Feigned Surprise?

Is it any wonder that when you consistently treat any population of people like petulant children, they start acting like petulant children?

It's always count time here.

We spend much of our days as justice-impacted individuals sitting in (formal census) count. We are in our cells, on our bunks, going nowhere and doing nothing for this time period. For something that happens so frequently, you would expect that the ones who do the counting would have it down to a simple procedure, yes? The process across the compound should be as smooth as softened butter and cream cheese on a freshly baked potato, just add chives and garlic.
One eaten hot potato later (y'know, about 15 minutes or so), count should be complete, right?
*laughs in nope*
Counts here typically take 75 to 150 minutes. To have a sub-60 minute count is so, so uncommon that it draws remarks from those of us who reside here.

If only there were a solution that could be implemented that would accelerate counts to just be a speed bump in the day, as opposed to taking away six or more hours of our waking, out-of-cell time each day...

I got it!
Give me an ankle monitor that holds a good charge and send me home.
That's one less body for Count Time.

With a little less levity:

If we spent as a people, a nation united, a little time in devising a better way to work with people who have been adjudicated guilty of some crimes instead of warehousing them for years or decades, the need for prisons in America could have an opportunity to lessen.

Can we think on that for a bit?

I've got a guy in here who wants to go home to his son and wife, but may be here a few more years yet unless things change. His son needs his dad, and our system punishes the son by playing keep away with dad.

This story repeats across the dorms, around the compound, especially among Black and Latino men who are disproportionately represented as fathers snatched out of the lives of their littles, ladies and gentlemen. Those children are people that are forced to grow up only hearing daddy's voice at fixed times on the expensive wall phones, seeing his face in a blurry kiosk photo, and occasionally getting to visit him in a place like this hell.

Can we think on that for a bit?

In an era where excessive money can ply shorter prison stays out of a system, these average people who were just making do and cannot afford to buy down their sentences are gutted with 15, 20, 30, 50 year sentences, often for a lapse in judgement that was witnessed. We eagerly punish the crime and its criminal with decades of warehousing, but we punish the children worse.

But then we air these high profile cases out on the news, pour buckets and barrels of evidence into the public notice, and slap someone on the wrist, comparatively speaking.

Is it any wonder that when you consistently treat any population of people like petulant children, they start acting like petulant children?

But what do I know about uplifting people and working toward their betterment?
What do I know about the changes desperately needed in our justice system?
What do I know about how horribly our current system devastates families?

I just wear private prison blue here.