Aboliting Prisons Does Not Mean “Free Criminals”

By: REGINALD DUGUE

Abolishing prisons does not mean ''Free Criminals.'' But even if if it did everyday we live among xenophobes, racists, and sexists people, yet we somehow haven't paralleled their actions of misdeeds as criminal in nature. Does abolishing prisons truly mean people should not be held accountable for their indiscretions? Or is it asking us, the citizens, to think anew about what we call crime and punishment. Has the market of mass incarceration really helped our nation? Or has it made a small number of people wealthy while placing the burden of running an outdated and broken system on the backs of the everyone else? You wouldn't know the racist, sexist, or xenophobe that you pass everyday of your lives anymore than you would know the ex-con.

Currently, I'm writing this from a dormitory with 30 men and no heat, one telephone, one electric stovetop eye, and one hot pot. Not only are a number of these men sick (some Covid and some with the flu), there is literally nothing in commissary. So then, what are your tax dollars really going to? Prisoners are being warehoused in unsafe environments, but to the public we deserve it. Since the age of eighteen I've been confined behind maximum security prison walls. On average I'd say I maybe seen 1-3 people go home in a years time behind those walls. But having been in my first medium for the last six months, I see at least that many people go home every other week. Sadly, many prisoners are leaving prison and returning back to the same environment that they left. However, what's more sad is that the very conditions that led them to prison is being reproduced on the inside.

If you were able to identify every xenophobe, racist, and sexist person who lives among you wyd? how would you treat them? And what would you do to open there eyes to she past their personal views? BuT really, wyd for the ex-incarcerated individuals who society has casted away? Ignorance is our nations biggest hindrance in the fight for equality. So if you wouldn't lock up every xenophobic-racist-sexist bigot for their ignorance, then why do you think locking up every person for an ignorant misdeed is still an valuable solution?

By: REGINALD DUGUE