So after being here in Santa Fe for a week, I signed up with a temp job agency. Well actually I signed up with two. The interview with the first was a bit awkward and I wasn't keen on the agency rep. I guess she wasn't keen on me either because I never heard back. So I signed up with another, and they offered me a job right away. Job title "clerk." I had nothing to lose and I needed money so I took it. Next day I started at the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, sticking bar codes on thousands of criminal records. Basically there was this big project aimed at digitalizing every criminal record from the state. It's almost hard to believe, isn't it? That up to this point NM criminal records weren't on a computer system! Turns out all the other states are doing it too, if I heard correctly. It's all part of an overarching FBI project to get a tighter handle on our nation's convicts. This job was ironic for me for several reasons.
Firstly, up to now I've had jobs that are meaningful to me but low paying. Working at Camp Glenburn, coordinating the Sustainability Office at Acadia, a little landscaping and carpentry. Now I had a better paying job that was meaningless to me. In fact, it was more than that; I somewhat believed against the cause of this project. Certainly some of these convicts are dangerous to the public, but many of them are definitely not. Some days I was going through records from the 1950's! These people, mostly convicted of petty crimes, would be in their 80's or 90's now. On top of that, many (perhaps even most) of the current convictions are charges of drug possession, many of them marijuana. Now how a person who has a stash of weed is dangerous to the general public, I'm not sure. So why the FBI needs information on all these people, well it seems to me that they're just obsessive compulsive.
Secondly, to me getting this job was a general reflection of this nation's policies. Where does the US put so much of its money? Into national security, of course. Hence this government security job was the first available to me through this temp agency. Would the US ever prioritize community, healthcare, free education, fair wages, healing institutions (rather than punishing) - things that might actually help create a healthier society and prevent dangerous crimes? It certainly isn't now. Our country is so far from it that it hurts. I'm not saying that we should just let murderers run free. We need balance though! Putting criminals in jail may stop them from committing more crimes, but it won't stop new generations of people doing the same things, thinking they'll get away with it.
Thirdly, this job challenged me to keep a sense of humour and perspective while doing dull work and sitting next to others who didn''t want to be there. There were some amusing charges. One was from 1971, can't remember the conviction, but it was something like drug possession. Listed occupation: hippie. Another record's listed occupation: medicine man. There was another record with a drinking and driving charge, with this description: "driving under the influence of intoxicated liquor." Damn liquor getting intoxicated.
