Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden Analysis

Prison is a place no one willingly wishes to be in. Although many people do enter into this world, few actually tell their tale to the public. Stephen Reid is a criminal; a stone cold gang member and bank robbing criminal. He is also a father, devoted husband, friend and a writer. For those of us who have never been on the inside, Reid tells a story in his book A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden of how he was sentenced to many years in a maximum security prison and what life in prison is actually like. In addition to this, he also describes his childhood. Reid grew up very differently than most people. At a very young age he was already a drug addict and had moved across the country by himself. It was not the life he chose for himself, and he tried many times to go back on the right path. He wrote that he has “quit heroin to become a better father, a better husband, a better friend [and] a better citizen” (p.56). His history and addiction did however catch up to him and he ended up spending time in over 20 penitentiaries in both Canada and in the United States. As previously mentioned, Stephen Reid did not have a normal childhood. By the age of eleven, he had already been hooked onto morphine and addicted to cigarettes. It was a shock to discover that when he had ended up in the hospital for a heroin overdose, he had only been fourteen years old. He was also living on his own in Vancouver, a long ways away from his hometown in Ontario, at this time as well. Many people believe that abusing drugs is a choice; that no one can force you to do them. However, in many cases such as Reid’s, starting to do drugs at such a young age is never really a choice. Usually someone influences you and after that, it is a vicious cycle going from one drug to another. This eventually led Reid to start selling drugs, being on the most wanted list in both Canada and the United States, and being hunted down by the FBI. Just this alone is completely different than the lives of most people. Reid was also a part of the notorious Stopwatch Gang. This gang was made up of Reid and two other men who together robbed more than 140 banks in North America and collected more than fifteen million dollars. Interestingly enough, this gang was not only known for their speedy heists but their politeness to the victims as well. It is safe to say that Reid’s childhood and history may have led him to engage in a criminal lifestyle. Reid even says himself that “of all the syringes [he] emptied into [his] arm since then, the only gates that ever opened led to the penitentiary” (p. 56). There are many people who wish to work within the criminal justice system. The majority of these people, …show more content…
When he was sixteen, he spent Christmas in a solitary cell, and many times after that. Segregation is a sad a lonely place for prisoners. It can be described as a prison within a prison where inmates are kept isolated and detached from any human contact. It is used as a form of punishment and sadly many prisoners are being kept in solitary confinement for very long periods at a time. It is known that penitentiaries are a place to house those who are mentally ill. More than one third of inmates have some sort of mental illness (Makin, 2011). This can range from depression to psychopathy. When placed in situations such as prison, these mental illnesses begin to increase and aggravate the individual. In order to control these types of inmates, they are usually placed in solitary confinement. More than half of suicides that occur in jails happen in solitary confinement. Even those who do not originally have a mental disorder, usually come out of solitary with one. An investigation led by Stuart Grassian into the psychiatric effects of solitary confinement, found that inmates who are in segregated for long periods of time usually come out with hypersensitivity to sound and external stimuli, experience hallucinations, distortions and illusions, as well as have trouble with concentration and memory (1983). So if you are not going into solitary confinement with a mental illness, then you are sure to come out with