What are prisons for? Are they to help inmates become better people then who they were when they entered by preparing them for a productive life in society? Or are prisons for warehousing people to lock away and forget? Think about your response to that question, is the ideal hope or does your response actually reflect reality and the way that prisons actually function in United States?
Ideally we would hope that prisons are places that people are sent, who make bad choices that we don’t accept, so that we can show them how to make better choices through rehabilitation, treatment programs, classes and a plethora of opportunities that would enable them to be better prepared for life on the outside. Due to the fact that they are in prison it’s obvious that they were ill prepared for life on the outside, so prisons are supposed to be the link to correcting ill behavior and increasing productivity in every individual who enters. Now think about the way that prisons actually function in our society and about our high recidivism rate is, how long sentences are, the lack of power that judges have in determining sentences and the abusive treatment of prisoners due to the negative ideologies of staff and prison officials towards the inmates that they’re supposed to protect and serve. Think about the way that our prisons actually function. Instead of being places where people can pick up new skills and develop mentally and emotionally in order to become more productive, prisons have actually become warehouses for human bodies where people stay locked in cages for as long as the state can possibly keep them so that companies can exploit their labor for billions and billions of dollars at their profit on the taxpayers’ dime while prisoners earn pennies to the dollar. Prisons have become well kept secret for megastores, food chains, coffee shops, clothing stores and even state departments.
Prisons have become places that are completely destitute of hope or opportunity. Prisons have become inhumane animal conditioned cages with staff that do little to nothing to protect the individuals who are forced to live there. In some cases staff even incite violence among individuals who are forced to live there in the same way that we saw and Lee County earlier this year when prison officials took away prisoners lockers (the only secure way to store their personal items) then switching them into units with strangers. The way that prisons function today is disgusting, abusive, oppressive and repulsory, it’s predatory because it’s a business in which taxpayers are subsidizing company profits by paying for the room, board and officer saleries for prisoners while companies make billions off of their time in labor.
Why do prisons exist? The the simple answer to the question that many think is, “So that there’s a place where bad people can go. But what defines a bad person? Obviously not a drug dealer, because we’ve got pharmaceutical companies dealing deadly drugs on every corner and even pot shops shelling out green whose dispensers are not only free but making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prisons obviously not for people who abuse children because even the high profile priests who have been abusing children for decades are walking around the streets not only free but as highly regarded religious leaders. Obviously not for murderers because there are senseless killers like Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman who effortlessly walked out of the courtroom and roam the streets freely. They’re obviously not for rapists because even our president whose grabbed pussies and been found guilty of countless cases of assault is not only free but reigning over the entire country. So what exactly are prisons for? It’s people who commit the same types of crimes who can be found on both sides of the prison door.
Why do prisons exist? Because if the jobs that come into these places as ‘skill building opportunities’ have they just been offered in the communities where these residents are from then these inmates would not have suffered this demise. Prisons were built to control populations of black, brown and poor people. Prisons were made for the poor kids who won’t learn anything in their defunded schools and access to jobs outside of the prison they’re sent to after they find money using the skills that the schools were never funded to teach, the skills that they were forced to learn in the streets. Prisons were made for the people who were marginalized from having access to educational opportunities. Prisons weren’t made for bad people and prisons weren’t made for criminals because I see bad people everyday and I come into contact with people who somehow avoid the label on many media outlets which share my outrage. Prisons were made for profit, both the private ones that are funded by third parties and the public ones that are funded by the tax-paying citizens of the state. All prisons, detention centers, jails and other institutions that keep people in cages were made for profit.
When we deny prisoners access to rehabilitation opportunities for any reason then we defeat the purpose of incarceration that the state claims which is why the strike calls for, “No imprisoned human shall be denied access to rehabilitation programs at their place of detention because of their label as a violent offender.” No label should be placed on any inmate that denies them access to self-development and improvement. Violence is not an innate characteristic of any person and regardless of if someone’s violent actions contributed to their incarceration they should not be denied the opportunity to educate and develop themselves. No person is a lost cause. While I do believe that each inmate should choose if they would like to participate in a class, because this is the first step towards development, it is essential that those programs and classes are offered to everyone regardless of of their status or label as an offender. The strike’s demands also state that, “State prisons must be funded specifically to offer more rehabilitation services.” When we incarcerate people we should be able to guarantee that they will have access to educational and professional opportunities that they did not take advantage of prior to their incarceration. The Department of Corrections should be in the business of correcting not warehousing, abusing, oppressing or making profit. The criminal justice system should be entirely focused on restoring justice, not through punitive and outdated lists of punishment for crimes but through holistic and individualized programs that prepare those who were once ‘criminals’ to become productive servants of the world. This is only true way that justice can be restored.
The National Prison Strike is a call for Criminal Justice Reform on all levels from legislation, housing, access to rehabilitation, education and the rescinding of policies and labels that dehumanize people. The national prison strike is an opportunity for prisoners on the inside to join in taking the lead of guiding the conversation about Criminal Justice Reform. The national prison strike for those in the outside is an opportunity for organizations, businesses and individuals to show support and solidarity with prisoners who are risking everything to lead and guide us to a better prison system that is more effective then the disgusting and abusive practices that we see in prisons today. Just because we don’t literally see what’s happening in a prison everyday doesn’t mean that those conditions aren’t due to be required to change immediately. The national prison strike is an opportunity for us to shine a light on every single prison in America where prisoners are striking and expand that to every single prison in the world where prisoners are striking from Canada to Palestine. The national prison strike is an opportunity for us to specifically focus on what George Jackson and prisoners who lost their lives in Attica risked everything to fight for. The national prison strike is here now and it’s time to add your hat to the ring and amplify prisoners’ voices by following their lead in transforming the way that prisons operate in this system of modern day slavery.
Striking is a human right,
Support the National Prison Strike.
