Quote: (04-18-2012 02:38 PM)Arcais Wrote:
Has anyone ever faced a jail sentence or gotten charged with a felony?
What did you do after the whole thing was over?
Necroposting since this is bound to continue being a relevant topic for many, given that
8.6% of the adult population has a felony conviction.
I entered the federal system in 2008, served 14 months behind bars, then spent 6 months on the outside, then served another 22 months behind bars, then spent another 6 months on the outside, and then served another 10 months behind bars. Then I was done.
I've noticed this seems to be a pretty common type of pattern in the federal system. A lot of people get busted for supervised release violations, especially if they use drugs, and end up spending a lot more time in prison than what they originally got sentenced to. These days, the probationary restrictions tend to be pretty onerous, and therefore a lot of guys decide to say "fuck you" to U.S. Probation and go back behind bars rather than deal with all the hassles.
After my sentence was completely over, I had a marriage that ended up failing partly because of a flawed premise that my wife and I could start a business together that was going to make us rich (or at least make a meaningful contribution to society). Unfortunately, I repeated that same mistake with my second wife before I finally figured out, girls who perceive themselves to be a weak negotiating position will often compensate by seeming to go along with whatever plans you suggest, but they won't actually follow through with it; in the end, women expect men to take care of them.
When I first started job-hunting after prison, I spun my wheels for about six months applying at pretty much every retail and restaurant job I could think of. Meanwhile, I was also working at an unpaid computer repair internship. Eventually, my boss told me that the internship wasn't going to lead to a paying job (partly because that whole industry is shrinking, as computers get ever cheaper to simply replace when they break).
I also found out that, even in the retail and restaurant fields, if you're trying to get a job, you need to present yourself as the ideal candidate. That means coming up with a fake employment history and career goals that match what they would be looking for. Once I started doing that, I started getting offers, but then I realized that if I didn't mind falsifying my history, I might as well go back into accounting, where I could be making twice as much money as in retail.
So, I went back into accounting, and worked in that field for a year before my employer found out I'd been in prison, and let me go because I'd falsified my job application. I then worked a couple of temp gigs, and it wasn't long after that, that due to my political activities, my past ended up being splashed across the regional media, which pretty much blew my cover in the local accounting community.
(One might say, I should've kept a lower profile, but I think the direction I was headed in was a life similar to
this anyway. As time has gone on, I've concluded more and more that it doesn't really matter all that much what you do; society is divided into the givers and the takers (or the providers and the moochers, or the producers and the looters, or whatever you want to call them), and when you leave one of those classes, all it means is that you end up in the other. It seems to be becoming harder and harder to leave a meaningful legacy.)
So, next I was going to try to get back into programming, but that didn't pan out, because all the skilled programmers are busy with paying work, and don't have time for entrepreneurial projects. So at this point I'm mostly just hanging around. It seems as though at 36, my life is over. But then again, it seems like our civilization too is on a decline that will likely end in its collapse before it changes its ways, so I'm not sure it really matters.
There are some who have bounced back from a felony conviction by working for a family business or getting into the blue collar trades. I could give it a try, theoretically, but it's not like I know anyone in those trades. The last time I researched, it seemed like the process for getting into those trades isn't as straightforward in my state as it is in some other states.
I was going to apply for SSDI, but it turns out that if you've been out of work for five of the past ten years, lawyers typically won't want to take your case. I hadn't realized that. I'm at a point now of wondering, what is really the point of participating in this society as a productive worker; what is the benefit? What's the prize that I can get? It seems like the available women these days are arrogant, uncooperative, and hard to please. Even when I had a job, it's like I was never making enough to meet the standard.
I seem to remember that, when I was a teenager working retail, or washing dishes in the back of a restaurant, there was usually at least one tattooed, snaggletoothed 45-year-old guy hanging around who said he was just there because his felony kept him from doing any other job. A lot of those guys didn't last long before getting fired for one reason or another.
I could try to go into those fields, but the fact is, companies typically don't actually want felons working for them. It puts them at risk of legal liability. There was only one instance when someone knew about the felony and hired me anyway. I started telling him about it during the hiring process and he interrupted me and said, "You don't have to tell me about that." It was a seasonal tax gig at a place that had very slow business that year (probably because more people are doing their own taxes these days) and therefore that job didn't last long.
If I'm not actually wanted in the workforce, then I'm not all that inclined to try to find some way by which I can sneak back into it. My point in getting a job would be for personal pride, to feel like I'm contributing to the world. If they don't want the contribution, then fuck 'em. That's society choosing to financially support me rather than accept the help I could give them. We don't live in a society that lets people starve on the street, so I don't have to worry about that.
Of course, people will always say, "You did this to yourself by committing a crime." You can say that all you want. You are still picking up part of the tab for that, in terms of lost productivity, lost tax revenue, etc.; and I feel great satisfaction in reminding myself of that. You deserve it, for the policies you support, that hinder felons from returning back to gainful employment, once they're done serving their time.
Americans love to indulge their righteous indignation at lawbreaking by sending men to prison and barring them from most of the career paths after they get out. But those same taxpayers pay a heavy price for it, as they should. If it makes you feel so good to treat felons that way, and you don't mind having your money go to spend $50K/prisoner-year on incarceration, plus the costs of unemployment and underemployment, then hey, knock yourself out. Keep voting for the tough-on-crime, lock-'em-up policies.
I have a friend who went to prison, then got out and resumed his career as a loan officer, and then got fired because the state instituted a policy that felons can't be loan officers. He ended up going back to crime, and now is making a living selling large amounts of pot (and carrying guns as he does it). That makes me laugh too, because society deserves to see ex-offenders return to crime, when it bars their paths of rehabilitation. You can say that he deserves his fate, but you deserve yours too, my taxpaying friend.
Don't mind me, I just had to rant a little bit, because I get annoyed at people's smug, self-satisfied "Can't do the time, don't do the crime" rhetoric. We're all in this together, because we all have to live in the same world. Then again, I guess deterrence (in addition to incapacitation) is a major consideration that makes people think all this is worth the cost. On the other hand, other countries don't feel the need to treat ex-offenders this way in order to keep their crime rates low.
MikeCF is right that the federal system is completely different from state court. In federal court, they don't tend to
overcharge you and then drop charges the way the state courts do. They're also really big on apologies and remorse.
The way the plea deals seem to work is that you and the prosecutor agree to manipulate the facts in such a way that you end up at a certain level in the sentencing guidelines. There's a book,
Busted by the Feds, that a lot of guys swear by.
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