There is always a lot of talk about freedom. I wanna be free. Free to decide my own life, what I want to do, how I want to develop this theme, freedom. But of course, millions of people are not free. They’ve been incarcerated.
They’ve been put in jail for a very very long time. When I was a young man, I read a book entitled Go Boy. It was about the story of a chap by the name of Roger Caron, and he had spent most of his life from the time he was 16 in jail and the experiences that he had in the Canadian jail. And it truly made me reflect about prison. Then another time, sitting on a bus, the chap sitting beside me was oddly white.
I mean, of course, his skin color was white like mine, but he was whiter than me as if he hadn’t received any sunlight for a very long time. We got chatting along in a long bus ride, and eventually, he said to me, you know, I’ve just released from prison. And I said, really? Oh, I I couldn’t tell. But, of course, I knew he was an other, if you will, someone very, very different.
Our modern view of prisons, of course, comes from a chap by the name of Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian and he designed something called a panopticon which was a circular prison. I think you can still see an example in New York City and so the idea was that 1 guard or 2 guards could look at all the prisoners all the time. But this idea of prison, it strikes me as so odd. There’s gotta be a better way. I’ve had two experiences of being in jail, not in prison, but in jail that I would like to share.
Went to a trade show once in New Orleans. And after the show was over, we leased a car and we wanted to go down to visit the Gulf of Mexico, a couple of 100 kilometers south of New Orleans, as long as bayou where the Mississippi pushed the silt out into the Gulf of Mexico. You had this enormous finger of dirt, basically, and at the very end was a little tiny town called Grand Isle. So we’re driving along, and I was stopped by this policeman. And, of course, being very polite, you know, I waited for him in the car, you know.
And he came over and I kid you not, he had an absolutely enormous hat. Enormous. And the gun seemed to be even more enormous on his hip, and it was just like I was in a b movie, if you will. And he looked at my driver’s license and literally, he said, can’t hold this inbound. And I thought, where am I?
Am I in Mexico? Because I knew we were somewhat close to Mexico. I had no idea what he had just said. So I said to him, excuse me, sir. I I I don’t know what bound is.
And he became very enraged. And he said, you being rude to me, boy? And I said, no, sir. I’m not being rude at all but I don’t know what bond is. So you coming back to jail.
We’re going back to jail. So he drove the car back to jail, and I followed him. And then he put me in a cell, and he reminded me that he was going to leave the door open and then he proceeded to it was a very long time ago, long before the Internet, etcetera etcetera. But somehow, he checked my license. I was in this jail cell for, oh gosh, 40 minutes or something, a very long time it seemed to me.
And then he just let me go. Now at the time, the movie Shawshank Redemption had just come out in the last little while, and I had these visions of becoming part of some chain gang in Louisiana, you know, and going to stay there forever. But my other story about being in jail, I think, is a little bit more interesting. I was gonna go to India for a yoga conference, so I flew from Taiwan to New Delhi, and we transited through Shanghai, changed planes, what have you, on the way to New Delhi. So when I arrived in New Delhi, I discovered that my visa was wrong.
In the American system, they put your month and then they put the date. But in the Indian system, they put the date and then the month. So it was backwards and this was August, and it was so close that the month and the date had been inverted. So I literally had missed the visa date by days. Regardless, they didn’t allow me in the country.
So they said I had to return to Taiwan. So I got back on the same airplane, and it was kinda strange in a way because the uniforms in New Delhi got darker, and finally, there were people with guns putting me back on the airplane. So back we go through Shanghai. And as we’re approaching Shanghai, they moved me to 1st class. And I thought, wow.
They really know because I insulted and I’m angry, of course, and it’s the wee hours in the morning and I’m thinking of the money for the ticket. It just goes on. Right? So we arrive in Shanghai. They open the door, and there are 2 policemen, and they’re waiting for me.
Why me? So up we go. You know how you go up to the top of the ramp and everyone goes left? Well, I went right. And they took me along, and they took me into a room, and they sat me down.
And a young policeman, all very polite, spoke to me in impeccable English, asked me why I had only been in New Delhi for 4 hours. Now the New Delhi airport is, of course, totally open, so it would be easy to toss a bag of diamonds or narcotics, what have you, between people if the guard was distracted at 4 o’clock in the morning or whatever. So they assumed that I was up to some nefarious activity. So I explained to him what happened with the visa, but he didn’t really believe me. But that was fine.
I explained it. And then he said, thank you very much. Please wait. And then a young woman sat down and asked me exactly the same questions again. And I was there another hour in this room.
By now, I’ve been inside the airport security and airport police area for a couple of hours, and they asked me to please sit down and please wait. Now they have my passport. You appreciate. And I have no visa because I’m transiting now as a Canadian. At the time, we were allowed to transit through countries like China with no visa and stay for up to 11 hours.
After 11 hours, you are there illegally and all the complications that could bring about. So I sat there and time went on and they have my passport. And I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited. And finally, when the time was nigh at 10 and a half hours, the policemen arrived, and they got me into some flight, and I flew back to Taiwan. But they didn’t hand me my passport until just before I got on the plane and then I flew back home.
Now these two instances have shown me for sure that no one wants to go to prison. Jail was enough of an introduction, and so I truly think we have to find a way that we can minimize. At the moment, I was reading that there are 5,000,000 people in the criminal justice system in the United States, and they used to be under 500,000 not that long ago. So obviously, this is a growth industry. But for sure, once you’ve been incarcerated like this, you change and it makes you reflect.
Doesn’t it? And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary. We must find a way to reform the criminal justice system, and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.