{"id":14426,"date":"2020-03-17T12:37:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T16:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14426"},"modified":"2020-03-22T15:03:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-22T19:03:56","slug":"my-convict-road-gang-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/17\/my-convict-road-gang-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"My Convict Road Gang Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"et-l et-l--header\">\n<div class=\"et_builder_inner_content et_pb_gutters3\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_0_tb_header et_section_regular\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_0_tb_header et_pb_equal_columns et_pb_gutters1 et_pb_row--with-menu et_pb_row_1-4_3-4\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_3_4 et_pb_column_1_tb_header et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough et-last-child et_pb_column--with-menu\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_menu et_pb_menu_0_tb_header et_pb_bg_layout_dark et_pb_text_align_left et_dropdown_animation_fade et_pb_menu--without-logo et_pb_menu--style-centered\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_menu_inner_container clearfix\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_menu__wrap\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_menu__menu\">\n<nav class=\"et-menu-nav\"><strong>Libertarian Institute<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-14427 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG-150x90.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"90\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG-150x90.jpg 150w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG-800x480.jpg 800w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG-768x461.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/libertarian-institute-logo-tiltedlogoORIG.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div id=\"et-main-area\">\n<div id=\"main-content\">\n<div class=\"et-l et-l--body\">\n<div class=\"et_builder_inner_content et_pb_gutters3\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_1_tb_body et_section_regular\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_1_tb_body et_pb_row_3-4_1-4\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_3_4 et_pb_column_1_tb_body et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_post_title et_pb_post_title_1_tb_body et_pb_bg_layout_light et_pb_text_align_center\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_title_container\">\n<h1 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/libertarianinstitute.org\/articles\/my-convict-road-gang-summer\/\">My Convict Road Gang Summer<\/a><\/h1>\n<p class=\"et_pb_title_meta_container\">by <span class=\"author vcard\"><a title=\"Posts by Jim Bovard\" href=\"https:\/\/libertarianinstitute.org\/author\/jbovard\/\" rel=\"author\">Jim Bovard<\/a><\/span> | <span class=\"published\">Feb 17, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14437\" src=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1-800x394.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1-800x394.jpg 800w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1-150x74.jpg 150w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1-768x378.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jpb-16th-birthday-convict-road-gang-combo-Untitled-1.jpg 805w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_image et_pb_image_0_tb_body\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_post_content et_pb_post_content_0_tb_body\">\n<p>I may have been a rube, but I knew enough not to startle the gargantuan glowering prison guard with that double-barreled shotgun propped on his beer belly. As a sixteen-year-old toiling in the hot sun in 1973 alongside convicts on a road gang, I understood that the summer help was not exempt from the laws of physics. It was so easy being polite downwind from the shotgun that working for the Virginia Highway Department was my southern etiquette finishing school.<\/p>\n<p>A couple times a week, a bright orange dump truck toting a cage full of convicts from a nearby state prison pulled up to work sites on rural back roads in the Shenandoah Valley. The hairless-headed guard would take his crouched position, ready to start blasting anyone who took off running. The convicts would exit single file from the cage and pick up their shovels, picks, or other tools. \u201cMake my day!\u201d was that guard\u2019s motto long before Clint Eastwood\u2019s <i>Dirty Harry<\/i> debuted.<\/p>\n<p>There were no restrictions on contact with the convicts as long as you didn\u2019t help them escape. I was fascinated to\u00a0 hear the convicts\u2019 life stories \u2013 or, more accurately, the story of how their lives turned to crap.<\/p>\n<p>A few black convicts on the road gang\u00a0 had been busted for drug dealing. Two years earlier, President Richard Nixon had proclaimed that drugs were \u201cpublic enemy number one\u201d and\u00a0 that drug use was a \u201cnational emergency.\u201d Prosecutors around the nation took the cue and started busting narcotics offenders by the busload.<\/p>\n<p>I often shot the bull with an amiable mid-20s black guy from Richmond, Virginia.\u00a0 Willie\u2019s colorful bandana stretched across his head trumpeted his disdain for drab prison garb. He admitted to me that he had been a dealer but swore he\u2019d never met the key trial witness who claimed to have bought heroin from him. Willie was stunned by the fabrications prosecutors used to nail him. He didn\u2019t seem particularly bitter about doing time but was convinced the justice system was a crock. \u00a0Decades later,\u00a0 I wrote in <i>Playboy<\/i> about the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly using\u00a0 dishonest \u201cconfidential informants\u201d to fabricate evidence at federal trials.<\/p>\n<p>Willie was already half way through his prison sentence and was counting on getting out early for \u201cgood behavior.\u201d Unfortunately, thanks largely to mandatory minimum laws, the number of drug offenders in prisons rose tenfold between 1980 and 2005, spawning a vast prison industrial complex. More people were locked up for drug offenses than for violent crimes, and possessing trace amounts of cocaine was often punished with longer sentences than rape, murder, or child molesting. And prison guards became one of America\u2019s fastest growing occupations, increasing five-fold and becoming one of the most powerful political lobbies in California and other states. Americans who a century and a half earlier recognized how slavery corrupted slaveowners failed to recognize that being a prison guard can also deprave human nature.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to goofing off on the highway department payroll, I toiled two summers in a peach orchard in a job enlivened by nonstop profanity from an ornery former Army drill sergeant foreman.\u00a0 Most of the convict road gang didn\u2019t seem that different from some of the down-and-out peach pickers who busted their tails for $1.40 an hour to fill metal buckets around their necks with cursedly fuzzy peaches. At least convicts never showed up drunk at the start of the workday. But the judicial system treated narcotics violators as demons who needed to be scourged, not like human beings who transgressed an arbitrary line between licit and illicit conduct.<\/p>\n<p>Several convicts bragged to me that summer long ago about having access to the best illicit drugs<b>. <\/b>\u00a0Government could not even control its own prisons, much less every street corner in the land.\u00a0 The following decades saw one campaign after another to banish drugs from behind bars. In 1999, President Clinton proudly announced an initiative for \u201czero tolerance for drugs in prison,\u201d plowing more millions of dollars into canine teams and new drug-detection technologies. But\u00a0 scandals kept on coming. In 2013, a convict who was also the boss of the Black Guerilla Gang impregnated four beefy female guards at a state-run jail in Baltimore. That gang practically ran the jail, bringing in as many cell phones and narcotics as they pleased.\u00a0 Last week, a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted another 15 prison guards, inmates and outside \u201cfacilitators\u201d for smuggling narcotics and cell phones into prison.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing first-hand the boundless bullshit of the war on drugs planted seeds of skepticism in my thick young head. I scoffed at \u201cReefer Madness\u201d in my high school health class.\u00a0 I had smoked marijuana a few times but did not feel compelled to burn down any orphanages afterwards. A decade later, I published my first attack on marijuana prohibition in the <i>Los Angeles Herald Examiner<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays, many activists are pushing for laws expunge drug possession convictions from people\u2019s records\u00a0 \u2013 a reform that could improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who did no violence to fellow citizens.\u00a0 That humane reform would be far more effective than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission\u2019s crusade to make it a federal crime not to hire ex-convicts.<\/p>\n<p>Some leftists are going further and calling for closing down all jails and prisons and releasing all convicts. In New York City, activists disrupted a public meeting with the chant: \u201cHell no to the status quo! These prison walls have got to go!\u201d\u00a0 Apparently, anyone who is incarcerated is a victim of social injustice. This is where activism descends into lunacy.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the guys on that 1973 road gang were behind bars for savage rampages.\u00a0 A sullen, Hulk-sized white dude told me he was in prison because he had beat hell out of his girlfriend\u2019s husband. I never aspired to test the boundaries of that guy\u2019s sense of humor. But he seemed like a ticking time bomb who could explode no matter where he was.\u00a0 Simply because many people are wrongly incarcerated or unjustly convicted doesn\u2019t turn all convicts into angels.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, permitting politicians to demonize anyone possessing \u201ccontrolled substances\u201d is nuts as long as there is no way to control politicians. \u00a0 The demagoguery that has pervaded the War on Drugs for half a century is one of the great disgraces of American democracy. Maybe my time working alongside those convicts helped spur the theme of <i>Lost Rights<\/i>: \u201cAmerica needs fewer laws, not more prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_blurb et_pb_blurb_0_tb_body et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_blurb_position_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_content\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_container\">\n<h4 class=\"et_pb_module_header\">About <a href=\"https:\/\/libertarianinstitute.org\/author\/jbovard\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jim Bovard<\/a><\/h4>\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_description\">Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>This article is adapted from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Public-Policy-Hooligan-Rollicking-Washington-ebook\/dp\/B00AKZH97W\"><strong>Public Policy Hooligan,<\/strong><\/a> available on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Public-Policy-Hooligan-Rollicking-Washington-ebook\/dp\/B00AKZH97W\">Amazon<\/a> &#8211;<\/div>\n<div class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_3_4 et_pb_column_1_tb_body et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_blurb et_pb_blurb_0_tb_body et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_blurb_position_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_content\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_container\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_blurb_description\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Hooligan-revised-cover-320-size-8615328506_c53c4847a9_n.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5261\" src=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Hooligan-revised-cover-320-size-8615328506_c53c4847a9_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"213\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Hooligan-revised-cover-320-size-8615328506_c53c4847a9_n.jpg 213w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Hooligan-revised-cover-320-size-8615328506_c53c4847a9_n-99x150.jpg 99w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 213px) 100vw, 213px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Libertarian Institute My Convict Road Gang Summer by Jim Bovard | Feb 17, 2020 I may have been a rube, but I knew enough not to startle the gargantuan glowering prison guard with that double-barreled shotgun propped on his beer belly. As a sixteen-year-old toiling in the hot sun in 1973 alongside convicts on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[592,426,2277,2274,65,1783,113,1067,258,188,2278,2276,23,484,1314,927,2275,410,257],"class_list":["post-14426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baltimore","tag-bill-clinton","tag-black-guerilla-gang","tag-convicts","tag-dea","tag-drug-enforcement-administration","tag-drug-war","tag-entrapment","tag-front-royal","tag-hooligan","tag-los-angeles-herald-examiner","tag-mandatory-minimums","tag-marijuana","tag-playboy","tag-prosecutorial-misconduct","tag-richard-nixon","tag-road-gang","tag-shenandoah-valley","tag-virginia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>My Convict Road Gang Summer - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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