Lil' Wayne Going to Jail in New York Now After Release of Latest Album

According to the Associated Press, Lil' Wayne will be going to jail in New York on Tuesday. He is set to start a one year prison sentence for pleading guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon, since a loaded gun was found on his tour bus back in 2007. With good behavior, in about eight months he may get out of whatever New York jail he winds up incarcerated.

Will Lil' Wayne go to jail in Rikers Island, New York City's main jail, located on the East River between Queens and The Bronx, where many criminal offenders with prison terms of one year or less are imprisoned?

Will Lil' Wayne go to jail in Attica, where many inmates with disciplinary problems are transferred from other New York prisons; and where its reputation for housing many of the most dangerous criminals precedes it?

Will Lil' Wayne go to jail in Sing Sing, just thirty or so miles up the Hudson River from New York City. Interestingly, if Lil' Wayne does serve his jail sentence in Sing Sing, he may have the opportunity to take part in a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA for short.

RTA (no relation to the Regional Transit Authority of New Orleans, and the same place Lil' Wayne is from) "is dedicated to using the creative arts as a tool for social, emotional and cognitive transformation behind prison walls, according to Rehabilitation Through Arts." Prison inmates can take part in theater, dance, creative writing, voice and visual artistry.

While Lil' Wayne is a celebrity entertainer whose actions while touring around and entertaining landed him in jail, it would be very ironic if Lil' Wayne were to take part, in earnest, in Rehabilitation Through Arts next to inmates whose actions as entertainers as part of Rehabilitation Through Arts are meant to help get them out of jail and transitioned more smoothly into society.

Perhaps wherever Lil' Wayne goes to jail, which is likely Rikers Island, since he is a well-known celebrity, he may get housed in a protective custody unit. It almost goes without saying, when the general population of a prison finds out a new inmate is a celebrity, an inmate who feels he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by harming the celebrity may perpetrate violence on the celebrity inmate.

Conversely, special treatment for incoming inmates can raise the ire of inmates, to say nothing of taxpayers, just as much, if not more, than if they weren't accorded special treatment. Nevertheless, if prison officials determine Lil' Wayne is in grave danger in the general population, they will move him to protective custody, even into another jail if prison officials find it necessary.

All of this is coming after Lil' Wayne just released his latest album, a rock album. Ironically, yet sadly, Lil' Wayne is going to do time at the rock just after releasing a rock album. Will there ever be a time where no one's actions in society will warrant rehabilitation, much less prison?

Sources:

"Lil Wayne Set to Test How Jails Handle Celebs," Associated Press, Jennifer Peltz, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_en_mu/us_lil_wayne_celebrity_inmates

Rehabilitation Through Arts, http://www.rta-arts.com/

List of New York State Prisons, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_state_prisons