It's Not Just the Bars Make the Prison

Treat a person like an animal, a dangerous creature to be caged and minimized, to be starved and controlled, and what can you expect but that they should become that ravening beast you have all along accused them of being?

Feed their spirit, nurture their humanity, show them that they can grow to be more than what they have been, and there can be tremendous change for good.

Idealistic?  Probably.  No less true for the idealism, though.  If one, even one, can change the path they're on and become a light in the dark, I would see them given the opportunity rather than let them be trampled into the mud and misery.

I have seen and heard of much of the negative in the world of jails and prisons, and certainly Hollywood has aggrandized the worst of it all.  What is missed or quashed or ignored is the good, the tremendous good, that happens among and between inmates every single day.

Yes, there are gangs.  There is bigotry.  There is violence.

There are also people who give a bar of soap to someone who can't buy their own.  People who reach out to their families in the outside world to help connect their fellows with THEIR families.  People who ask their loved ones to give a ride to a stranger so they can visit.  People who share food, offer a pair of socks or a shirt, lend some paper, a pencil, an envelope, a stamp, never asking anything in return.  People classified as less-than by society who act as more-than despite the expectation that they should be anything but their higher selves.

Prisoners are people.  They have souls.  They are imbued with the same divine spark as all living beings.  To see them as lesser is to diminish us and create the monsters they never would have been without our help.