What is the end goal of incarceration? what does the public expect the inmates to be once they come back into society? The real answer, not the clean cut formal department of justice answer, because that’s just pie in the sky salesman speak. I mean what do expect a child to do if you send them into timeout for being bad, but offer no instruction nor attempt to figure out what it is within them that causes them to do those things. Do you expect change, without correcting the problem? Adults don’t need to be told the why’s but their why’s need to be understood in order to have any hopes of an improved mindframe. You don’t send a child to timeout and surround them with temptation and the things that will only serve to make them worse, you structure their punishments in order to condition a better response and behavioral change. So how do you expect an adult to change when they may come from dysfunction, and you enhance those dysfunctions by throwing them into the center of even more dysfunctional people with no real requisite or structure of betterment. How can you speak to a person that only understands and knows struggle and pain and the worst sides of life, like betrayals of love, abandonment of family, alienation of friends, no problem solving, venting with dependencies, drugs, murder, abuse of all sorts and with no real identity and a constantly changing environment that surrounds them and clouds them with neglect and a society that offers them no respect, honor or family that gangs offer yet casting them out showing only fear, denigration and disrespect with every effort to say they are lesser while providing unrealistic expectations of achievement as if it is mutually inclusive and possible regardless the conditions they developed within. How can you say you understand if you offer opinion first before an ear, if you compare your experience to mine as if you overcame despite it all. How can a person know how to forgive when all they know is blame and revenge, when society hides their truth and hands down their responsibility on everything and everyone else but themselves yet you say I should come out better and fully functioning, knowing better and cherishing what I had yet prison shows the bare naked truth of society. Separation, segregation, prejudice, racism, lies, denial, depravity, alienation, classism, judgement, unforgiving, violent, anger, fear, escapism, loneliness, abandonment, addiction need I go on, because my closet is doorless and yours is vaulted now all of a sudden since I’m in this obvious prison and you hide within your prison you act as if you can speak down to me, as if I owe you something, as if I’m so unrepairable and my sin is so much grander than yours while your precious freedom makes money off my misery, offering me false hope. The best kept secret is that I am constitutionally a legal slave and you expect me to come out without trauma and be grateful? I was raised s a state ward, with an imprisoned mother battling depression alienation addiction and a father killed by her hand while pregnant with me because of his drunken abusive episode which I never found out til damn near 18. How do you speak to that person, how do you get through to them when all you see them as and throw them in is shit? I speak to that type everyday, because I am in that shit with them, these same people that could’ve killed me not because they hate me but because hate is all they know and society tells them its their fault, so fuck it right?! When they call out and hear of a close death, a cheating girlfriend, maybe she left, or likes her power in the phone, family distant and friends are a matter of convenience but yet society says don’t come back broken because you know better, we gave you a chance to heal and find yourself even though everyone outside lives as strangers trapped within their own prisons. I’ve offered my voice to friends with heartbreaks, addiction issues, suicidal thoughts, loneliness, health struggles, relationship problems, in need of life advice and an ear because I m going through it too, so I know it, I identify, I feel them and I I’m that ear daily for the worst people society casted out, real killers and molesters. I have answers for everyone but myself and two sons that barely know my voice, their mothers holding onto past pains, my siblings growing through life on their own, and a mom transitioning from prison, but who talks to me, what do u tell me that I haven’t told the mirror already, I get more judgment than help, we all do..I heard it all so just in case you didn’t know what its like, this is a fraction of what I embrace willingly daily
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