I Dream Of Owning A Prison
Hold on I know what you’re thinking. Let me explain myself.
I know that I’m not going to save the world but let me dream. Whenever I see something wrong in the world I think of the changes I would make.
Let’s face it, our world could use some work. Not that I know how to fix them all. But I have some ideas, including the prison system. The prison system is not meant to rehabilitate prisoners, it’s meant to house people who have nowhere else to go.
There’s no doubt that there are prisoners who have committed horrible crimes. I wouldn’t feel safe if there was someone who committed multiple murders out and about.
Prison Is The Home Of Failed Parenting
I had a conversation with a colleague of mine. He was a former police officer. He said “Jail is a holding cell for the mentally ill.”
What my colleague said brought me back to Ted Talk I heard in high school. It was about a lawyer who was defending a man on death row. The Death row inmate says to his lawyer, “My mother was schizophrenic. During one of her episodes, she chased me around with a knife. I ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and waited for her episode to subside. A child never forgets that. Is it really a surprise that I ended up here?”
That line hit me like a ton of bricks. Most prisoners are products of failed parenting or mental illness. My colleague added on by saying a lot of parents set their children up for failure. That’s why they end up in prison. Because if parents fail to parent their own children, the real world punishes them.
Some prisons have rehabilitation programs and counseling. But that isn’t the standard in American prisons. It’s not meant to rehabilitate prisoners, it’s meant to make a profit off them. The truth is everything here in America is a business, prisons included.
People in prisons are tossed aside because no one knows what to do with them, or cares what to do with them. I’ll be honest it’s easier to condemn them and punish them instead of healing them.
There are some remarkable rehabilitation programs that certain prisons have:
The Monroe County Detention Center in Florida has an animal farm. The prisoners feed and spend time with the animals. Animals are therapeutic and it’s a unique idea for work experience.
In San Quentin State Prison in California, there is a finance program. It empowers prisoners to be in control of their money. They learn how to trade stocks and be financially literate.
The Northern Nevada Correctional Center has a program where prisoners train wild horses. The prisoners bond with the horses while they try to domesticate them. It teaches them to be patient and empathetic.
The Solano State Prison in California, they have a theatre therapy program. It was amazing to hear about this program, I love theatre but I never thought of it to be healing. Well, one prisoner did! He explains it so well, it teaches him how to process and work through his emotions.
A prison in Harlem New York has a dance program where the prisoners channel their emotions by dance. The prisoners find it healing and feel lighter.
You Can’t Hurt Someone To Heal Them
These rehabilitation programs are the scratch the surface of what prisons are capable of. There are people who do horrible crimes, crimes that can’t be undone. Then there are crimes that are committed for the need to survive. Going back to what my colleague said prisons are the home of the mentally ill.
What good is it to punish someone who doesn’t know the root of their problem? What tools do we give them? We can’t hurt someone into being good. We are only able to do that by healing them.
Counsel them, rehabilitate them, and unteach the behavior that got them there. If I had my own prison and had access to all the resources in the world, I would create a prison that heals prisoners. Because before becoming prisoners, they were people who lived in a world that didn’t want to heal them.
