Recently the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ("DOC") ran one of its writing contests. It offered $50 (an insultingly tiny fee for a writer) for an essay on the theme "Discovering a Vocation During Incarceration." You wonder sometimes if the DOC really believes that we're such suckers that we believe their propaganda. In any event, the obvious intent of the contest was to pretend that there was meaningful vocational training in the Pennsylvania prisons. There isn't. DOC wanted inmates who would go along with the pretense in the hope of getting the $50 bribe, entrants who would make the DOC sound good. It ain't. Our co-founder wrote an essay for the contest. We wonder why it wasn't accepted. Maybe the truth hurts. Please notice that, regardless of the rule against prisoners being involved in business, the DOC pays $50 if the prisoner will write what the jailers want. Our co-founder's essay follows. During my interminable twenty-four years of imprisonment, I've discovered many useful vocations; floor-mopping and advanced floor-mopping, cell-cot-making, toilet-scrubbing and pants-folding, to name just a few. Prison is the university of crime, so mostly, I've learned how to commit every imaginable antisocial act, murder, kidnapping, bank robbery, arson, purse snatching and the ubiquitous drug retailing. I've learned lying, cheating, stealing, bullying and brutality. Brutality and violence are the talents which bloom in every prisoner. There's nothing good about prison - nothing! It has no socially redeeming values. It's certainly not the place to discover a constructive vocation. In prison one discovers anger, bitterness, resentment, hostility and contempt for the law and those who invent and enforce it. One discovers the darkest most unsavory parts of one's psyche. When I came to prison in 1975, I was told that prison was "what you make it." That's a lie! Like so much of "corrections," the clichés are lies. Prison is a kind of poison which slowly kills the best parts of the human personality. By its very nature it makes one a worse person. Crime is contagious and prison is where it incubates and spreads. One of my first discoveries in prison was that "might makes right." The "man," the system, is strong. I'm weak. No matter what the man does, no matter how irrational, inane, destructive or evil it may be, it's "right" because he has the might, the power, to enforce his aggressions. For prisoners that teaches an important life-lesson. When we're released, me must make ourselves stronger. For many, guns are the obvious empowerers. The example that I watch everyday from the prison staff is how the strong oppress the weak. I don't like being oppressed, so I must become strong. In prison I've discovered how to be untrusting, frightened, insincere, distant and devious, skills which are not very useful in obtaining a meaningful vocation. Prison could be operated in a constructive way which actually improved men and helped them overcome their shortcomings and environments. The skills and training which might have helped me obtain meaningful employment are intentionally withheld. If I'm trained how to do useful work, I'll compete with the "free" work force. Prison is about oppression and repression, about keeping me and other prisoners down, in an inferior and uncompetitive position. That way we are no economic threat to the children of our jailers who are in the work force. But in truth, prison really is all about vocation. Make no mistake, the purpose of prison is simple economics. It's employment for the staff. Where else would they get such gravy jobs? Prisoners are used, not improved. Prisoners are a natural resource to be exploited for an income. Prisoners are being kept out of the labor pool so there's less competition. Instead of competing for the jailers' jobs, we are their jobs. It's in their interests to keep us down. Even though I've discovered many useful vocations during my imprisonment, now I'm much too old and sick to use them. What call is there for a 1930s model hoodlum? Now, if I'd learned something useful like fast-food preparation, I'm sure I could land a swell job with Wendy's. Or, less sarcastically, how about if I'd learned useful office, service or technical skills? Or how to really use and repair computers? I was a writer when I came to prison and I'm a writer today, but I say things the jailers don't like hearing so I can't even succeed at my former vocation.