Sam Day puts his time to good use

Notwithstanding loneliness, anxiety and such indignities as being shackled, contributing writer Sam Day describes his six-month prison term - including stretches in solitary confinement - as "an empowering experience" in his cover story "Doing Time." One of three Madison residents convicted of trespassing at nuclear launch sites in Missouri, Day served time at a series of nine institutions; he read, exercised, worked on a 160-page jail and prison guide and emerged 30 pounds lighter. The nation's criminal justice system, he concludes, "is wrongheaded, brutal, wasteful and corrupt." The correctional system does not correct, nor do penitentiaries elicit penitence. "What the system really produces is a bumper crop of bitterness, cynicism and violence." The take-away is "that the battle for justice, just like the struggle for peace, has yet to be seriously joined - and that jail can be a good place to begin." Day honors the courage of his convictions throughout the remainder of his life; he dies in 2001, at age 74.