Watching "Lockup: Raw" on MSNBC (channel is a default in this house) and someone being taken to administrative segregation ("solitary") twists and fights his escort. He gets tackled and carried like horizontally like a log to the end of his journey.

I wonder to myself is part of his fight is about a desire not to go to solitary. (I understand it's supposed to be a punishment but I wonder if it's really as horrible as it's made out to be on "Law & Order: SVU." I wonder how people who think it's no big deal would react to being subjected to it.)

So I had this crazy idea. What if some scientist created an AI psychology program to "talk" to prisoners as an experiment in improving behavior? A kind of Siri for prisoners.

Of course, there are all kinds of problems with doing experiments with/on prisoners. I wonder if this kind of thing would be very difficult. The aim would be to improve the prisoners' mental condition in the hopes that it would improve the society of the prison and conditions overall. By using an automated system, it wouldn't endanger or entangle anyone with the prisoners.

Of course, maybe AI wouldn't be enough and it would be better to have actual human psychologists doing the work. With the technology of today, a long distance video (or only audio) connection could be set up to talk to the prisoners.

In my original plan, the AI program would be set up specifically for prisoners in administrative segregation. I'm sure most people would think this violates the rules of "ad seg" but to my thinking if it's a voice only and it's an experiment to improve the mental health of the prisoner, it's still useful.

Another piece of the program I saw talked about prisoners doing art. I wondered if maybe the art could be given to the families of the prisoners to sell, so that they could be supported somehow. Of course, there are many arguments against this:
1. The profit could come back to the prisoners through their prison accounts, meaning they are profiting for work while in jail.
2. I don't know if part of imprisonment is supposed to be the prevention of someone from having work and making money. (Maybe it's implicit rather than explicit.)
3. The art could be used to communicate with people outside the prison; gang networks, etc.

I've tried to think (briefly) about how to get around these problems. For one, I thought maybe the art could be sold to profit the prison (but my mind just did a u-turn and said: "The prisons are private institutions run for profit!")(wait: is that all prisons or just federal - or even just some federal prisons?). Well, let's say if a prison is not for-profit, then sales of art are allowed to benefit the prison.

For the gang communication issue, I have a less clear solution. One idea was to mix up the sales and prisons, attaching works to prisons they didn't come from. This idea is flimsy, though, because gang members could search through all the works coming from all the prisons for certain cues that could be put on all pieces that are gang communications. Another idea would be to create a shell company (or more than one) through which the art is sold. The question that results from this idea is: why wouldn't this information be revealed, since it's related to state/federal business? How would you keep it undercover (for security reasons) so that it wouldn't become some curiosity news story (because it's very juicy for that beat)?

I think about prison now and again and every time I think about it, I think there's so much we can do to improve the prison experience or make prison time a true reformatory experience for a lot more people than it is now. For instance, if we're putting car thieves in prison among a population of double murderers who will break down their souls even more; how is that helping our society?

One of my recent thoughts had to do with food. I was reading a piece from the NYT about aging prisoners and how expensive their care is and I wondered how much of that has to do with the food that they're eating - but what can you do about that? We're having a hard enough time providing healthy food to our school children, y'know?

Still, I think it's possible. A lot of prisons are out in the middle of nowhere, which means there's arable land (well, maybe) to grow local produce on. Second, it gives low-risk prisoners an activity that's useful and fulfilling. Third, it's a savings for the prison if they can provide some of their own resources! It seems like a win-win!

Of course, it would take some kind of investment up front: an investment of time; an investment of energy; an investment of trust and/or an investment of money. The investment of trust - my phrase for a change in mindset - is the largest hurdle, to my mind. For a prison to invest time and energy in this project, they would have to believe that it has any relevance in the first place, have to see that it would help them; and I don't think of prison guards and institutions as places with a whole lot of faith.

Still, it would be a great project. Something to start small at one prison; I mean, you could even have a minimum-security prison doing farming and turning out produce and vegetables for medium- and maximum-security prisons! (It's like a farm team - get it?? Guffaw, I crack myself up.)

In any case, I think that the prison system could use America's attention, to try to change it from a system of abject misery to a place of possibility. Think of it as akin to parenting moving away from corporal punishment to the "time out" method. It's worked for thousands of parents who have raised happy, healthy kids. Maybe we could create a new class of ex-convict that could change our society somewhat.

It's just a thought.