Concrete Bars and Mental Scars

That's what makes up prison. That's what I wanted to tell a lady who heard you could play basketball in prison. She was both surprised and somewhat elated.

Many people think that because you have some novel amenities that prison is a day camp. I have been to both camp and prison, and let me tell you no privileges given in prison makes it any less horrible.

It's not so much the physical as it is the mental anguish. Learning what out of sight out of mind really means.

You have to learn a whole new culture that does not exist anywhere outside of prison walls. No one but those that have been there can express it to you and even for us it is difficult.

Yes there are simple things to do that do not cultivate or stimulate any mental growth. There are things to do that in no way help you to understand the state of mind you have that got you where you are. There are things to do that do not help to rehabilitate you.

Here's a stupid idea, rehabilitate; Let's look at this word for a second

1. restore (someone) to health or normal life by training and therapy after imprisonment, addiction, or illness.

   "helping to rehabilitate former criminals"

   
   

   • restore (someone) to former privileges or reputation after a period of critical or official disfavor.

     "with the fall of the government many former dissidents were rehabilitated"
   • return (something, especially an environmental feature) to its former condition.

   
   

The first sentence says restore after imprisonment, this I get because to be rehabilitated you first have to have been in that state of being, in order to be (RE)stored to it. Prison doesn't do that.

If the person was not in the right state of mind to begin with, then you are only restoring them back to the craziness that led them to prison.

Prison is about hiding people away from the ones that are afraid of them or there actions. There are no programs to help you once you are inside. And no form of deprogramming when you get out.  You wanna talk P.T.S.D. 

Yes I agree most put themselves in the position to go to prison, and once there have two options, figure out how to change you thinking process or try to do what you do better. Which we know makes no sense.

The prison system is not designed to help, but to hide, hide those society has deemed unworthy to remain free.

So they give you games to play a few books to read and television to watch. I ask you where is the habilitation that is supposed to take place. 

Those of us who had support from the outside and a decent mental capacity with the desire to get out and never return.  We worked on ourselves to figure out what was I thinking.  Thank God for my support system.  So many have nothing or no one they remain in the same sick state of mind with the same thought process and are then set free with nothing and told to survive. Although they had no idea how to do this in the first place.

This is just a short portion of a discussion on prison that is many hours in length, this is just to get the juices flowing.

MORE TO COME