James Bain spent 35 years in the Florida prison system for a crime he did not commit. That’s the longest period of incarceration for any of the 246 individuals who have been exonerated by DNA since 1989. Bain was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1974 after he was identified by a 9-year-old boy at the assailant who kidnapped and raped the boy.

            That James Bain spent 35 years in prison as an innocent man because the criminal justice system failed him is a tragedy. But what’s even more tragic is Bain’s benign acceptance of the injustice. He was quoted by the news media as saying: “No, I’m not angry because I’ve got God.” He told a CNN interviewer that Florida prosecutors were just doing “their job” when they wrongfully convicted him and thus he bored them no animosity.

            I know this behavior well. It’s called “prison institutionalization.” Bain became so absorbed in just surviving, just “doing his time” with the least resistance possible that he began to identify with the system that held him. I’ve seen too many long term inmates who find the right job in prison, such as tending flowers, and who create a “routine” of doing time in which everything has a perfect place. These inmates patronize the keeper, always doing the little things to ingratiate themselves with the system. They actually become staunch defenders of the system.

            And many of these inmates do attend church in prison. The “Lord has all the answers” and it’s not “within man’s province to question God’s work.” In effect, these inmates, particularly those who are innocent or who have been wronged by the system, internalize the belief that God is using them is some mysterious way; that God may even be testing them in the manner in which He tested Job. God and the prison system become one and the same.

            I’m not advocating that Bain should have walked out of the prison system with a “fuck you” attitude. That road leads to inevitable self-destruction. But it’s tragic to see a man walking out of prison asking only that his attorneys bring him his favorite drink, a Dr. Pepper, and smiling for the cameras effectively saying “we’re all God’s children” and “them good ole prosecutors were just doing their jobs.” James Bain will only have his Andy Warhol “15 minutes of fame” before he will return to the ranks of the forgotten. He should have used it to hold the system accountable—not only for the terrible injustice it inflicted upon him but the untold injustices it has inflicted on others, those left behind in prison still screaming out their innocence in midnight nightmares.

            The State of Florida will pay James Bain $1.7 million for those wasted 35 years. It will not last long. He is now surrounded by “family and friends” who are celebrating his release and crying over his “ordeal.” They will recount all the things they “tried” to do for him but were “threatened” away by the system. Then they will hold out their hands, expecting “gifts” from the man they “supported” all those years. And James Bain, being a God-fearing man, will give up those gifts because prison institutionalization has embedded in him a need to be accepted, even to be loved by those who care for him. The money will be gone in no time, and James Bain will be alone, and, yes, probably homeless.

            I hope I am wrong. I hope James Bain will have the greatest possible life to somehow make up for all he has missed. But I don’t believe it will happen. In the end, Bain will be worse off in the free world than he was in prison.