Alexis Bolden12/5/2017Composition Essay 3The Truth Behind Prisons When you were growing up did your parents ever punish you for doing wrong? Well in this society when people commit crimes they are sent to prison, if they are found guilty of the crime.
Although people should be punished for committing crimes, prison is cruel and inhumane. If you take a moment to think about prison it is basically modern day slavery. Slavery supposedly ended but, America has a new way of modernizing it. Everyday people try to find ways to cheat the system but, prisons have actually done it. Here in america citizens are good for covering up the truth. People do not like to face the reality of how rude, abominable and ignorant we truly are.
As long as people are not asking questions we do not give answers. America throws rocks and then hides the hand. Meaning the people of America will make it clear that we have an issue but, when it is time to fix the issues nothing is being done. The longer people are kept young and dumb the more the government is secretly ruining our lives. It is time that America wakes up and face reality to start fixing issues and not covering up the issues. You can cover up a wound but, at the end of the day it still leaves a nasty and obnoxious scar.” It’s not that i’m proud of my scars- they are what they are, born of accident and necessity – but i’m not embarrassed by them, either.
More than anything, I relish the stories they tell.” By this it means they are not proud of what they have did but it has already been done and can’t be changed the most they can do is learn from it. This is without a doubt slavery and not indentured servants. These are things that need to be talked about in schools.
The School systems need to start teaching the value of life. The schools needs to give each student equity in order to succeed. Citizens should be teaching the youth ways to stay out of prison, showing them a brighter path of where education can take their lives. Let’s start facing facts and not keep telling lies. Let’s start here with what an indentured servant was. Indentured servants were people who had to work for free, if they owed someone and did not have funds to pay them off.
“Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues.” (Indentured Servants in the U.S.) Servants had contracts that stated how long they had to work until they were set free from the contract.”Indentured Indian workers were themselves subjected to a system of slavery, albeit a form of ‘temporary slavery.” Indentured Servants were shipped across the Atlantic ocean for free. With each new servant masters were rewarded with 50 acres of land. When servants were done with their service their contracts guaranteed them freedom dues.
This was arranged for servants to be able to have their freedom back. “This might include land, money, a gun, clothes or food.” Indentured servants indeed encounter some hardship but, it was not even close to how cruel slavery is.America should no longer keep trying sugar coat what slavery is, slavery began in 1619 and guess what? IT NEVER ENDED! Slavery was supposedly abolished in 1865 from the thirteenth amendment. The thirteenth amendment protected people from slavery unless they were being punished for a crime.
Was it abolished and than recreated in a different form? Did we code the modern day slavery with a new term Prison? No man signs up to go to prison where they are forced to work and be brutalized. The actions that people do in order to be in prison is wrong but, forcing hard involuntary labor on them is also wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right. A slave is person who is owned by another person to do harsh and cruel work. Slaves were forced to work against their will and were beaten severely or, even killed if they disobeyed their masters. Slaves had their rights restricted involuntarily, their lives were being changed and there was nothing they could do about it. From the time slaves were born until the day they died their lives were being controlled by a “master.” They were told when they could eat, sleep, or travel.
If they did travel, slaves had to travel with their masters. Slaves were put on auction where they were torn apart from their families, being bought or sold to another master. America will continue to be mentally, physically and emotionally enslaved for the next couple of years. History seems to always repeat itself, just like slavery and racism is repeating itself. Ignoring the issues that America has does not fix it, it simply prolongs the issues.
Slaves started to form hatred for each other.”Because of their difference in skin color, there would be occasional tension.” They were told that lightskins were better than dark skins. Light Skin people would have the opportunity to work in the house. While, dark skins had to work the fields.This starts to divide up the black community, instead of working together they are forming hatred for each other.
With the black community being split up they are killing each other out of spite over their shade of darkness or lightness. Thus giving the government the right to lock more African American people. It is funny how when you hear about a black man killing someone they were called a “thug” involved in violence and in gangs but, you do not hear the same for a white person The whites that understood what the blacks were going through were hated, ” they have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who viewed them as ” dirty nigger-lovers.” But hey, a wild guess would be the blacker the baby the longer the news.Prisons are organizations that are money based where they involuntary make someone work for free creating clothes, working in fields etc.
The more prisoners a prison gets the more money the facility makes. In prisons you are restricted of having freedom your life is now being controlled by a prison guard 24/7. This is not just about blacks rights, Latinos right etc. This is human rights they are taking advantage of.
The abuse that is happening in prison is despicable. No person should ever have to encounter situations like this. The power that these prison guards are having to control prisoners is being abused. In prison the inmates are stripped naked and parts of their body is being checked for germs, drugs, etc. This is taken place in front of other men, which can be very uncomfortable. The praised whites who understand have supported the movement.
First having a man check another man’s private area is wrong, not only is it wrong it is humiliating. Some people may feel insecure about their bodies and may not want someone staring at them let alone another man. They are being forced to shower with the same sex, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They are forced to cut their hair on their heads and beards, this makes them lose their individuality.
Everyone has different ways of expressing themselves and hair styles is a way to express yourself. When you make everyone wear the same hairstyle everyone is put on the same level, now this way no one is expressing themselves or feel they are above someone else. The moment you start to make someone feel uncomfortable or humiliated is when they feel powerless.
When a person is inferior to someone they often get taken advantage of, which is what prison guards do. Prison should be a place where people grow and better themselves so, when they are released their able to maintain a life outside of prison. “You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs.
the female.” (Willie Lynch Letter) During slavery women were valuable for maintaining the house but, men were more valuable to work the fields keeping the plantation neat. Women are looked as useless housewives while, men are the providers. Women incarceration rate seems to be lower than male incarceration rate. Slave wore shackles on their ankles just as prisoners do. Slaves were counted as ? of a person,They were just numbers.
Similar to how prisoners are just an inmate number. That inmate number sticks with you, wherever you are involved in anything in prison you are looked up by a number not a name. With evidence like that it must be questioned is it helping a human better their life or creating a new slave?The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to show the study of how people react to captivity. The experiment started where the inmates were stripped naked and sprayed for germs. They were given uniforms, rubber flip flops, caps for their heads, chains around their ankles and an I.
D. number. The guards that volunteered were not trained, they were told to react to situations that would keep chaos under control. The guards all wore identical uniforms Khakis with mirror sunglasses.
” Mirror sunglasses prevented anyone from seeing their eyes or reading their emotions, and thus helped to further promote their anonymity.” (Stanford Prison Experiment) They would wake the prisoners up at 2:30 in the morning viciously blowing whistles. They would than do a roll call, calling everyone by their specified I.D. numbers. The guards would do this to test out their authority, to see what kind of control they could have over the prisoners. It started off with simple punishments doing push ups occasionally, making someone sit on someone’s back while doing push ups.
The punishment started to intensify when the prisoners started to rebel against the prison guards. They started ripping off their clothes and refusing the roll calls. They would bearcat the cell doors with their beds to stop the prison guards from entering the cell. The guards got tired of the disrespect with the inmates and started to be forceful back. The prisoners were then stripped of their beds. The guards thought it was a good idea to have special privilege cells, the ones who were least involved in rebellion got the special treatment. The guards started to mix the good and the bad prisoners together causing chaos among the inmates. The separation of everyone would cause friends to lose their alliance causing more anger and aggression.
By the end of the experiment both the guards and inmates, had forgot that they were role playing and started reacting how they would in reality. The stanford prison experiment illustrates what happens in modern day prison. The thrill of having control over someone outweighs the fact that the control is abusive and cruel. When you are pulled over you are told to respect the officer and not to resist them. “The nigger must be broken; that is breaking them from one form of mental life to another.
Keep the body take the mind! In other words break the will to resist.” (Willie Lynch Letter.) What starts to take place is mind control, You are no longer aloud to think for yourself, prison guards are making the decisions for prisoners. Prisoners have to obey the prison guards or else, their sentence can be extended, they are being punished in a cruel way. Willie Lynch once said “They must love,respect and trust only us Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control.” (Willie Lynch Letter.) When controversy starts to happen between an inmate and a guard, the inmate is sent to a hole. The hole is where inmates go if they are being punished for doing something wrong.
It is understandable to punish someone to show them what are wrong actions but, there is a fine line between teaching a lesson and oppressing a person. The problem is not that the justice systems lacks the ability to give justice, it is the problem that person who needs justice is a different skin tone. The president of the United States has set the tone “Make America great again.” (Donald Trump) What was ever great about america? Was America great when slavery started? Or the mass incarceration for black people? Or the race riots that have been happening for years? Keeping black people enslaved, and never giving them a chance is that part of “Making America great again?” (Donald Trump) America seems to only be great when white people are controlling the black community. Prison is a very harsh place that any human can encounter. America is claimed to be the land of the free but, the only people who are free are those who are not colored. When you are sent to prison your daily life is changed, you are now being controlled 24/7.
The rights that you have in the amendments are now being limited. Felons are no longer aloud to vote or hold government positions. “Nearly five million citizens in the contemporary United States are ineligible to vote as a result of a criminal conviction” Felons should have the right to vote in elections, they are still citizens of the United States. What is the point of being a citizen, if you can not have a say so in who is running to govern you? Felons are limited to the jobs they can work when they are released from prison. With job limitation this gives felons no opportunity to better their lives. Without felons being able to work they have no other options, but to turn back to the streets causing this cycle of constant incarceration.
Not everyone is perfect which is why no one is identical, people make mistakes and that is okay. Making mistakes is apart of life and learning from them is the beauty so, why do felons have to pay for their mistakes for the rest oftheir lives? They served their time for their mistakes and they should be given back their freedom that was taken from them.Inmates should be taken care of in prison as far as hygiene, eating and housing.
They should be provided the proper requirements of living. At the end of the day they are still human, no matter what crime they committed. The government could care less about prisoners and their health. “Prisons are being built on environmentally unsound lands, bearing potentially lethal health effects for inmates” The environment for prisons should be taken care of so, their health is not affected. They should have proper treatment to illnesses, and diseases that are spread throughout prisons.This not only affects the prisoner’s, it also affects the people who come to visit their loved ones who are incarcerated. There should be laws made that `prisons can not build close to coal mines, gas plants or any other toxins.
It is one thing to punish a prisoner for committing a crime but, to intoxicate their health due to careless environmental control is outrageous. The numbers for incarceration has gone up dramatically over the past years. ” So many people are in U.S. prisons because of the congressional “War on Poverty”. Let’s take a quick journey back into the past, starting after the civil war when there was a mass incarceration for black people in america.
Blacks were sentenced long years in prison for minor offenses. Some even were sentenced to prison for false accusations. Similar to how the scottsboro trial was handled. In 1931 nine black males were falsing accused of raping two white women Victoria Price and Ruby Bates . 82 Years later Victoria Price finally admit it was a lie but, the truth does not matter when a black male is on trial for harming a white person.
It’s interesting how George Zimmerman was set free for killing a unarmed black teen. He was ordered by cops to leave him alone but he persuaded to follow him anyway. They let him go because of the “Stand your ground” law. The law where you can shoot someone if your life is being endangered. The law were a white man fears a black man and has the right to shoot him but, a black man can fear a white man and shoot him he is sentenced to life in prison.
Can you relate to the fear of being pulled over by a police officer? The person who is supposed to serve and protect is the one shooting with no regrets. It take more than one person, more than one state, to fix the damage done to America. It is hard to erase years of racism, abuse, and cruelty but, as a nation things can start to get better if everyone tries. Helping each other out and spreading love for one another is a start. Talking to the youth and keeping their minds on track is the way to go.
The youth may be 20% of the population but, they are 100% of our future. Personally, to me the prison system is very broken, the prisoners are treated as if it was slavery. Slavery has not ended. Indentured servants or slavery? Slavery, the prison system is more so slavery.
