Why does the justice system in America spend so much energy punishing the innocent?

I have a few conditions I have to follow while paroled and one of them is to attend certain therapeutic programs designed to help me change my past criminal behavior. Since I didn’t do the crime for which I was incarcerated, I have a complex dialogue taking place in my mind while a program’s facilitator tries to lead us through the coursework. On the one hand, I didn’t commit the crime the justice system asserted I had committed. On the other, the people running this program are not prepared to deal with innocent people. The class and others like it have no tolerance for innocent people.

If I insist on resisting the course’s premises, I make everyone uncomfortable, including other parolees and probationers. I don’t want this. My strategy so far has been to apply the work to areas of my behavior that I believe require improvement. That way I get the benefit of any therapeutic value the course provides without dealing with the specific reason I was locked up. For the most part this has worked well for me. But there is a bit of a problem in any therapeutic community when you’ve got to walk a tightrope like this. That problem is honesty.

It’s a fundamental principle in a therapeutic community that the participants are honest. Confidentiality is another. What you say in group is limited to group. Trust is a big deal. You have to be able to bare your soul to get any benefit from the therapy. However, the justice system has its own desire to preserve its credibility. If you signed a plea deal, you’re guilty. And this desire for self-preservation causes a huge conflict for an innocent person in group therapy.

When I was sent to the sex offender treatment program on the Goree unit in Texas, I had to go through what is called UCC a couple of days after I arrived there. UCC stands for Unit Classification Committee. This group usually consists of the Warden, Assistant Warden or Major, the head of Classification and one other ranking member of the unit staff. Together they review the inmate’s information, his crime, his behavior while in prison and his medical records in order to determine where he should be housed on the unit. Any time an inmate is assigned to stay on a particular unit he or she has to face this committee. In addition to assigning housing they decide what sort of job to give the person. Inmates with sex charges aren’t generally allowed to work as clerks or librarians.

Now when I first entered prison, I had an instinctual knowledge that claiming I was innocent after having signed a plea deal would be frowned upon. So as I went through the initial evaluation on the Holliday unit, I didn’t protest my innocence at every juncture. I knew that TDCJ would make it even harder on me. But there were a couple of times when I tried to explain things “off the record” to the person interviewing me that there are plenty of sound reasons a person might sign a plea deal which don’t involve actual guilt. Off the record apparently did not have the meaning I thought.

About two minutes into the Goree UCC committee meeting the 02 (Assistant Warden) peers into a manila folder and then meets my eyes. It’s my fifth year being locked up. I’ve received a positive parole answer over 9 months prior on an eight year sentence.

“I see here you aren’t willing to admit your guilt on this crime. Son, you aren’t going to be able to finish this program if you don’t. I’ll just ship you out of here and you can discharge your sentence.”

The head of the sex offender program on the Goree unit is sitting beside the 02 shaking her head and clucking. She gives me a sad smile and says, “That’s right. We can’t help you unless you’re willing to admit you have a problem.”

There wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to argue with them. My face was burning, my heart pounding. I just wanted to get through this interview and get to my cell. I hadn’t really thought about this possibility too much and it was a real slap in the face. I didn’t expect that I’d be arguing my innocence throughout the program but I did think that maybe I’d be able to learn about how I might approach the problem if I could only learn what the system believed was true about sex offenses. What motivates people to victimize others sexually? It’s not just a desire for orgasms. Maybe there is something I could learn which would help me to prove my own innocence later. It was a comfort to consider the possibility. But now?

“Go ahead, make our day. Say you’re innocent. Then we’ll take away your parole,” was basically what I was being told. So my parole was now a matter of what I spoke and believed. If I told people the truth, I’d be punished further.

A few months later I learned that one of the basic tenets of therapy in any situation is the honesty the participants. Unless you’re innocent. Then, you have to lie your ass off.

The beginning of the program for those being prepared for it consists of many interviews and tests. Most of the testing is cognitive therapy language. “Do you believe that you have problems?” Questions like that, to determine your attitude, whether or not you would accept the suggestions and teachings. People who don’t answer “correctly” are thrown into solitary confinement. If they still do not get the message, then they are given a disciplinary case which changes their parole status and are then shipped off the unit. It’s a way to (illegally) revoke their parole. The unit’s staff does not have authority to revoke a person’s parole on the basis of his survey answers but this is how they get around it. If they can convict you of a bogus disciplinary case, your classification status changes. It is the change in your status which triggers the revocation of parole. Slick eh?

Part of the process involves a lengthy interview with a licensed therapist. During my interview I was told that if my lie wasn’t convincing enough, therapists would kick me out. “We’ll know that you’re just trying to satisfy the program requirements. It’s easy to see when somebody is just gaming the system,” the therapist told me.

“Look, you’re a nice guy. But if you’re innocent, go to the law library and fight your case. This isn’t the program for you.”

It had to be the most disheartening conversation I’ve ever had. “You may be innocent but if you are, we need to punish you further. “

I made it through the program. And I can tell you now that in reality, they don’t care about any of that. They want you to go through the motions but they truly don’t care if you are innocent or guilty. They just need you to go through their prescribed motions so they can check off a box. I often wonder how this can possibly help the guilty but paradoxically, I saw people wonderfully changed.

When I got out, it took a lot of consideration but I decided that I would no longer pretend I was guilty. It is, was, and will be completely counterproductive to any improvement in my life to speak about my experience other than truthfully. My own integrity demands it. And I’ll not beat myself too much about why I signed a plea deal rather than going to trial. I won’t go into it in detail here but the avoidance of a lifetime behind bars is not something for which I’ll apologize nor will I allow anyone to shame me for it. I wish I could have gotten real justice but I at least am living outside of prison today. I don’t think I would be had I gone to trial. Juries often convict innocent people.

A few weeks after I was released, I watched some portions of “When They See Us,” a haunting miniseries about the five young boys falsely accused of a brutal rape in Central Park in 1989. Personally, I don’t know when I’ll be able to watch the entire thing. It is too real. And it might be the most important work ever produced about true crime based on the changes that are being made in its aftermath. Ava DuVernay proves herself to be a master at noticing what it is that makes these men’s stories authentic. One scene in particular struck me dumb. It shows Raymond Santana taking a shower shortly after being released from prison. He’s alone, in his boxers, hot water streaming over him. Prison has made its indelible mark on him. If you’ve ever been to prison you know immediately that there is exquisite care being taken to get the story right.

And we see how the system keeps punishing the innocent, even more punitively than it does the guilty. The Exonerated Five first confessed, then took their cases to trial. Juries found them guilty in spite of the fact that there wasn’t one shred of physical evidence that they were anywhere near the scene of the crime. In another scene, two of the young men are out on parole and have to face a so-called therapist in a mandated Sex Offender Treatment Program who calls them out as rapists in front of the group. In the face of her withering rebukes, they stand their ground and tell her there is no way they are going to admit guilt. She kicks them out of her group. It was a stark reminder of how the justice system grinds up the bones of its subjects, especially those who protest their innocence.

Many who work in justice departments around the country resist every hint that what they are doing might be improperly directed. And why not? If you were involved in a system that was supposed to be doing good, one that often rewarded you with praise, emphasizing the positive impact you are making on society, why would you ever question anything? And why wouldn’t you resist every critic? Such criticism would be considered insult. A slap in the face. “I’m doing good!” Scream those faced with the growing number of exonerated innocents.

While I can understand, I don’t feel any better about what is going on. If you are innocent, and especially if you are an innocent person charged with a sex crime, you are punished with more zest than if you were guilty. I hope one day this will stop. But it’s hard to imagine that happening in the current environment. The people involved in the case of the Exonerated Five are even today trying to rehabilitate their own actions. Even without the help of dramatization, their behavior would lead reasonable people to realize that police and prosecutors were vicious and merciless.

But instead of remorse, those involved and some of their supporters too, seem to be angrier that the victim’s innocence has exposed flaws in the justice system, than they are happy that the “system worked” to exonerate them. They often trot out this same “the system worked” canard when people suggest that many innocent people are ritually murdered by the state, as if one exoneration is proof that no more innocents languish in prisons, or that there is no need to modify current standards of operation.

The justice system in America doesn’t have a lot of tolerance for the guilty, but it has even less for the innocent. That is why it keeps punishing the innocent.