Much has been written and much has been said about "life" within prison, some write of the glaring incidents of violence that occur, certain that such subjects will grab the attention of the readers. Others write and play down the violence, lest the reader jettison those dark visions, so distant from his or her experience, as simply beyond belief. The truth oscillates somewhere in between. That prisons are hotbeds of violence is undeniable, but overt expressions of violence are rarely daily ones. The most profound horror of prison lives in the day-to-day banal occurrences that turn days into months, and months into years, and years into decades.
Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel an brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days. While a person is locked away in distant netherworlds, time seems to stand still, but it doesn't, of course children left outside grow into adulthood, often having children of their own. Once loving relationships wither into yesterdays dust. Relations die, their loss mourned in silent loneliness. Times, temperaments, mores change, and the caged move to outdated rhythms.
Encased within a psychic cocoon of negativity, the bad get worse and feed on evils offal. Those who are harmed become further damaged, and the merely warped are twisted. Empty unproductive hours morph into years of nothingness. This is furrowed face of "corrections", which outlaws education among those who have an estimated 60 percent illiteracy rate. Today we live in a class society, nonetheless.The governments genocide is carried out through the legal system. Legislature makes laws that are not rational or moral, like "mail fraud" and "conspiracy". Anyone could run afoul of such a law. When they say you have broken the law, they punish you and fine you. They claim to be operating within the law.
The mind - numbing, soul - killing savage sameness that makes each day an echo of the day before, with neither thought nor hope of growth, makes prison the abode of spirit death that it is for over 140,000 men and women how held in Texas hellholes and over 1 million people nationwide. What societal interest is served by prisoners who remain illiterate? What societal benefit is there in ignorance? How are people corrected while imprisoned if their education is derisively meager? Who profits other than the prison establishment itself from stupid prisoners?
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_L_Thomas
No comments:
Post a Comment