Criminal sentencing guidelines should never include forfeiture of first amendment protections. Neither should ex post facto laws be established to prevent convicted criminals from working for profit in any legal endeavor. The quantitative financial effects of letting convicted and paroled offenders write for profit versus are socially insignificant in comparison to the political harm that can be caused by censoring anyone. Such a one may be a falsely convicted, framed up political dissident that the corrupting powers of concentrated wealth sought to destroy.
We may consider Alexander Solshzenitsyn for one. His ‘Gulag Archipelago’, ‘August 1914’, ‘Cancer Ward, ‘First Circle’ and ‘One Day in the Life of Alexander Dennisovitch’ would not had brought him a fraction of the profit in Soviet Russia as in The United States. He was compelled to leave the U.S..S.R. and move to Vermont in the era before it became a radically pro-homo, anti-straight guy state. Will Rush Limbaugh one day occupy a cell in Maximum Security for his outrageous politically incorrect comments? Would his ‘hate crimes’ of speech be prevented by confiscation of his profits (we know he wouldn’t talk or write for free).
Work should always be made for profit. No government commuune or corporatist collective should be able to take away the right of anyone to profit by their own labor as a writer. If the product is not implicitly illegal as a controlled substannce or stolen good, then no bill of attainder or other theft of private property should be tolerated bgy a free people upon those incarcerated by a government even if it occassionally or accidently honest.
One might wonder if anyone that has committed tax evasion and been convicted should ever be allowed to profit from publishing after release from dungeon-of course. Should anyone convicted of tax evasion be allowed to profit from work as a floor scrubber, garage container cleaner or dog kennel waste processor or should they forfiet all profits for having been convicted of a crime, forever? Those that wish to skim writers for publishing and profiting riightly ought to be recognized as the cold blooded Stalinist-Nazi-Lenniniists they really are. Those back to the stone age Kymer Rouge sympathizers that hate individualism and freelance writers even so much as to consider labeling Nobel Prize wiinners like the Burmese lady iin house arrst another year are suppliers of mushroom nutriients that keep the people in the dark and feed them a load of manure..
First amendment rights are inalienable. Being convicted of crime ‘A ‘hasn’t anything to do with fundamental inalienable constitutional rights. Penalties and corrections for conviction of a crime do not include any arbitrary unrelated proximal and collateral suspension of civil liberties unneccesary for correction. Can one go to prison and keep first amendment rights?-sure, although they may not have the opportunity to write while incarcerated. It is important to keep the penalties for crimes limited to those that actually, proximally directly serve for correction,
The Orwellian State presently has enough of an advantage over individuals that a serious danger is presented by the prospect of the use of criminal conviction as permission to apply broad extra-constitutional powers of state censirship. The global corproatist evil empire has nearly complete ownership of the broadcast media as it is, one does not want to concede it the power to censor individuals simply by the circumstances of finessing their arrest and sentencing on other crimes, or any crime which thenj provides state coillaborators the broad power for censorship of the prisoner.
Should prisoners be free to physically benefit by lifting weights and body-building in prison? Should a prisoner be free to get an education while incarcerated? Ought a prisoner be free to get care packages or a bucket of Kentucky Grilled Chicken? Is it just the abstract profit from writing that is the bone of contention, or is it an anti-capitalist communal desire for increases totalitarian power to make people into tools of the corporatist state without civil rights that is at issue? Perhaps prisoners are permitted to watch televivion because their is no intellectual benefit at all even with 2000 global internet television channels including those from Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
If a prisoner enjoys a profit from writing-a difficult enough task for non-incarcerated authors, if he was found to owe any money for his crimes through juridical evaluation he would have an opportunity to payf rom the profit the amount determined. If O.J. Simpson can write a best-seller from prison the Goldman’s might appreciate his ability to pay on the civil judgement against him.
If only Richard M. Nixon had written a good autobiography of the Watergate scandal, or if Lee Harvey Oswald had lived to tell the tale. The late Michael Jackson, while not a convicted criminal, would have written an autobiography probably equally as interesting as that of Geraldo Rivera…criminal and celebrity autobiographies won’t be written if the economic motive is taken away. Expert opinion books by principle insiders are invariably the best and most authentic versions of what went down in the crime of the century.
Bill Clinton’s autobiography was disappointing because it didn’t seem to dish out the honest plate of scandal that everyone wanted to read about. Bernie Madoff should receive some kind of lighter prison time if he writes a compelling inside autobiography of his crimes that passes the quality book review rating. People want to know why these people perpetrate and what they think. Perhaps I ought to differentiate perpetration from music playing-but it’s something of an art in either case; crime and music both.
Criminals that write books about anything should not be subject to the censorship of perverse federal bills of attainder. If they profit much they could pay taxes or compensate victims. Creating extraordinary laws to censor convicted criminals who write books by the aversive conditioner of confiscation of their profit appears to be a gross violations of free speech and fundamental civil liberties that too many are happy to give away in the relous jage expressed in avarice and greed about other people being good writers and making the big bucks for post prison spending sprees.
Quality writing ought to be the only test for sales and marketing of a book. Federal censorship out to be restricted to opponents of alternative, positive energy legislation in congress who write bad laws and oppose good ones in order to create more federal debt and federal borrowing allowing the progressive degradation of American ecological economic development to oppose trans-national and globalist corporate non-renewable economic hegemony.
There are many kinds of crimes-some prosecuted and others rewarded. Corporate television is a horrible muck of criminal intent, advanced criminal intent, special criminal intent, c.s.i., burn notices, vampires, wolverines on steroids with mutant super-positioning automotive ding battles and so forth. If television producers pay criminals for books about their crimes, at least it makes a mea culpa and expedites the correction of the criminal who recognizes hajjis crime and necessary punishment. If O.J. Simpson were to write a book in which he said he did it, and felt damn good about killing the adulterous trysters mocking him, it would sell millions of dollars worth of copies. Of course the murder trial acquitted him, and he denied wrong-doing. While incarcerated on the other conviction for a threating attempt to recover sports memorabilia he should be free to write about anything.
I doubt that many challenged authors will plan a spectacular crime in order to advance their chances of getting a big book contract with a major book firm. Its an interesting concept…
‘The young Fyodor Dostoyevsky has left his home in rural Russia and moved to St. Pertersburg to attend college. After fall semester he has gone broke spending all of his pittance for tuition on vodka and caviar to impress the delectable-even exquisite, cherubic delight-Annayevlena Brighteyescheskin, on a date. Unable to face the prospect of eviction from his writer’s loft on Lunasherpa Prospeckt just a half a kilometer beyond the bridge over the Neva in front of the Shurething University of Prosperity if You Graduate, and unwilling to be expelled from college for being broke, starving and without hope of getting a good job such that he could purchase a Nissan Fatboy S.U.V . plug in electric truck with gold Cadillac elements and Dolby Sound System, he devises a plan to commit a spectacular crime and write a book about it after conviction. Fyoor Dostoyevsky has just determined to murder a pawnbroker. He takes out his Blackberry and searches the yellow-pages for a victim’.
If Barry Bonds were to write an inside story admitting to steroid use that would sell well-yet if he would be convicted of lying to congress or some such offense and have his profits confiscated, why should he? Criminal law and its effectiveness should function on a rational and well designed foundation rather than through an ad hoc series of patches that create more causal, unplanned ancillary issues of unintended consequences. A good system of prison reform is sorely needed in the United States, and there are a variety of reason why socially a working, low-cost corrections system is impermissible. Attacking the right of hard-working authors to make a profit anywhere is alternatively a communist plot or a fascist attempt at the coup by social infarction. Only books ghost written or ‘as told to books’ not directly written by the crinimal should have there profits confiscated and donated to the Florida Old Sailor’s Home.