Prison Soap Shiv. Bars of Dove will never look the same again.

So I’m taking a Criminal Justice class online this summer with my boyfriend. I took it knowing it would be interesting since, well, my family has had more contact with the system than your average family. Most of my cousins have had their fair share of run-ins with the law, and my brother has been in and out of jails and prisons since he was 17.Now the prison system has come a long way since the times of torture devices and public spectacles of punishment, but it still has a long way to go. Prisoners are neglected and the overcrowding has created a dangerous environment for everyone involved. For example, there was a case in Georgia where an 18-year-old inmate wrote letters to his grandmother pleading for her to contact prison officials for him because he feared he would be raped. Well she and his father did just that, and their fears were brushed aside by the administration. The boy ended up getting jumped by 3 inmates, raped and strangled to death. What makes this story even worse was that 2 hours passed before prison guards even found his body to attempt CPR. This just shows how the overcrowding in the prisons leaves less violent inmates at the mercy of the more dangerous men, and they can’t rely on the guards to protect them.

Now, many people are cruel and believe that since they are criminals they deserve whatever they get. But consider this, although most prisons house violent offenders separate from non-violent offenders, the separation really relies on a system of assigned points, rather than violence. For example, in my brother’s case, he was placed on a yard with violent offenders on one of his stints in prison. He has never been convicted of a violent crime; his crimes are all drug related. But since he received a felony charge for being caught in a stolen car, he was placed on a higher yard. Thankfully nothing happened to him, but it very easily could have. Luckily he makes friends easily and adapts to the politics inside to save his own ass, literally. My point is, there are many non-violent offenders that are left at the mercy of the true crazies inside, and there are not enough guards to keep the peace.

Think of it this way, if a non-violent inmate goes in and has to worry about protecting his life, he’s gonna learn a few tricks. Prisoners come out more violent than they were when they went in! Now combine this with the fact that prisons dehumanize their inmates, and bam!…you got a bunch of dangerous crazies on your hands. Think this doesn’t affect you, since you’ll never wind up in prison? Well think again. About 95% of inmates get released back into the community, and they bring their new little prison tricks to the streets. And let me tell you…a man who can shove a sharpened toothbrush up his ass so that he can have it in case he is attacked on the yard is NOT someone you wanna mess with. In the words of an inmate in Kansas prison, “would you put a pit bull in a cage and poke him with a stick and let him out in a classroom full of kids?…That’s the same thing you’re doing to inmates.”