Home

Rocky beginnings

Kerry's picture
Fri, 2007-11-23 01:47 - Kerry

What if you fell in love with someone with a shady past or criminal record?

Is the love of a good person powerful enough to change the evils of a bad past?

MSNBC has a series called Lockup , with an episode called: Lockup: San Quentin - Extended Stay – The Conjugal Visit

It's interesting how the conjugal visit is portrayed in this particular series, because it shows a different side to the public image many of us have of an inmate going to a sleazy looking make-shift hotel room or trailer to have sex.  Instead, this program features home-like facilities that are used by the inmate and his/her partner for a weekend-visit.

Mentally, it can't be much different than a regular couple going on a couple's only weekend get-away.   In fact, I bet these visits and stays are much more appreciated and valued by those who really want better for themselves.

I believe Child Placement begins with the parents, and the parents who are put in prison need to work on their role as a team member of the family they created.  For the non-violent offender, I think nothing motivates more than the unconditional love and support a family can offer one of it's own, especially when everything seems to be hopelessly ruined.  Who couldn't use the faith and confidence of another person to get through tough times?

I wonder if there are programs that allow parents to stay with their entire family for a weekend?

 

Comments

Fri, 2007-11-23 15:24 — neophyte

"rocky beginnings"

When I think of "rocky beginnings", or shady past, I think some one is hiding a secret.  That's never good, because you know that secret is gonna blow one day.  I think, too, most lies are told to cover-up another person, and this is how jealousy and fits and anger and crap get started.

Think about it.  What's the quickest way to get a man pissed or a woman freaked-out?  If they find-out there's another person sharing the sheets with their lover.

Jealousy typically refers to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that occur when a person believes a valued relationship is being threatened by a rival. This rival may or may not know that he or she is perceived as a threat.

The word stems from the French jalousie, formed from jaloux (jealous), and further from Low Latin zelosus (full of zeal), and from the Greek word for "ardour, zeal" (ζ?λος) (with a root connoting "to boil, ferment"; or "yeast"). Jealousy is a familiar experience in human relationships. It has been reported in every culture and in many forms where researchers have looked. [1] [2] [3] It has been observed in infants as young as 5-6 months old and in adults over 65 years old. [4] [5] [6] [7]

It has been an enduring topic of interest for scientists, artists, and theologians. Psychologists have proposed several models of the processes underlying jealousy and have identified individual differences that influence the expression of jealousy. Sociologists have demonstrated that cultural beliefs and values play an important role in determining what triggers jealousy and what constitutes socially acceptable expressions of jealousy. Biologists have identified factors that may unconsciously influence the expression of jealousy. Artists have explored the theme of jealousy in photographs, paintings, movies, songs, plays, poems, and books. Theologians have offered religious views of jealousy based on the scriptures of their respective faiths. Despite its familiarity, however, people define jealousy in different ways.

The word "jealousy" is frequently used to describe what is more properly envy, fixation on what someone else has.

I think deep in my heart of hearts, I'm jealous of people who have the love of not only someone special, but the love of family to share it all with.   People assume that's a given, but it's not.  Not even when you're adopted are you guaranteed love and affection, or protection.  In that sense, too, I'm jealous of those adoptees who got it much better than me.

Is that a crime?

Fri, 2007-11-23 16:17 — Kerry

The "Notorious Boston Jail": compare & contrast markets

Looking for love in all the wrong places?  Interestingly, MSN has an article boasting the lavish cost to sleep in a refurbished jail for those lucky enough to afford whimsy these days.

http://travel.msn.com/Guides/article.aspx?cp-documentid=436275&GT1=10642

No longer is it hard time to spend the night in this slammer. The elegant iron-railing balconies were once catwalks where guards stood watch over the inmates to make sure they didn't try to break out. If you look closely, you can still see the outline of the holes from the iron bars on the windows.

At the newly opened Liberty Hotel in Boston, it's hard to escape what this building once was: a decrepit jail where Boston locked up its most notorious prisoners.

But that's just the point.

After a five-year, $150 million renovation, the old Charles Street jail is now a luxury hotel for guests who can afford to pay anywhere from $319 a night for the lowest-priced room to $5,500 for the presidential suite. The hotel, at the foot of Boston's stately Beacon Hill neighborhood, opened in September.

Architects took pains to preserve many features of the 156-year-old stone building and its history.

The old sally port, where guards once brought prisoners from paddy wagons to their cells, is being converted into the entrance to a new restaurant, Scampo, which is Italian for "escape."

In another restaurant, named Clink, diners can look through original bars from cell doors and windows as they order smoked lobster bisque or citrus poached prawns from waiters and waitresses wearing shirts with prison numbers. The hotel bar, Alibi, is built in the jail's former drunk tank.

Instead of con men, counterfeiters and cat burglars, the guests now include Mick Jagger, Annette Bening, Meg Ryan and Eva Mendes.

The old clientele included Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, who served time for fraud in 1904 after he took a civil service exam for a friend; Frank Abagnale Jr., a 1960s con artist played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can; a group of thieves who pulled off the Great Brinks Robbery in Boston in 1950; and a German U-boat captain who was captured in 1945 and killed himself with shards from his sunglasses.

Boston also has a luxury hotel called Jurys in the former Boston police headquarters building in fashionable Back Bay. The hotel bar is called Cuffs.

The transformation of the Charles Street Jail is stunning to some of those who spent time in the notorious lockup.

"It's a magnificent place," said Bill Baird, an activist locked up for 37 days in 1967 for breaking a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people. His arrest led to a landmark 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for unmarried people.

"How you could take something that was so horrible and turn it into something of tremendous beauty, I don't know," said Baird, who visited the new hotel on the 40th anniversary of his conviction.

By Denise Lavoie, AP

Considering the hand-in-hand connection hotel accomodations and love-making has in our minds, anything for a gimmick, I suppose.  However, there's raw truth in child-placement when you think about the seedier side of man, money and third-person operations, isn't there?

For instance, do you think Guatamala has such a fine hotel linking system to it's old jails like the US does?  In fact, given the known overcrowding in the US prisons these days, can we truly afford to convert prisons to hotels, ourselves, and keep catering to the elite, whilst ignoring those families still in need?

When a new-mother is cast away after her baby has been purchased by new adoptive parents, is she at least put up in a nice hotel for an extended stay as a 'consolation prize' or perk?

Am I a jerk for thinking like this, or just more aware than most?

I've often wondered, is it so hard to fathom the connection between broken families, broken hearts and broken laws?  When the laws of nature (keeping family intact) are not respected, why would a child grow to respect laws of the land?

Sat, 2007-11-24 15:08 — Niels

Prison hotels

Here are several othe hotels in the world that previously served as a prison.

The Old Jail, Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia

Langholmen Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden

Gamirasu Cave Hotel, Urgup, Turkey

Malmaison, Oxford, England

Liepaja Prison Hotel, Liepaja, Latvia

Napier Prison, New Zealand

Hotel Katajanokka, Helsinki, Finland

Sun, 2007-11-25 06:42 — neophyte

Brutal!

From a historical perspective, I think it would be really cool to tour an old jail or prison, but it would really creep the hell out me out sleeping in a cell that housed inmates that lived horrible lives.  God only knows what really went on in those places.  I know I'm not that brave or sick to do that!  At least not sober.  I would love to meet with people who did stay in those kind of places, though.  First question I would ask is, "Did you scream in your room, just to see how it would echo in the jail?"

Instead, for myself, I would have to rob a bank to afford the two places I would want to try-out:  the one in England and the one in Turkey.  Damn!  With a few extra bucks, they sure clean-up nice, don't they?