witness. Share the story. Improve awareness. :Billie Best Blog

It’s really a world, what kind of world. Everything in all places is fragile, broken or broken at once. Yes. But we are here, we have to stay sane. Our resilience depends on clear thinking, a good sleep, and socializing our attention. It is unlikely that we will fix any of this in the near term. But we can stay alert and maintain the relationship that forms our safety net. Most importantly, we can talk about it. Talk about the problem that worries us is a way to remove some tension in the body and strengthen the mind. Communication with each other is the way to unity. If it feels like we are living in a war zone, that is. Therefore, we need to track threats. Beware of false prophets, liars and thieves. But we also need to smile, hug and smile at our friends. Once, once.

Today, I want to bring your attention to the problem I am considering. Enter it. Add it to your question list. Then let it go and move on. Tell it to others who may be interested. But don’t feel like you have to get stuck because like many of the systemic failures we face, there is no quick fix. However, we need to pay attention.

A year ago, I started writing a novel about a futuristic women’s prison called Esmeralda and how prisoners there learned to resist the system of incarceration. It is Shawshank Redemption There are messy women and some magical realism. So I’ve been thinking about how prisons work and why. Now that the U.S. government has begun a mass incarceration campaign, I believe the end result may be the opposite of what was expected. Please think with me. Incarceration needs to have a social justice part to make it effective and make us safer.

Shares of the two largest listed companies, which own and manage prisons and immigration detention centers, soared immediately after they were elected. For-profit prisons have money to make money, but where does that money come from? You and me. Our tax payment prison system. We have it. We will pay rent to these companies for every inmate they accommodate.

I know that the collapse of many systems we take for granted is overwhelming now. To simplify this problem, I want to zero in on sustainability content. This is a word that we don’t usually apply to how governments work. It is easier to see the concepts of sustainability in systems that rely on natural resources, such as agriculture and our food supply or oil and energy. But as we learned during the pandemic, people are also natural resources. A few years ago, we ran out of nurses and doctors, and our supply was still insufficient to maintain public health. Likewise, the prison system should restore those who make mistakes and release them as better citizens. But if our prison system increases the number of criminals, it is unsustainable.

If you’ve seen pictures of a man with a locked white boxer in El Salvador, you know instinctively that the situation is cruel and unlikely to recover. I don’t object to imprisonment. It can be a very effective tool. I recognize that some criminals cannot be repaired and must be permanently separated from society. However, most prisoners learn from their mistakes and redeem their own opportunities.

This is the contradiction we face. Redemption is the social goal of incarceration. The goal of a for-profit business is profit. Criminal justice is our civic duty. The company has no civic duties. The for-profit prison system is similar to the for-profit healthcare system. Shareholders sweep through social kindness from the top and keep it themselves. The more prisoners we have, the more money the for-profit prison system makes. That’s a negative feedback loop. It won’t make us safer.

We need people released from prison to become productive citizens again. That is the cost-effectiveness of running a well-run prison. Rehabilitation requires emotional intelligence, self-confidence, social skills and intentional life. Punishment is taking away a person’s freedom and self-determination over a period of time, and they learn to recover from their mistakes and do better. Prisons should separate them from society until they are suitable to return. The prison system should solve the problem and not make the situation worse.

In my novel, Esmeralda Women’s Prison is a for-profit prison. To reduce costs and increase profits, the company isolates all prisoners in its cells during incarceration, even for decades. No group gatherings, no cafeteria, no sports field, no shower, no classroom. dislike Orange is new black. More like Black Mirror. In Esmeralda, AI, which can be continuously monitored by AI, is extremely isolated in an anti-corrosion environment. The fun lies in the way women beat the system. Still, it’s a cautionary tale about the high-tech prisons can become.

Cruelty doesn’t make us safe. Treat cruelty cruelty. This is an unsustainable prison approach as it increases the volatility that should be eliminated. When prisons concentrate too many people in a small space, the virality of criminal behavior increases. When prisons become weapons of ethnic cleansing, they ignite violence inside and outside the walls. That’s what’s happening on our watches.

The purpose of prisons is to improve society. It is our civic obligation to supervise criminal justice. Yes, it’s complicated. A lot of things happened at once. But we can talk about the issues we witness. Share the story. Improve awareness. That is the path to unity. Thank you for reading.