JAMES TRAFICANT ON PRISON REFORM

Former Ohio Congressman James Traficant was released after spending seven years in Federal prison for racketeering, tax evasion, and fraud. His comments on prison life as told to Fox Network’s Greta Van Susteren:

“I come from seven years up at Rochester…a lot of good guys in there. They’re sort of like family in a way. It’s a different experience.”

“The first place I went was Allenwood, and I think the reason I went there is there were a lot of illegal immigrants there. And they knew I had the troops on the border…I think I was put in a position to be hurt.”

“Then I went to a place called Ray Brook up in upstate New York, known as “The Gladiator School. There’s a lot of violence. Well, it was a medium high…most political figures go to some camps in country clubs. I didn’t.”

“I mean, I was a prisoner, but I understood the dynamics of prison life. And now what you have is, they want to keep the prisons open, keep the jobs going. They’re putting 20, 30 years on some of these young people, and it’s out of hand.”

It would be great if Traficant uses his intelligence and his verbal skills to speak out on the need for prison reform–on how overcrowding in the prisons causes violence and inhumane conditions. He can use his ties to blue collar America to explain the problems with the prisons and how long prison sentences make people feel helpless. He can talk about how people who feel helpless feel like they have nothing to lose and turn to violence to get what they want. But on the other hand if he is going to whine about how he did not get special treatment because he is a ex Congressman he would be violating the great rapport he is supposed to have with the common man. He will lose his credibility and he will lose an opportunity to attempt to reform the prison system which he knows first hand.