Prisoner Advocacy in 2024: Let's Build Better People!

Hi, Welcome to 2024!

A tiny interlude before the thoughts leave me:

You might notice a shiny new domain on my posts! :)
My sincerest thanks to my friends and loved ones contributing to this project, giving me an outlet for thoughts -- both mine and yours.

We in prison find it hard to be heard and treated as human as we're locked in our bathrooms with another person for roughly half a day at a time.

People on the outside might not have a realistic picture of the conditions inmates live in, having only seen prisons in movies; I would point out the Florida Cares Charity Group, who has, I believe, a replica of how some of the two-man cells look here in this state.

In the year I have been in the Florida prison system, I have seen three different styles of two-man cells; the reception center in Orlando being the filthiest and the worst, with broken porcelain in the sinks, an absolute absence of privacy to use the toilet (and subsequent provision of a PVC privacy half-wall that you have to wait for someone to finish using), in conditions not much above squalor...

Have a mental picture, y'all: I lived in a homeless shelter and transitional housing shelter for two years. My living environment was better there. Seriously.

Of the three varieties of two-man cells, my current one is the least offensive that I've lived in. Sure, it's bunk bed life with someone living overhead, but the toilet faces into the cell (not out to the day room), the door closes at any time of the day, and no one lives with their head two feet away from the toilet bowl!

A person, treated with dignity and respect, is more likely to be amenable to opportunities to improve.
Living conditions are one opportunity to improve the status quo, to be blunt.
Not just the physical conditions, but the mental ones, as well. Having officers who lack empathy and compassion in what I know is currently a thankless job makes it hard to change the culture, especially when the prisoners seem unwilling to change; however, when the prisoners have been steeped in a culture of shut up, boy, or yer gonna get it tea, the only flavors they understand are disappointment and disrespect.

I was reminded of two lines in the Dhammapada, numbers 64 and 65. I'll not quote them; however, I will say that logical people would expect to get out of something the same amount of effort they put into it. If you only put :poop: in, being alarmed that the system is only dispensing :poop: is, thus, illogical.
(alternately: "Garbage In, Garbage Out.")

To wit, I feel that if free worlders put care, strength, and respect into the system I am mired in, when people come out of it on the other end, it's entirely possible that the human that comes out will falter a little, but not have the ingrained fear of asking for help. This will steer them toward success, instead of their fallback habits that might be why they were here the last time they lived on One Prison Loop.

What you CAN do...

Is simple!
Wherever you are, whoever you know, whatever you do...

• Absolutely push for better training requirements for corrections officers: we're already doing this with law enforcement in the free world; these people are effectively our law enforcement inside.
• Push for mental health care to actually care about mental health. The mind is a part of the body; it needs care, too.
• Insist on dietician review for menus served: giving diabetics all the bread, rice, potatoes, and noodles you can scrape onto a tray disrespects an ADA protected class of people. Just because it saves you 3¢ per tray doesn't make it right -- you'll pay for it on the medical side, clearly.
• If you're in the USA, find your state's prisoner advocacy group(s), and GET INVOLVED. We cannot break this cycle of locking people up without you.

I'll admit it, I wasn't focused on prison when I was younger, despite having a blood-relative who came to prison here in Florida multiple times over half my life ago; Media has you believe that if a person is in prison, they aren't a person worth knowing.
Media fails us: they're still a person, just here as punishment for the mistakes someone made.

Who made the mistakes is a discourse for another count time. :)

Do I wish I had advocated for the betterment of inmates back then? Yes, knowing what I do, I do.

What can I do about it now, from here?
Be the tongue, not the ladle.
Soup's hot, y'all.