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Harvard Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset is probably right in defining Jackson as a "politicized" rather than a political prisoner. Initially he was held in prison for his defiant intransigence. Eventually, it could be argued, parole boards may have kept him locked up because to them his radical political views were evidence that he had not been rehabilitated. For his part, Jackson rejected the entire notion of rehabilitation. He saw it as the prison system's conspiracy to turn him into a subservient "good nigger." It is easy to understand a parole board's collective bafflement as it tried to decide what to do about this unabashed advocate of revolution who, like a 19th century anarchist bomb thrower, denied the legitimacy of all laws ("white, fascist, capitalist") and regarded himself as virtually a prisoner of war.
Clearly his political views were offenses against the system. But just as clearly, if he was being kept in prison solely for those offenses, he was being denied due process of law because he had not been convicted for his opinions. Plenty of other radicals today advocate the violent overthrow of the American system. In theory at least they cannot be prosecuted until they act upon their beliefs in some overt way.
Under radical influence, a number of black convicts are placing their crimes —even acts of violence against their fellow blacks—in a political context. Similarly, some youthful white radicals tutored by Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, practice shoplifting and other crimes, which they justify ideologically as "ripping off the Establishment." Exiled Black Panther Leader Eldridge Cleaver took this process to rather grotesque lengths by explaining that he used to rape white women because he was so incensed by "the white-racist American system." The rationale may be metaphorically interesting, but it is one that no free society can accept if it hopes to survive. A democracy—or a dictatorship, for that matter—obviously could not function under the radical assumption that a crime ceases to be a crime if the perpetrator can persuade himself that it has political intent. The revolutionary's aim is to destroy the system, but a society naturally protects itself against those who want to overthrow it. The problem is how to avoid repression while achieving social stability and liberty even for would-be revolutionaries.