Desperate Man funds his retirement by going to prison

[Herman Munster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/business/mutfund/07essay.html?_r=1&ref=mutfund&oref=slogin

On May 1, Mr. Bowers — or, as he is known to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, prisoner A535976 — handed a teller a stickup note, got four $20 bills and then handed them over to a security guard, telling the guard that it was his day to be a hero, according to accounts by The Columbus Dispatch and The Associated Press.

At his trial in October, he explained to the judge that he was about to turn 63 and had lost his job making deliveries for a drug wholesaler. He said that with only minimum-wage jobs available, he preferred to draw a three-year sentence, which would get him to age 66, when, he said, he could live off of Social Security. And that is what he got.

Mr. Bowers has solved his income problem and the question of health care in a single act. He’s a little like O. Henry’s character, Soapy the New York hobo, in “The Cop and the Anthem,” who hopes to winter over at Rikers Island: “Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.” The patented O. Henry twist, of course, was that Soapy had a great deal of trouble getting arrested. Mr. Bowers did not.

His lawyer, Jeremy W. Dodgion, said his client is neither unbalanced nor dim. “He’s as charming as can be,” he said. “He’s easy-going, very articulate — he’s no dummy, by any means.”

He said Mr. Bowers was addressing an all-too-common problem.

“At his age, it was harder and harder to find a job with benefits,” Mr. Dodgion said, and “he finally said, to hell with it.” And while most people would find prison a soul-crushing experience, Mr. Bowers had done time in the 1970s on a robbery conviction, Mr. Dodgion said, and so he knew he could survive.

The prosecutor, Dan Cable, summed up for The A.P.: “It’s not the financial plan I would choose,” he said, “but it’s a financial plan.”

[me b zola]

1. How utterly sad

The rw has shouted so many lies for so long that inmates have it "so easy" in prison that some of the desperate would actually choose prison over freedom.

I'm ashamed of what we have become. :cry:

[G Hawes]

2. Nothing new about that, really.

"Three hots and a cot"

It's been the choice of many for a long, long time. Sad, yes. New, no.

[Bozita]

3. Here's another guy doing the same thing. (from last week's paper)...

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061...

December 29, 2006

Feds fail workers hurt by outsourcing

Critics call for massive overhaul of program designed to help employees displaced by globalization.

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

The machine-tool designers at Tesco Technologies' Auburn Hills plant had long suspected that the Indian engineers whom they had helped train would one day take their jobs. The layoff notices, in the summer of 2004, were no surprise.

But the Tesco engineers had not imagined that they would face a second opponent: the U.S. Department of Labor. When they applied for help from a federal program designed to help those unemployed because of international trade, the department first delayed, then denied their application.

More than two years later, they're still waiting for benefits, despite a federal judge's ruling that the labor department officials essentially invented their reason for denying the workers' application. "I think their process (is) no matter what, they're going to deny it," said Gary Mosey, 50, of Oxford Township, who filed the original application and has been fighting since. "It's so late now, several of these people have either found another way to hang on, or they went down already."

One example of that, Mosey said, was the situation of a former co-worker, 60-year-old Lawrence Lawson, who was arrested in July after police said he tried to rob a Troy bank; his lawyer said the man was desperate for a place to live, even a jail cell, after losing his home.

more...

[Cant_wait_for_2008]

4. Gonna bea lot more of that happening in ten years when the Boomers retire in droves.

[sweetpotato]

5. Bring back the workhouse

You could live at your job. In a dormitory style arrangement. There would be a dining room where you are fed, and a room with a couple of beds - one for you and one for your roommate.

You'd never be late for work. No more commute. Takes care of that housing problem, too.

I think Charles Dickens has outlined the system in his literature.

Maybe that's what the camps are for - debtor's prison/workhouses for the poor.

[Bozita]

6. kick

[MadHound]

7. This is nothing new, the homeless have been doing this for decades

The feeling among many was hey, you had regular meals, a roof over your head and a modicum of medical care. Sad to see that this is becoming more and more common.