Today, the Oklahoman has two articles on state officials asking the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to move inmates from one prison to another so they can be closer to family members, who may then visit them more often. The entire tone of Nolan Clay's article is one of a whiff of scandal, typified by this passage about one inmate's family who asked then-Sen. Maxine Horner of Tulsa for help in moving him closer to him, despite a heinous crime:

The inmates include murderer Adriel Simpson, who shot a 12-year-old Tulsa girl in the head, chest and abdomen, bound her with rope, then set her on fire.

[…] Simpson was 15 when he murdered a 12-year-old acquaintance in his home in 1990. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

"Senator knows he is a serious offender -- in for murder," a Horner aide wrote. "But supposedly he has been having clothing and ... his TV stolen as well as having ailing parents. She would like to ask if he can be moved and hopefully closer to Tulsa."

Simpson was moved from Lawton to Cushing, which is close to Tulsa.

"I don't believe it's fair," said the girl's mother, Linda Green. "Why should he have the privilege of being closer to home? He should suffer."

"He should suffer." The fundamental misunderstanding, especially among victims and their families, is that prison is a place where we put bad people so they can be punished for their crimes. This is why there's no serious movement in this country to stop prisoner rape, or why there's been no serious investigation into how the guards at Abu Ghraib who committed all those atrocities learned some of the tricks as prison guards. It's like people think prison should be Escape from New York - put them in a bad place, don't let them leave, and if they get hurt it's their own fault.

This concept should make any Christian - hell, any human - weep.

Criminals do not go to prison for punishment. They go to prison as punishment. Being deprived of your liberty for the rest of your life is the punishment for your crime. Prison is not the place they send you so that you can be tortured. Being there is torture. Think Oz, but darker and gloomier, with a little less cartoon violence.

Even if you have maximum visitation rights under Oklahoma DOC policies, that means a maximum of eight hours per week. For someone doing life without parole, it can't ever be more than six hours per week, and probably no more than four. And yet every serious penology study shows that visits are very good for prisoners. Visits keep them connected to the outside world, which reduces violence and inside crime. It makes the institutions safer for everyone.

And, as Sen. Cal Hobson said (and kudos for him having the nerve to tell the truth):

"I'm certainly not ashamed of trying to help families be a little closer," Hobson said. "About 98 percent of everybody who goes to prison is going to get out, and if they have a supportive family and a positive attitude, they ought to do a better job when they get out.

"The parents, and the kids, the grandparents, didn't do anything wrong. The inmate did."

Some states (like California) have it codified in the penal code that inmates should, wherever possible at all, be placed in facilities that are near to their families so they can receive visits, for all of the above reasons. Oklahoma does not appear to have such a law or policy, and when inmates or their families fill out the paperwork for transfers to closer facilities, oftentimes nothing at all happens.

The story here isn't that legislators sometimes ask DOC to move inmates closer to their families. The story is that legislators have to get involved at all before DOC will make the right decision for safety, rehabilitation, and community support.

I do not excuse Adriel Simpson's actions or dismiss Linda Green's pain, but she should rest assured that even if Simpson manages to laugh a few times in the rest of his life, his "suffering" will not change if he's in a different 8' X 6' locked box than the one he's in now.