Receive Your Copy After The Madness:: A Judges Own Prison Memoir Assembled By Sol Wachtler Presented As Printable Format

book caught my eye as I was penning a dark and gritty prison novel, To lend my sordid tale the proper musky stench of verisimilitude, I sought insight into the world of shower rapes, gang violence, murder, mayhem, wasted lives, abject despair, and nasty jagged homemade shanks to the jugular.
Little did I suspect it would be so kneeslappingly hilarious,

It might well be the funniest prisonthemed book ever, Except maybe for mine, but I wouldnt trust me on that point, because Im probably extremely biased, and shamelessly dishonest too, But although this is peeyourpants funny, it doesnt for a moment suggest that prison is a laughing matter, Even as I was chuckling merrily away, I was nevertheless shocked and horrified, scared even straighter than I was before, and vowed to cancel my backup plan for pursuing a life of crime when my book fell spectacularly short of its ambitions to be a bestseller.


Thats a tough trick Judge Wachtler pulled off: taking on a deathly serious subject and treating it with humor, without crossing the line to belittling and mocking something that we, as a society ought to think a lot more seriously about.
Such is the state of our penal system, And Wachtler is more qualified than just about anyone to opine, having become intimately familiar with both sides of that ugly but inevitable institution, There always has been and always will be crime in human societies, and we will always need some type of system to deter it, most likely including incarcerating at least some proportion of our citizenry.
But if your country locks up a larger percentage of its citizens than any other nation on the face of the Earth as the U, S. does and yet still has rates of crime and murder that could hold their own with any lawless thirdworld quagmire run by drug gangs and warlords in your face, Somalia! then youre doing something wrong.
Your strategy isnt working very well,

In the course of my research, I read dozens of other books, and probably hundreds of articles and blog posts written by past and present prisoners, guards, attorneys, politicians, sociologists and crime statisticians.
I visited a couple of prisons, spoke with some of the inmates, and interviewed both a former prison staffer and an excon whod spent a few years up the river.
All these sources painted a similar ugly, blood and semenstained picture of an utterly broken system in desperate need of fixing, not only for the sake of the many individuals who dont deserve to be caged alongside the ones who actually belong there, but for all of us on the outside, who, though we need not worry adversely about being shivved the next time we shower, are still affected by this spectacularly dysfunctional system.


None of those other sources was nearly as enjoyable as this book, though, I have seldom been

so entertained reading about something so horrible, Im inspired to follow in his footsteps and maybe present a hilarious collection of Holocaust jokes,

“So, a crippled feminist with AIDS stumbles into a concentration camp, . . “

Hisses and crickets, Angry, angry crickets.

Ooh, tough crowd, See I told you its tough to pull off humor under these circumstances, Check this out to see it done extremely well,


And of course, you had to expect at least a little shameless selfpromotion, so heres my prison novel sitelinkhere I didn't think I wanted to read this book, but it was the only nonreligious prison memoir on the shelves at my local library, and so I picked it up.
In getting to know Sol Wachtler I have learned a tremendous amount about the federal prison system, the responsibilities of a Chief Judge, and the remarkable character that is Judge Wachtler.
He made a big mistake in, influenced by prescription drugs and manic depression, and he paid for it in anmonth jail term that wrecked hiscareer as one of the most innovative and productive Chief Appellate Judges in the country.
His name is on a thick stack of hugely important laws, including the ability to convict a man for raping his wife, His experience in prison is not a woeisme tale, but an insightful examination of the experience of a convicted felon told with the sophisticated and honest language of a career professional.
He holds forth on prison management and judicial practice that he has problems with, giving specific anecdotal evidence to how they played out in front of him, and always included solutions that make sense.
One of his biggest issues is was the change in sentencing procedure from the judge who could give a length of sentence that was uniquely appropriate to the level of the crime, to the prosecutor, who argues that a defendant fits a particular definition of crime, for which each crime has a minimal sentencing requirement.
He describes it as a woman who steals powdered milk to feed her baby serves the same jail time as a drug dealer who steals powdered milk to cut his cocaine.
Points can be added for obstructing justice, which can mean as little as not narcing on anyone else, therefore not cooperating with the police, Wachtler says prosecutors complain that the old way was too much work, judging each crime individually, but Wachtler responds with the best line ever: "Law enforcement is difficult, except in a police state.
"
Wachtler really makes the case for the need to expend more time on rehabilitative services and give lighter sentencing on firstoffense nonviolent offenders, Everyyear sentence costs us aroundmillion dollars, and we're turning firstoffenders into unskilled professional criminals, Onlyof the current federal prison population are violent, We could spend less and get real people back in our communities at the end of the deal, Why isn't this happening What is wrong with the world!! Why build one more damn prison to house anotherpot smokers
I was happy to learn that Wachtler got his law license back in, and he's teaching law and working to provide alternative courts for the mentally handicapped.
What an amazing person, a new idol for me, Oh my god, he'syears old and still working for justice, A diary of a very prominent and respected judge who managed to get himself arrested, convicted and imprisoned, He explains how it happened, and then after a brief introductory narrative, his diary begins, His diary entries chronicle events and thoughts during a prison stay infederal facilities, He explains they were not Club Fed camps, but actual prisons, with medical facilities, His diary entries describe many varied experiences from getting his hair frozen after a shower he had to walk outside during a Minnesota winter, to getting family and professional colleague visitors, including a US Supreme Court Justice, who gives him a hug, and being kept in solitary confinement on occasion.
He describes people he met in prison, and tells little stories about them and their biographies, and some of the procedural history which led them to become incarcerated with him.
He tells of being confronted bylarge, menacing black dudes and being told that HE was the one who put their daddy in prison, When he wonders out loud if that were possible, since he was mostly an appeals and not a trial judge, they all three bust out laughing at their prank! He describes breakingribs tripping on a gopher hole when involved with afoot tall Chippewa chief who does not like being called Sioux.
He has a chapter on meeting organized crime bosses in the pen, and has some history on several Mafia families which he remembers from his career as a judge.
He has quite a few insights about public policy which he explains he could not have reached if he had remained a judge on the outside, He feels he has a lot to offer, perhaps as a teacher or lecturer, and when he is released, he is, at first welcomed at a college as a teacher, but then told they cannot allow him to continue, so he finds that his employment and career options have become severely limited as a result of his conviction and incarceration.
He does take responsibility for his errors, and other than a little initial whining about how his accuser could have just come to him directly with her complaints, instead of going to the FBI He admits in his madness he demanded extortion money which he did not need from her using a fictitious identity, hoping that she would turn to him again for help.
He had previously had an extramarital affair with her, but then he broke it off, He also complains that the prosecutor made a big media show of his arrest, to aggrandize his own career, which he explains is actually par for the course: a form of judicial trophy hunting, to mix metaphors.

Eventually, on the outside, he starts an ADR alternate dispute resolution type of business with some colleagues, so that he is involved in arbitration and mediation for private parties who have agreed to avoid civil litigation.
This seems like a very intelligent and best outcome for him, after a hellacious ordeal for everyone, His comments about public policy on nonviolent, drugrelated, first time offenders have the voice of experience from the bench and now the cell, and many people agree with that now, although perhaps at the time this book was written, such an opinion was perhaps rather more novel, and interesting coming from a judge, who explains his previous naivete contrasts with the anecdotal stories he has since acquired as an inmate.


When I first started reading, I commented: Just started reading book AFTER THE MADNESS, a judge's own prison memoir, by Sol Wachtler, From the very first few pages the former New York state chief judge describes weaving a complex web of deceptive pretenses fake letters from invented, fictitious bogeyman, etc, in a vain attempt to manipulate a younger female relative with whom he had previously been having an extramarital affair, I see how those efforts were what are called "indirect alternatives" to obtaining a goal, Indeed, contact with the lady was in service of personal goals and needs which were not inextricably linked to her involvement i, e. he could have figured out a way of meeting those needs without harassing her, So all of the machinations and manipulations described in the book are, from the start, looking to me to be tragically misguided and unnecessary,

Let us all resolve to figure out what we basically truly need and to figure out how to get it with as little fuss, bother, and annoyance of others.
This is called a "direct alternative", When a person decides to manipulate others as a path to obtaining what they think they need, they lose their own freedom amp they make the path to happiness unnecessarily difficult, inefficient, amp indirect, because it depends on actions and persuasion or manipulation of others.
Choose the easier, more direct path if you can find one or figure one out, You will be glad you did! :

HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD by Harry Browne, .