MANSFIELD: Seeking Donations for Chateau Hough

Seeking Donations for Chateau Hough

As soon as the weather breaks we plan to begin hosting training classes in viticulture for neighborhood youth at the half-acre vineyard we established on Hough Avenue. We’re seeking any donations of usable gardening tools (rakes, hoes, pruning shears, loppers, etc.). I’ll pick them up and give you a form to deduct the donation off your taxes since we operate as a non-profit organization. I can be reached at 216.469.0124. Thanks.

Close, but not Quite

The walking, talking piece of excrement known as Denny Obermiller (who killed his grandparents and raped his grandmother in the process) committed deeds so vile and despicable he certainly has forfeited his right to live … but I still don’t want his life taken in the name of the People of the State of Ohio … because I’m one of those people.

While Obermiller’s crimes were so horrific I’m tempted to abandon my principles of the death penalty in this case … state-sanctioned murder (no matter the method of dispatch) still is murder, and it still is wrong. And, as sure as this man, this time, is guilty beyond any doubt, we just as assuredly will execute an innocent man by mistake sooner or later as long as we continue to engage in this barbaric practice.

Statistics reveal that 138 individuals convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated since 1973 when the death penalty was reinstated in America. How many were wrongly executed is a figure no one wants to know.

But in the Obermiller case there is another way. The obvious solution for this sick puppy (who fought for the right to be executed and won) is suicide. Why doesn’t a guard slip a belt into his cell when no one is looking, or teach him how to make a noose out of his bed sheet? Hell, I’ll volunteer to show him how to do that, and even help him to climb up on the top bunk. What I won’t do is push him off.

This coward – for once in his miserable life – needs to do the right thing. Trust me, no one is going to rush into his cell to stop him, and no investigation will be done after the fact.

And the faster he does it the better so we can quickly forget him … lest we be forced once again to examine the flawed child welfare system in America that produced this monster … and continues to produce many more like him. Denny Obermiller (tortured and twisted man that he is) didn’t raise himself … somewhere along the line we, as a society, failed him.

I spend a good portion of my time working in the field of prisoner reentry … attempting to keep people from recidivating. And I submit that if our prison system was not overcrowded with low-level, non-violent offenders officials could do a better job with the Obermillers in the system.

Sources within the prison system have told me that everyone who came into contact with this dude (from prisoner staffers to other prisoners) knew that he was a dangerous, walking time-bomb, but, nonetheless he – a). by and large went undiagnosed and untreated, and b). was let out to make room for someone else.

America’s prisons have become the largest mental institutions on the planet, and do an inexcusably abominable job of treatment … simply because guards are not mental health professionals. Due, in large part to overcrowding, the system broke down in Obermiller’s case … and the proof of it are two recently buried bodies.

Portsmouth and Points South

Due to its proximity to the state lines of Kentucky and West Virginia, Portsmouth, OH has become the epicenter of downer addiction along the Ohio River. The area is also home to an increasing number of meth labs.

The Academy Awards-nominated film Winter’s Bone is chillingly accurate in its depiction of a drug culture that is rapidly expanding in this country. And as opportunities for working-class Americans continue to dry up more and more young people in rural areas will do what inner-city youth have been doing for decades: Escape the pain of living without a future by self-medicating.

But this new wave of addiction is indeed more challenging: If these were black and brown youth, the hammer of incarceration would swiftly fall, just look at our prison system nationwide … which is overcrowded with drug abusers of color.

However, these are overwhelmingly young white people who are being welcomed to hard times with open arms by the twin devils of uppers and downers – and law enforcement in America is simply not as swift to drop that hammer of a felony conviction on this demographic.

The treatment of choice when the crack epidemic hit America was incarceration, but the treatment of choice now that primarily white kids are the addicts is going to be common-sense substance abuse programs that negate the need for incarceration and branding for life with the scarlet “F” for felon… just watch.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.