Free Sanctuary by Ted Dekker Page B

years, hardly more than a pubescent teenager, not because he was small but because his features were fine. Short blond hair covered his head, straight but slightly disheveled. The lashes above his light blue eyes were long, and the fingers holding his plastic spoon as he toyed with his whipped spuds looked like they hadn’t seen a day’s labor in years. He was pale and his skin was unblemished except for a bruise on his right cheekbone.
    The only sign that he was anything but perfectly normal came in the way he carried himself, delicately and on edge, as if he knew of some imminent danger hidden from the rest of them.
    A quick count identified seven privileged members eating at the tables, and five employed in the serving line, all easily distinguished by their street clothes in a sea of members dressed in blue pants and tan shirts. Roughly half were white, perhaps a third were black, the rest, Latino. Danny found this odd, considering the overwhelming percentage of minorities imprisoned in California’s prison system, one of the great injustices of law enforcement.
    A single CO—or facilitator, Godfrey had called them—lounged in a chair near the door, apparently bored stiff. In most prisons, guards were sparsely stationed for efficiency in high-traffic areas. A show of force was only required when trouble erupted. In some larger institutions, inmates might see corrections officers only a few times over the course of several days unless there was trouble nearby.
    The custody and security operations at Basal were fairly typical. One captain, Bostich, oversaw three lieutenants, one for each wing: the east privileged wing, the west commons wing, and the basement meditation wing. Under each lieutenant were three sergeants, one for each eight-hour shift, for a total of nine sergeants. The sergeants oversaw the corrections officers, ranging in number from two to seven depending on the shift and the wing. Each of the four towers on the perimeter were manned by an armed officer, who made up the balance of the security detail.
    But at Basal they were all simply called facilitators, regardless of position. Danny could account for five of them—two at the commons wing, one in the hub, one in the dining hall, and one rover—as he ate and listened to Godfrey’s philosophy.
    “You do realize that most get locked up without a violent bone in their body. Two percent for rape. Ten percent for murder. That’s it, Danny boy. There’s been no increase among violent offenses per capita in this county for decades. There has, on the other hand, been a seven hundred percent increase in the number of nonviolent offenders put in prison since the seventies. You ever wonder why?”
    “Since the warden mentioned it,” Danny said.
    “There aren’t more rapists out there to justify the increase. Not more murderers. Not more violent husbands. Instead, there are simply more laws.”
    The older man continued with a twinkle in his eye.
    “The land of the free has only recently undertaken a grand experiment of sorts, incarcerating far more of its citizens than any other society in history has ever attempted, Hitler’s incarceration of Jews notwithstanding. Is it working? Is America now safer than it was in the seventies, eighties, or nineties? Nope. Is it safer than Canada, which is far more lenient? Not close. Europe? Again, not even close. You ever think about that?”
    “I haven’t dwelled on it, no.”
    “Well you should. Politicians are obsessed with passing new laws that give them power and satisfy smug constituents. Fact is, hundreds of thousands of the inmates inside are no worse than those who live in freedom. Know what their problem is?”
    Danny didn’t answer.
    “They were caught out of sync—wrong place, wrong time. They crossed the road on the wrong day. They said the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong country and were accused of hate speech. They placed the wrong chemical in their mouths. You ever do