The recent Ink Out Loud editorial column involving criminals as aids to seniors points out a bad idea. Whoever came up with that brilliant idea should their head examined.
I”m currently a prisoner at the California State Prison-Solano at Vacaville. I”ve served 28 years of my 129-year sentence.
I do know that criminals have sticky fingers, and they do take to shiny items, such as rings, bracelets, necklaces and all manner of shiny trinkets ? most of which possessed by seniors are heirlooms or things of sentimental value, but are merely items to trade for drugs or a small bit of cash at a pawn shop.
These people could care less if the item is a thing of endearment.
At Folsom Prison in 1992, I discovered what was at the root of my criminal behavior that began sometime in 1949 when I was 9 or 10.
I discovered that the abrasive treatment I received from my father (abrasive name-calling, constant belittling and observing him slug my mother around) caused my own self-respect to erode chip by chip, and once it was gone, I embarked upon a one-way road to self-destruction through drugs, alcohol and all manner of other crimes from “A” to “Z.”
Then I realized that a person without his self-respect cannot function in a free society, gravitating toward one of two places: the morgue or prisons. I escaped the morgue and landed in prison numerous times since my first term at San Quentin in 1965.
And please believe a person who is without his self-respect cannot be rehabilitated; that every effort to do so, no matter the choice of the individual, only rolls off him like water does a duck”s back.
However, get a person to realize he”s lost his self-respect, and can”t function in a free society without it, then you have a person who will earnestly pursue getting it back ? and once getting it back, he will pursue every avenue of rehabilitation for his betterment.
Every individual who has lost his self-respect can think back in his past and detect exactly when it was lost. I”m one of those people, and this is a thing done better late than never.
I do hope this helps somewhat in, hopefully, making it very difficult for a criminal to get a job aiding seniors.
Rod Keim
Vacaville
