By Michelle Chan, San Francisco Bay View, November 11, 2019
Every aspect of modern incarceration has been meticulously engineered to threaten and shatter all sense of self-worth and to drain the mind and soul of all vigor and clarity: every filthy toilet, every rotten apple, every oven-hot cell, every act of control, coercion, violence, isolation.
Prison is punishment. Prison is racism. Prison is vengeance. Prison is the criminalization of poverty, the institutional oppression and enslavement disproportionately and intentionally inflicted upon the descendants of enslaved people. Prison is NOT rehabilitation. Prison does NOT prevent or reduce crime. Prison IS slavery.
According to a 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 2.2 million adults were held in America’s prisons and jails at the end of 2016. That’s 2.2 million adults who did NOT benefit from evidence based substance abuse or mental health treatment. That’s 2.2 million adults whose trauma and victimization were NOT addressed and treated as the root cause of the circumstances leading to their incarceration – 2.2 million lives with dimmer prospects and far less hope.
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