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Free in the Heartland By David Brown After spending the greater part of the late 90's over-sentenced in some of the worst imaginable parts of the California prison system, I decided to take back my life by any means necessary. I was frequently singled out, both in courts and by officers of the court, who without fail, decided I needed to be taught a lesson, and that society would benefit from me (someone who works for a living) serving the highest allowed prison sentence for possession, three times. This has been very disruptive, to say the least. I am certainly not an advocate for "prisoners' rights", nor will I ever champion the "cause" of the institutionalized. I've done the market research; most people in prison definitely belong there. I represent a small number of people caught up in the system, who've had enough of the constantly changing California drug laws in the 90's. We are tired of these laws "evolving" at our expense. We are displaying a healthy reluctance to having our quality of life compromised by questionable political motives. Last month, while still on parole for a possession case from over four years ago, I successfully fled the state of California with a new identity. Until the laws catch up with me and Prop. 36 can affect me retroactively, and I can be apologized to, at least on paper, for the years spent locked away, I will remain anonymous, hiding in plain sight. I was assigned to a parole officer, who should have been more concerned with taking care of his caseload of rapists, murderers, criminals, and their victims. Instead, he took a perverse joy in my suffering, threatening to control every aspect of my life, unnecessarily. This required considerably less effort than getting those members of his caseload off the streets who were actually a real threat to society. Upon my release...»»

V I E W P O I N T

	November 2002