and remorse that consume you and leave you empty even as they fill you with grief.
For most people, truly reckoning with the pain they have caused is an exceptionally painful, identity-shattering process. It cuts them adrift from all they knew and upends all they believed. To venture into this unknown is terrifying, which is why so few of us attempt it, inside or out of prison. It is one of the reasons why opioids are so popular in prison, more so even than cocaine. Cocaine heightens the senses but opioids dull them. Opioids are pain killers, and people in prison are in a lot of pain.
On the outside, it’s easier for people to avoid this reckoning and spare themselves this pain. They can sever ties with the people they hurt. They can numb themselves with alcohol, drugs, or sex. But prison makes it more difficult to avoid this confrontation with the truth. For one thing, participating in the underground drug economy is expensive and dangerous, far more so than on the outside, and as a person ages in prison, their capacity for that life diminishes. But more than that, people in prison are reminded every day of the reason they are there. Yes, the system is unjust; yes, their trial was likely unfair in countless ways; yes, their sentence is probably grossly excessive. But at the end of the day, to immerse oneself in one’s guilt is to accept the fact that you alone put yourself in this cell, and you alone must build a future from your past.
The people in prison who do this—who accept the enormous truth of their actions and construct an entirely new identity—become extraordinary human beings in every sense. They have confronted the worst of themselves and cast off all that produced such brutality and wretchedness. In an environment where nothing thrives, where literally everything is torn down, they have built something honorable and enduring. There is no cookbook for this process, no recipe that all can follow. Everyone charts their own path. Some people build a new identity from religion. Others become writers or artists. Some begin to read and never stop. Others find meaning in fellowship with those around them. Many become mentors, for they see themselves in the rage and wild recklessness of the young people who arrive every day.
This is what redemption looks like. And as difficult as this process is, it actually happens quite often. There are thousands upon thousands of people behind bars who have followed this path—who committed the wrong that Miller imagines, and have become all that anyone could want of another human being. Everyone who lives and works in a high-security prison knows it to be true.
And Stephen, if you go to prison, you will know it too.
As always, and in the spirit of thoughtful conversation, if you have any reactions to this or any of my essays, feel free to share them with me at [email protected].
