Here we are now; Entertain us!

Hi, folks! I have been away from the free world for a year now, and it's given me a lot to think about.

My perception of prison has changed a lot as a prisoner. I knew that television and movies skewed the view, but not to what depth. While I would rather not be gathering the data personally, haha, it's actually eye opening to see the conditions firsthand in which prisoners are detained in Florida.

So, let's don our Florida-tinted lenses, and pick apart some things, shall we?

...and Hell is Hot.

I am thankful to be in one of the few facilities in Florida that is air conditioned . Most of Florida's prisons are not.
There are voices out there complaining that air conditioning is coddling prisoners, but I must retort:
We are frequently sequestered in our dorms all day, barring meals (on compounds with chow halls) and callouts (written orders to be elsewhere on the compound).
We don't have the luxury or privilege of having a beach day, or running through a sprinkler, shuffling through the mall, or doing other things to keep our bodies from reaching dangerously high temperatures. Unless these naysayers are wanting to insist on heat exhaustion, heat stroke, or death by extreme heat exposure as our climate is trending in that direction...
I remind readers that prison, an institution of correction, is our punishment -- that is, being sequestered for a period of time known as our sentence.
Being abused was not what the judge signed on our mandates. Continued exposure to triple digit temps without any attempt to mitigate the deleterious effects is abuse in my books.
We fight to prevent that happening to the elderly on the streets; what about the elderly behind the concertina wire?

Devil's Workshop

Now, I'm Buddhist, but I will borrow a variation of the expression Idle hands are the devil's workshop and run with it.

In so many cases, inmates have nothing to do with their day. I waited months for a slot in a vocational class to open up, spending my days in the dorm, on my bed, reading whatever I could get.
Others spent their days high on whatever imaginary drug they could find, or watching TV, or if they could afford it, watching shows and movies or playing games on our tablets. Tensions run high over time, and eventually two or three folks square off against each other in the shower, away from the cameras so they can get some good licks in with a lock in a sock.
Maybe one guy took too long taking a dump, or someone owes someone prison money (read: a pack of ramen), or what have ye; the fight was going to happen, period.

If we had reliable access to things to do to self-entertain, I would surmise that tensions are likely to reduce because people have other things to do besides stare at each other. It's a focal point change.

Brainiac on the Dancefloor

Now, we do have access to a (very) light version of Khan Academy on our tablets. This would be nice... if they actually populated it with materials properly.
We either have the videos or the tests for content, rarely both. The tablets have an eBook reader, Librera; eBook content for the classes, if available, could be read on the same hardware we have. But it does not seem that there are any books for learning.
I had tried a few of the offerings, but found myself frustrated with poorly written tests (three questions, but you have to answer them three times), missing tests in modules, missing class content... It feels like a 'why bother' kind of thing.
There's also no assurance that we receive any kind of recognition or credit for it, so few bother working with the seemingly broken thing.

Apart from that, you would expect that in the interests of enabling intelligent thought and encouraging mental growth, we might get access to digital dictionaries, encyclopaedias, thesauri, and the like.
No such apps exist for our tablets, be it free or paid.
After all, welcome to the Florida State Distributed Mushroomery.
Next manure cycle is in ten minutes.

We have time.

If all goes against the plan, I have a long while to go here.
For a neurodivergent like myself, it is akin to torture -- I have been the kind of person that was always busy working or learning. To wit, during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, while I was still a free worlder, I was begging to come back to work, and having panic attacks because the answer was "Not yet."
I felt useless, and that was difficult to wrap my brain around for a while. Sitting around all day for months on end, watching YouTube and playing Cities: Skylines was not my favorite thing to do after the first month.

I would ask that for inmates showing a need for intellectual engagement, sort out a program for us, and make it available! Encourage the mental exercise -- what you might get out of that is recividism mitigation, the purpose of correctional institutions and facilities.

I joked with a few inmates, but now it might be seriously a decent idea,

What if they took small groups of inmates that wanted to learn something like web or software development, trained them on the skills needed, and gave them monitored access to something like Freelancer or Fiverr, so they could bid on and compete for jobs? Use the funds earned, in part, to add to each inmate's trust fund for buying commissary and paying for medical, and maybe even start paying any fines or restitution they owe?

I would be first in line for that idea -- don't keep growing me in the dark. Let me learn, and have me do positive things that I am interested in.

But that might be too sensible to figure out.

As always, I encourage you to fight for reforms that better society. Throwing away lives wholesale isn't the answer. Reform your communities and your prisons.

Take care, and thanks for reading.