Attica Correctional Facility

I think about freedom all the time. I bet you do too. Still, there’s nothing like the sound of a heavy metal door clanging behind you to focus your mind on what it really means.

I was a criminal defense lawyer. It was part of my job to spend a lot of time locked in a room with my client and other prisoners. I knew it was only temporary. I would get to go home and sleep in my own bed that night, but I also knew that I could only leave if that guy in the uniform with the gun unlocked that big door for me.

As the years went by I got used to it. I began thinking about visiting prisons almost as if I was a tourist visiting historic places. I remember the first time I represented a client at the Ossining Correctional Facility. It was always known as Sing Sing, and recently they renamed it to reflect that reality. I walked through the big arched entrance where so many movies and television shows were filmed. It was usually a scene depicting a prisoner being released after doing time. Sing Sing housed its first prisoners in 1826. It was considered a model prison since it turned a profit. It became the home of “Old Sparky”, the electric chair where 614 men and women were executed. Among those whose death sentences were carried out in that chair were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

I visited Attica Correctional facility, which became famous for a prison uprising in 1971. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz was imprisoned there for a while, as was John Lennon’s murderer. For my generation, “Attica!” became a rallying cry in fighting state oppression, made famous by Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.

The facility I dreaded visiting most was Riker’s Island. It is a New York City jail meant to hold defendants pre-trial and those serving short sentences. It is a run down, depressing place, like most correctional facilities. The reason I dreaded visiting was because it was an all day affair. It’s tough getting there. You have to drive over a bridge to the island, and then wait forever to see your client. You pass through various security checkpoints manned by angry, sour guards with violent tendencies.

There were moments that reminded me that despite my suit, and the laminated Officer of the Court Attorney card in my wallet, and the visitor badge clipped to my lapel, that I was as powerless as my client in the orange jump suit when I was sitting in that room. For instance, every day most prisons conduct something called “the count”. The entire inmate population must be accounted for during this time, and it is a painstaking process. The purpose is to make sure that no one has escaped overnight. In my experience it can last as long as four hours. If a lawyer happens to be having a client consultation when a count begins, he or she is effectively a prisoner until the count ends. The facility is locked down, and no one is permitted to enter or leave. That happened to me more than once, and I got used to it. I remember one time visiting a client at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. This old, run down federal facility has since become famous as the place where Jeffrey Epstein “hung himself”. That day years ago when I got locked in during the count, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, the alleged Genovese crime boss, was at an adjoining table with his lawyer. There were no guards around. Just defendants and their lawyers.

Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno

I have thought about freedom and the power of the state a lot. There is no doubt that citizens need to be protected from violent people, and there is a percentage of the population that deserves punishment for the harm they inflict upon others.

At the same time, the criminal adjudication process is deeply flawed, like any human institution. The purpose of a criminal trial is supposedly to discover the truth. I think the average person would be surprised at how much lying goes on in a courtroom. Lawyers lie, cops lie, witnesses lie, defendants lie, and judges lie. Not only that, but plenty of honest mistakes are made. Forensic witnesses screw up, defense lawyers say or do stupid things, and judges make mistakes. Despite all this, sometimes justice is served. Other times, it fails. That’s why I oppose the death penalty. Human beings make mistakes all the time, but you don’t get a do over after someone gets executed.

I’m sure many of you just read that and are wondering what the hell this article has to do with fiat, rent seeking, and bitcoin. I’ll try to explain why I see a connection.

By the time I got out of law school, the entire state of New York north of New York City was in the midst of an economic decline that really began as U.S. manufacturing was gradually exported overseas. Cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica were manufacturing hubs. Buffalo was also a transportation hub because of the Erie Canal. By the 1980’s that was all over. We used to joke that the only thing keeping upstate economically solvent was the prison system, and that wasn’t far from the truth.

Between 1973 and 2002, the number of prisoners serving sentences in New York State had increased from around 10,000 to around 70,000, and that number doesn’t reflect how many defendants were being held in pre-trial detention at local jails. There are probably many reasons for this increase, but there is no doubt that the prison population soared after implementation of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in 1973. Named for then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, these laws contained some of the harshest criminal penalties for non violent drug crimes in the country. Many prisoners were doing time for drug offenses. To put enactment of these laws into historical context, it was a year or two after the “Nixon Shock”, and a year or two before Nixon’s oil/dollar deal with Saudi Arabia.

In 1984 the U.S. Government enacted the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which removed much sentencing discretion from federal judges. The motivation for these guidelines was ostensibly to reduce disparities in sentencing regionally and racially, but the effect was to lengthen prison sentences nationwide. Non violent drug sentences became more harsh, since judges no longer could take into account the facts and circumstances of each case in determining an appropriate sentence.

During this time the economy of the United States was shifting from actually building real stuff to financialization. This concept was defined by a paper published by the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College:

New York City was and probably still is the hub of world finance. Upstate New York was a backwater descending into poverty. The prison system provided jobs to that region. It takes resources to convict these people before they begin serving their sentences: paying for prosecutors, legal aid lawyers, judges, court officers, prison guards, and maintenance personnel. After sentencing, these prisoners must be fed and clothed, and the prison employees need housing, schools for their children, and a community in which to live.

The New York model under the Rockefeller Drug Laws was duplicated in other states where there was a push to "get tough on crime." The economic benefits of the prison industry was an added incentive.

Eventually the Rockefeller Drug Laws were reformed and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were loosened, but the United States still has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The fact that a vital industry exists to facilitate holding fellow human beings captive is more than just sad. Nothing is produced. There is little gain in value. And yet it's all counted as part of the nation's Gross Domestic Product. It’s a product of a fiat system, anchored mostly around pure rent seeking. The system is ready made to foster political favors, nepotism, and other forms of state sponsored corruption. The bureaucratic bloat is familiar. Jobs multiply and budgets swell.

All this to imprison fellow human beings, many of whom were not convicted of violent crimes.

Yes, bitcoin fixes much of this, but not all of it. Bitcoin might reduce crime, but it won’t stop it. There is evil in this world. People will commit horrific, violent acts. People will steal, cheat, and commit fraud. But at least we will be able to more clearly spot the good guys from the bad guys.