Psychological Torture in the key of A.
Trigger Warning
Brief mention of cannibalism as a dark joke.
Hey, folks.
Here's a thought, along the lines of something I read in Cuong Lu's The Buddha in Jail:
The hardest part of being a prisoner is when they lock you in a cage, and you have to trust they will return to let you out.
I started writing this from my two person, concrete-walled 'cage' one day while we were in count. We as inmates trust that someone will go into the officer bubble when count clears and tap a few icons on a screen, and we'll hear the whirring of electronic locks retracting to let us out into our day room. Failing the electronic unlocking of our concrete and steel cells, someone will come in with keys to manually open a door.
The thought strikes me as I know of the prisoner-to-staff ratio here, knowing the prison is overcrowded as compared to staffing numbers,
Isn't this a form of psychological torture?
What happens when a sickness befalls the working staff, and most of them can't even show up because they're that ill? You cannot say it won't ever happen: the world has already dealt once with COVID-19; its remix is already ramping up for attack in a part of the country that does not seem to believe it existed in the first place.
A slight segue: How did prison handle COVID a few years ago?
Now, I wasn't here -- I was still a free enby then. I listened to Samuel L. Jackson and Stayed the F At Home, wore masks and face covers, even bought a Decathlon EasyBreath Subea snorkeling mask and paid for 3D printing the adapter that was found on https://covmask.cz if I remember the domain correctly so that I could screw on a NATO 40mm filter to ensure I could avoid airborne contamination as a high risk individual when I needed groceries.
When I discussed COVID with prisoners who were here at Blessington or at other prisons during the pandemic, I felt a chill dance down my spine. You have entire dormitories of people becoming sick with COVID, two men to a cell, open bay dorms full, no social distancing in effect. Kitchen inmates were falling sick left and right, staff coming in ill, spreading it from dorm to dorm as they quarantine a dorm but walk between all of them...
I don't want COVID. It will not end well.
I'd take a booster shot if I could get it, but, well... I asked last year in December on the tail end of this message sent to us:
All Inmates,
Vaccines are available through Health Services. These include COVID-19 and other respiratory vaccines. Health Services can assist you in determining for which vaccines you are eligible.
If you would like to be considered to receive a vaccine, complete an Inmate Request (Form DC6-236) and check the box for Medical.
Health Services
Result? No booster. Just a generic "You are on the list." It's September 2024 as I thumb this in on a badly designed tablet.
A return to psychological torture, already in progress.
As we jail and imprison people, we neglect to analyze the cognitive effects of incarceration, especially regarding what being locked in a ~75-80 sq. ft. room for half a day or longer at a time does to the human mind.
"Oh, but you're not in solitary, you have someone to talk to -- you're in a two-person cell, you said!"
Yes, I have someone to eat, should things turn so far south as to not be let out of my cell or be fed for several days, too. I've got enough paper for a small fire to roast something over, as well.
Should I have to think like that?
I don't think so. Heck, I don't even eat meat these days, so the thought of the above makes me queasy.
Well, how else do we keep criminals in check?
Considering the sheer amount of technology we have at our disposal, and the volume of surveillance we already let into our lives as free worlders?
Ankle or wrist monitors with cameras around the perimeters of our homes can do much of the job, with safer jobs of 'securing inmates' being given as people monitor banks of geofenced people with a bit of AI assistance. Highlighting unusual behavior to draw human attention to a particular user can be done -- we track whale fins with AI, so too can we track people.
Your current prison system could be shrunken by a vast amount, with those cost savings going into paying for business grade internet with a SLA for each person being tracked. ~$600 a year, providing the 'incarcerated' with monitored, restricted internet, while giving your eyes over my life a connection.
Compared to the prison system begging and getting ~$45-60 a day for housing and feeding me, you could reduce costs to about $5,000 a year for visually monitoring me at home and allowing me to go to work within my geofence.
Hell, you could even allot me a $5.00/day stipend for food to guarantee that I have access to groceries since I'm under your watchful eye -- $1,825 a year to feed me. I know, I know, it's ~$2.00 more than you spend on inmate food per inmate per day, but allow me to clap back with this:
We would be getting real food.
Finally, all the tofu and Beyond Burger I can eat! Say No to Pinto Beans! My religious rights would be respected!
Food waste would be much lower.
I would never buy 50 pound bags of processed corn product (actual item here in Blessington's kitchen, served as 'yellow grits'). Ten pounds of oatmeal? Sure! Raisins, dates, walnuts, pecans, cranberries? Okay! Fresh okra, collard greens, beets, cabbage, kale, pattypan squash, mushrooms? Yes! Suddenly, I'm getting a nutritionally complete diet that adheres to my faith, with part of its cost being borne by the prison system, the rest by me -- I'm WORKING, after all, instead of being just a drain on the system!
Remunerations for crimes committed would happen sooner.
Wait, you mean the victims might not have to wait for criminals to pay their fines and fees for years, even decades? We won't tie up the legal system with the waiting game? Wow, that's amazing!
No. That's Logical. Why?
Our access to the free world would be motivated.
By adding a condition of employment or education to being out, and by honoring a benefit to employers who hire those with convictions and monitoring (as examples: a break on taxes, a bond that repays damages if an offender damages the business in an intentional way, a stipend to the business to offset the wages paid to offenders), the barrier to entry in honest employment is lowered.
What about those without skills?
Train them!
If I were told I could stay at home and not live in prison, but only if I held a job, and had a month's grace to locate another one if I quit or am terminated due to any reason other than, say, economic downturn or other conditions leading to layoffs, I would gladly work.
But, let's take my buddy who lacks a high school diploma as example. He would be dreadfully limited in employment prospects.
We get 'job assignments' that include education and vocation behind the fences; make an extension of those offerings via some type of group videoconferencing, and make use of that internet connection we've already got through you.
Let him sit in an online class with tools at his disposal to learn, and tailor these classes for different learning styles. Some people are visual learners -- they need to see something done to learn it. Some are kinetic -- they need to DO something to learn it. Some are even auditory -- say it so they can learn!
Oh, none of that will work!
or,
We've never done that before!
Bull💩.
That's probation, that's conditional release. I've just bolted on these tools for success to keep a person from easily returning to behind the fences.
Fail Successfully
While it's interesting that FDC is rolling out the Edovo app to we incarcerated many behind the concertina wires, there is a case of additional failure:
Edovo requires a connection to the wireless network. When the WiFi stops working, we can't continue to study.
While I am quite grateful to companies and organizations like LinkedIn (who offer LinkedIn Learning), Saylor.org, and Khan Academy making their content available on Edovo, I can't help but feel frustrated with my situation of only getting a sledgehammer when a tiny screw with a flat head needs a quarter turn.
Count times are quiet times, great for me to watch the videos or hear the audio. That's when WiFi goes unstable or just completely out for us.
I want lessons, courses, training, so that when I finally leave here a decade hence (should my situation not change), I have a chance to fight fairly for survival. I don't want to feel as if I have to turn to a life of crime just to survive, much less live or thrive.
But instead of teaching us how to fail successfully, we get the lesson of "You are a failure, and that is what you will remain."
Yes, you can fail successfully: Science and Medicine are two fields that excel at this! Say you're looking for a cleaning detergent that does great at breaking grease and caked on food off plates. You get in the lab one day, whip together a polymerase chain that has a name two kilometers long, but it doesn't do too good with oil removal.
... but instead, you see it causing dirt to clump together, leaving behind clear water that, with just a little more work, is safe to drink.
Oh, that's a failure, right? No! It's a success in disguise!
You learned this combination does not do what you were aiming for; that is, you successfully did not create the target, and did it safely.
Now, can you use this combination for anything?
Surprise, yes, you can!
In fact, Procter and Gamble are using something just like this in parts of the world where clean water is just not a given, to provide the benefits of clean water that we take for granted here!
And so, we wrap:
In my mind, successes are always there, waiting for our eyes to open wide enough to take them in.
People look at prison, at prisoners, and in the squinty-eyed narrow view, see only the failures that brought us here. If they opened their eyes, their hearts, they can see a future with successes past the failures.
I sure can.
I can see past our own prison squint.
I choose to see past the psychological torture of this system.
Will you?
Thanks so very much for reading and sharing!
While my blog does not have its own comments system at the time of this post, I invite you to say your piece, be it on your own slice of the web, or on social media.
I personally don't have access to any of it, but getting the thoughts in front of the world is a vital step to rebuilding the system.
Take good care of yourselves, and each other. :)