incarceration
Incarceration, rehabilitation, recidivism: The reality of prison life and what it's like to be an inmate locked up behind bars.
Not Quite Nellie
I had never been so nervous making dinner before. Two weeks I had planned what I was going to say: writing drafts, compiling charts, and asking literally everyone I knew to make sure what I was going to say was fair. I was very well prepared, but my hands couldn't stop shaking all the same.
By Guenneth Speldrong5 years ago in Criminal
The Psychotropication of the American Prisoner
How much time is too much? In the late 80s the U.S. Congress created a law recognizing crack cocaine, a derivative of powder cocaine, to carry a federal sentence 100 times the weight of its powder cocaine derivative. The Controlled Substances Act established a minimum mandatory sentence of five years for a first-time trafficking offense involving over five grams of crack, as opposed to 500 grams of powder cocaine. In other words, it enacted a criminal liability scheme that $125 of street value crack cocaine, is the moral and criminal equivalent of $12,500 of street value powder cocaine. A low bar entry of $125 to run afoul of federal law is targeting consumers, whereas a $12,500 price tag is targeting dealers. This criminal liability scheme created racial disparity in sentencing, as it was known at the time of its enactment, African Americans were the consumers of crack, while White Americans were the consumers of powder. The law imposed the same ratio for larger amounts: a minimum sentence of 10 years for amounts of crack over 50 grams ($12,500), versus 5 kilograms of cocaine ($125,000).
By Darealprisonart5 years ago in Criminal
The sisterhood of evil
I consider Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer two of the evilest serial killers in our lifetime. There have been countless books, movies, and documentaries written about these two monsters. Whenever we think about serial killers, we usually exclude women. Other than Aileen Wuornos, there aren’t too many high-profile female serial killers.
By Marc Hoover5 years ago in Criminal
Experience the Exodus REAL Team
The silence was deafening. Over one hundred men, and a dozen staff members, yielded their complete attention to a single speaker. No yawning. No outbursts. No disrespect at all. The powerful message rested not so much in the individual stories they shared, but rather in the emotional attachment they projected in an effort to etch the experience on to the hearts and minds of these men.
By Dan McGinnis5 years ago in Criminal
How Free Are We?
Most of us living in the United States truly believe that we're free to create the lives and relationships that we want. We also believe that our judicial system is fair and only punishes those who need to be brought to justice. We are convinced that if a person is intelligent, works hard, and is driven to succeed they can achieve financial success regardless of the color of their skin , sex, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ethnic background, etc. We believe that human rights violations only occur outside of the United States and that our elected officials are working hard to root out corruption and pass laws that benefit all Americans. We view drug addiction as a moral shortcoming that mostly affects people of color. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, and national origin it appeared that people of color were finally going to be able to enjoy the same freedoms as their white counterparts. This, however, turned to be an illusion. How so? In 1971 Nixon declared a war on drugs. The drug laws under the Nixon administration were actually designed to incarcerate people of color in order to disenfranchise them and create a huge wealth gap between people of color and white Americans. Millions of men of color who were incarcerated lead to the creation of single parent households. Families of color were broken apart leaving millions of black and brown children without fathers.
By George V Araiza5 years ago in Criminal
Reason Of Insanity
Alexander Lewis-Ranwell ,28, is a paranoid schizophrenic who was found not guilty for reason of insanity when he stood trial for the triple murder of three elderly men. In the day’s leading up to the murders, he was held in custody and arrested multiple times. Sadly, this was an event that could have been prevented.
By YesItsMocha5 years ago in Criminal
In The White Room
The color white...the color symbol for purity and goodness. In the color spectrum white is all the colors as one. White light refracted from a cut piece of glass, or a diamond the way it sparkles. Crystals can bend that pure white light and you'll see all kinds of colors reflecting off that surface. How ironic it is that the color white, the very representation of peace and goodness, can be the most cruel of all colors. I can try my best to tell you why I believe this to be so. It is not a story for the faint of heart of that I must warn you before you continue.
By James Harmon5 years ago in Criminal
Video Games Can Help Psychopaths
A figure in orange shuffles into a room. His gate is abnormally shortened by the shackles the prison guards put on him. The room contains battered cheap furniture and an old American flag that lost its snap long ago. He seats himself at a table where someone managed to carve the initials DD into the scratched and worn surface. His chair faces three officials.
By Jessica Poister5 years ago in Criminal
Once We Were Children
We come and we go and we are who we are, nothing can change this. Fate. That’s what we believed when we were kids if you could call what we were, kids. We quickly learned, there are no children here. Many of us, too many, believed there was only one path that lay in front of us. Sometimes I think none of us were ever really children, the curiosity and amazement of childhood evaded us in the absence of able-bodied parents or positive role models, the lack thereof which caused the streets to step in to raise us. We really thought we knew it all.
By Stephen Conrad5 years ago in Criminal
