When I began my incarceration back in 1996, the staff were professional, non-biased, and knew the O.A.C.s and O.D.R.C. Policies that governed their jobs. In essence, they knew the rules they had to follow. Gradually, this changed, and in no way for the better. Today, staff members like sergeant (correctional counselor) Stephanie Craft are of the false belief they can do what ever they want to inmates. I wish I could tell you she is among the few who act this way. Truth is, the old guard is slowly disappearing.
These staff mistreat inmates in every possible way they can, and then act incredulous when the inmate calls them on it, or asks their superior to intervene. It is rather amazing just how bewildered they are that “an inmate” could ever question anything they say or do. How dare they! If you actually have the heart to stand up for yourself, staff like Craft begin threatening you, having their peers harass you, will try to get you fired from your institutional jobs, moving you to the locks where all the chaos is, and a host of other things.
With the political climate being what it is out there, I do not think this social change should end with just the police departments. It should not stop with the judicial system. It should include the overhaul of the penal system as well. Many of these staff are sadistic, and think they were hired to punish inmates. I have even heard other staff say things like, “they can do what ever they want!” O.D.R.C. has empowered these staff to not only feel as they do, but to get away with the mistreatment of inmates.
If you want to defund something, defund the Department of Retaliation and Coercion. I am sorry, I meant to say Rehabilitation and Correction, or was that a Freudian slip? While it would likely make prisons unsafe to cut their budgets, if done correctly, the state could be forced to release inmates and reduce prison populations overall.
There are people (not animals) who have spent as many as 4 decades in these places. I have seen inmates so old and frail they could never be a threat to society. Even with a geriatric provision in the state law to release these very inmates, the state still refuses to do so. I still can not comprehend why people are so ready to save a whale, a plant, an animal, but be so willing to throw away another human life as if it were meaningless. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
If you need another reason, because you are not sold on releasing inmates, the money they waste should persuade you. Once an inmate has been denied parole, it can cost the state millions of dollars a year to keep them locked up. Keeping these older inmates cost tens of millions in health care alone. Wouldn’t this money be better spent educating our youth, and diverting them from the judicial system altogether? This money could be better spent educating inmates to prepare them for when they come home. To prepare them for a successful re-entry. There are so many better things we as a “civil society” could better use the money wasted just to throw away inmates? Think about it! Millions of dollars spent, to throw away a human life. It would definitely put an end to our society giving authority and a voice to those who just want to inflict pain on others.
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