If you are engaged with the criminal defense side of the law at any point in your life - be it through prisoners rights work, as a public defender, or through general advocacy - you will again and again be asked different varieties of the question, “How can you work with those people ?” Some who ask the question will phrase it slightly more delicately, but the underlying emotion remains the same: those are bad people, they are not like us, they are beyond help, and they deserve whatever punishment they get.

These days, when people hear I am an intern at the Federal Public Defenders office, it seems everyone has a story to tell me about a gory crime committed and a criminal who didn’t get the punishment they should have had coming. A story, basically, about how criminal defense attorneys help people who have committed heinous crimes get away with them, scott free.

Doing criminal defense work could hardly be more different than that image. Instead, the attorneys here spend hours trying to help those accused of crimes understand their rights. The intricacies of the system hardly understood by most law students and lawyers: what it means to plea, the benefits and drawbacks of a jury trial, and the charts and graphs of the sentencing guildelines. Public defense attorneys spend the day talking to family members, helping them wade through the complicated criminal justice system. Attorneys here try to make sure that those being sentenced for crimes get a sentence that matches the individual situation of the defendant - hopefully, a sentence that will help them recover the life they are losing while incarcerated.

Yep, the reality of the criminal justice system isn’t much like CSI or Law & Order (which all focus on prosecution, it should be noted). It's not much like that at all. The “bad guys” are never quite so simple, the crimes rarely so elaborate and brilliantly planned. In reality, people get wrapped up in the criminal justice system for so many different reasons, usually not a scheme to make millions, and often non-violent offenses. People make bad decisions, they make mistakes, and they pay dearly for them. Usually this punishment - time in the hundreds of state and federal prisons throughout the country - guarantee that their interactions with the criminal justice system will continue for the rest of their lives. It is incredibly hard to reenter the “outside” after years in prison, with a gaping hole in your resume, in your personal life, and in your ability to interact with society as a whole.

The harsh reality is that those involved in the criminal justice system aren’t “those people” at all - they are us. Last month news sources reported that, for the first time in United States history, one in every one hundred Americans is incarcerated. (See the New York Times article on the report at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1206363871-4ViH+hZw3jRZENnLLPwIcw). If you were to do a true account of those directly affected by the prison system, it would reach far beyond that one in one hundred. It would include the fathers and children holding hands over tables in the visitation area at the federal detention center in Guyanabo, Puerto Rico. It would include the sisters and brothers in upstate New York mortgaging their hard-earned houses to pay for bail, to pay for an attorney, to support the families left behind. It would include sons and daughters across the country who haven't spent a holiday with family in decades.

I can never write eloquently enough to convey the suffering and agony of those imprisoned, and the pain and struggle of the family and friends they have left outside. Pop culture has romanticized prison in so many different ways, has made so many jokes about prison culture, and spread so many rumors about cable tv and life behind bars. Prison is none of these things. It is cold and institutional, it is bad food, and small spaces, and a constant feeling of fear. It is the loss of control, the loss of choice, and the absolute loss of freedom. Yes, many of those incarcerated have committed crimes, but all remain human. It is easy to forget that every day each of us wakes up, heads to school or to work, sees those that we love, makes the choice to do whatever we want with our day, millions of Americans are trapped in prison. If lucky, they may spend an hour or two in the fresh air. They are told when to walk, when to eat, when to bathe, and when to speak on the phone. All priveledges that may be revoked at any time, for almost any reason.

A number of people have been credited with a variation on the quote, but as Dostoevsky wrote,"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." For those who don’t want to acknowledge the complexities of the criminal justice system, those who don't want to look behind the black and white ideas of guilt and innocence, there is little that can be said (and certainly little in this short blog) to change their minds. The idea of "criminal justice" is complicated, it is both personal and political. However, it's also an issue that cannot be ignored. Because it's not just an issue - it's our friends, our family, and our responsibility.