I just really want more of you to take the time to educate yourselves about US prisons and jails and how they ACTUALLY operate. They are torture chambers [this is not hyperbole.]
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Glad you were exonerated. My friend and comrade @dreanyc123.bsky.social makes it clear why ending qualified immunity won't end the violence of policing..
its not like folks don’t know. every damn joke in every piece of media about someone going to prison is about rape. it doesn’t matter how horrific it is, if we believe someone is inherently deserving of that punishment. thats what Gaza is teaching me.
Part of the inhumanity of the trope is that it portrays the events and causes of prison assault as glorified or in some way a moral victory or failing for victim or perpetrator. The systemic causes of prison assault are insanely complex, banal, and institutional. But folks just think “I’m not them”
It builds up the othering of prisoners, it does not humanize them or make their suffering more real or relatable to people who do not wish to see the society they live in as flawed and punishing people at random. They believe prison is a good thing
You don't need to tell me that. I met a woman who carries her brother's ashes around in a box demanding justice. He got picked up for missing a drug test at work and was thrown into a cell. They provided him with no medical intervention until he was convulsing.
He died of an untreated brain tumor.
💯 truth.
AND every U.S. inmate gets a new victim: anyone that cares about them.
Prisons profit off connection, charging for calls, visits, even care.
Families/friends are punished just for trying to keep their loved ones sane. And human.
They all serve the sentence.
We need to talk about this.
The for-profit aspect of the system is galling, and especially so because rich people only seldom wind up in prison. Any discussion about prisons should include these two facts - poor people are the ones who do time and the system is designed to make money off them.
Exactly. This is how the entire capitalist system functions — the poor pay in every possible way, while the wealthy sit back and profit. The industrial prison complex, in my view, is a state-sanctioned system of torture hiding in plain sight.
Thank you I accidentally worked in the system and it is horrific. I did receive a settlement which funds mental health treatment for the next three generations because I snitched them off. Ta-Nehisi Coates said everything I wanted to say. This should be my bio
The only thing that made my time there somewhat acceptable, is the fact that I had ~12k on my books from my paychecks I had on me, and literally doing illigal shit in jail while I waited for my not guilty verdict to clear on the charge that put me there. Jail made me break the law to survive.
John Oliver did a piece on deaths in prison due to overheating some time back. I tried talking to someone I knew IRL about it and I got that "can't do the time" line.
I retorted with "The guy who wrote a bad check and died due to overheating deserved a death sentence? For a bad check?"
Hyper focusing on private prisons is a distraction from the fact that prisons themselves are the issue. Regardless of who owns them, they destroy people’s lives.
This is also what bothers me about “we shouldn’t deport people to CECOT, they should face trial and go to US prison instead”
I posted something about Gaza being an open air prison AND a concentration camp the other day, and someone replied “well, prisons are full of guilty people who have been through a trial”
The thoughts of people who reveal how they are so depraved and soulless about fellow human beings—probably the same people who tie their dogs to trees and dump cats off to die. Then sitting in church pews on Sundays as if they were clean.
This has bothered me about the coverage of the Salvadoran CECOT - it’s not a gulag, it’s a modern prison. There are a million reasons we shouldn’t be sending people there, but not because it’s an institution out of some faraway and foreign past. It’s actually an exemplar of a heinous modern prison.
Teachers who care might be a good group to talk with. Some of us have had students that have had 3-4 generations dealing with the prison pipeline. The institution is broken and dangerous.
I spent my entire teaching career in Title 1 schools and have had many students from Pre -k all the way up that have had parents/family members incarcerated. 1/2
I also taught at an “alternative” 6-12 school for 2 yrs. 90% of my kids had probation officers.
Teaching those “bad” kids was the best job I had. Many colleagues would disagree with me when I would go to bat in court/write letters for students who were trying to change bc they were “just bad kids”
I am Lulu from Gaza, a mother of five children. The war has destroyed me. I have lost everything. Please adopt my campaign. Share. I need someone to adopt my campaign so I can travel with my children. I have proof of everything.
Nothing haunts me like the man boiled alive in a Florida makeshift shower. They even disappeared the witness, another inmate, who heard the man's screams. No one was charged in his murder.
That's right, I could only remember his name started with a D off the top of my head. The people who did that are walking around free to kill again & that should scare people. If I remember correctly he was schizophrenic & he was in jail over some coke.
Taking this lil opportunity to say fuck Chatham County Jail in Savannah in particular, the lying pigs that bring people there, and the jailers that get off on abuse and humiliation. Fire to the prisons
People didn’t care because they could not fathom having prisons matter in their lives. This regime will imprison you for a miscarriage. We had better band together and rethink the US caste system. The lowest class is the 1% not the poor and oppressed who are so victimized by these torture chambers.
It's hard to understand how bad it is until you are directly involved. I cared about prisons and wanted reform until I had a loved one inside and understood that my previous knowledge was so incomplete. Obv now I'm an abolitionist.
1. Not enough correctional officers (COs). Nobody wants to spend their life in prison, including workers. Not enough staff means prisoners are kept in lockdown, sometimes for weeks at a time.
2. Sadomasochistic COs. You wouldn't believe their cruelty.
I have unfortunately, had to become intimately familiar with the conditions in US jails and prisons over the last five years as my son was put through the gristmill of American “justice“.
It is according to one warden , their primary job to keep my son safe. They’ve done a lousy job with that. He was jumped twice in reception. He was shot with non-lethal weapons by guards , even though he was the victim of the assault. He has contracted tuberculosis. He has recurring skin infections.
The medical staff in the prison are in some cases worse than the guards. No one becomes a RN in prison because they want to, they end up there because no one else will take them, and they have virtually no oversight. These nurses delight in the suffering of prisoners.
We pay about $1000 every month to make sure that my son is adequately nourished, clean, disease, free, and educated. The prison provides them with absolutely nothing for their health and cleanliness. Not even a bar of soap or a toothbrush. We cannot ship him outside hygiene products or food.
Other than reading material, everything must be purchased through their commissary vendors at ridiculously high mark ups. Food items cost 2 to 3 times what my local grocery prices are. Fresh food is simply unavailable. He hasn’t had a piece of fruit in five years. Emails are charged by the word…
Phone calls are charged by the minute. Other than the prison law library, which is frequently controlled by a Cabal, he has no access to interact with the outside world. Not for knowledge not for community not for entertainment. Except Fox News on the television. Phone calls are cut to 15 minutes…
the way “foreign” keeps showing up in well-meaning descriptions of the injustice of it all—I thought a lot of people were simply fine with inhuman treatment right here at home, but it’s like they actually thought all the jokes were about some other place
WE have reports of inmate dying from hunger. From hunger! It takes about 3 weeks without food for a human to die from hunger. That means they didn't feed people for 3 weeks! That cannot be a mistake, that's deliberate! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/starved-in-jail
You are 100% right. I learned about US prisons through my pen pals- at one point, I was writing to, and getting letters from, about 60 prisoners, most of them in Texas. The way they’re treated is reprehensible. Most people have NO idea.
It has really opened my eyes and taught me a lot about how fucked up our prisons are. They don’t really even pretend to rehabilitate anyone, or get them the medical and behavioral health help that many prisoners need. They don’t even keep them safe.
You will be blessed.
💗
You are getting them through and that means the world when you in jail:
Prison isn’t for humans, they treat us like cattle. I have sickle cell and I almost died in there if my bunker didn’t advocate for me when I couldn’t. I definitely wouldn’t have made it.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. I learned, through getting to know “my” inmates, that nobody deserves to be judged based upon the worst thing they’ve ever done. Especially when many of them were teenagers at the time they were arrested and are facing life in prison due to one mistake.
no need to apologize for sharing from Substack with me. There are a ton of good writers and thinkers who share there and I appreciate reading what they share. I understand that no platforms are without their problems & people have lots of reasons for writing where they do.
Grew up (literally) across the street from one of the worst prisons in Arizona. Father was a cage kicker they called when it got out of control. I didn’t have the restrictions that the guests of the Hells B and B. But I’d do understand what Prison Culture means. Keep Telling The Truth.
Co worker and I were talking about this the other day. They assert prisons are just modern day enslavement. I’d agree based on what I know which, if I’m being honest, isn’t a lot.
I was talking with my eyebrow lady (gotta spread the word to everyone) about Florida prisons not having any air-conditioning and reaching 115 easily on summer days and she was shocked. People just don't know.
This - the US could use funds to educate, treat medical and mental health needs (including nutrition and prevention), job train, etc. Instead corporations get rich
I made the mistake of discussing this with my father-in-law. His only response was "then don't break the law". I tried to go into how many wrongfully accused people are in prison and how inmates are STILL PEOPLE but he would have none of it.
That was the trope I heard my whole life from all the men in my paternal family who regularly broke the law, but had no empathy for those who did the same and got caught.
Unless it was one of their white friends, then it was outrageous and abuse of power.
I will eat my cup if you can find me an American over 50 who could never have been incarcerated.
Like killing a family in traffic - let's be honest - almost everyone that age has driven drunk, even.
Or hitting or shoving someone.
(My minister friend is in for breaking up a fight.)
We are hypocrites.
You @prisonculture.bsky.social have taught me to question that more effectively (in myself and others). Do we feel any safer than we did decades ago even though we now incarcerate 2 million people? I don’t. Even if it was morally acceptable, which it isn’t, the police state is NOT working.
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You are correct.
Abolish qualified immunity End impunity
He died of an untreated brain tumor.
AND every U.S. inmate gets a new victim: anyone that cares about them.
Prisons profit off connection, charging for calls, visits, even care.
Families/friends are punished just for trying to keep their loved ones sane. And human.
They all serve the sentence.
We need to talk about this.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/starved-in-jail
It took a SCOTUS case just to abolish life without parole for minors in nonhomicides:
https://www.pleadthe8th.com/graham-v-florida
http://prisonmap.com/
I retorted with "The guy who wrote a bad check and died due to overheating deserved a death sentence? For a bad check?"
Silence.
This is also what bothers me about “we shouldn’t deport people to CECOT, they should face trial and go to US prison instead”
It's all so unnecessary. Incarceration over nothing, horrifying conditions, exploitation of labor, disenfranchisement...
True legal & prison reform needs to be on the protest agenda for any of this to have meaning.
Teaching those “bad” kids was the best job I had. Many colleagues would disagree with me when I would go to bat in court/write letters for students who were trying to change bc they were “just bad kids”
Unconditional positive regard, warm demander all work in tandem.
I'll even add that I think sometimes mentally ill people should be separated from society but fuck, not prison
Because people don't really care about prisoners' rights, their fundamental rights to human dignity get abused.
I can confirm Prisonculture's statement.
They had a father & son in the same cell. The father had a heart attack & the guards made the son watch him die as they finished counting inmates.
They knew what was happening and would not help.
That's just 1 tale
Nobody cares unless they've faced that kind of grueling loss of time with a family member or dear friend 😞
1. Not enough correctional officers (COs). Nobody wants to spend their life in prison, including workers. Not enough staff means prisoners are kept in lockdown, sometimes for weeks at a time.
2. Sadomasochistic COs. You wouldn't believe their cruelty.
Juries don't consider this.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/starved-in-jail
💗
You are getting them through and that means the world when you in jail:
Prison isn’t for humans, they treat us like cattle. I have sickle cell and I almost died in there if my bunker didn’t advocate for me when I couldn’t. I definitely wouldn’t have made it.
https://bethshelburne.substack.com/p/at-my-alabama-prison-one-man-is-doing?utm_source=substack&publication_id=988797&post_id=160362032&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=fbzu&triedRedirect=true
Unless it was one of their white friends, then it was outrageous and abuse of power.
Like killing a family in traffic - let's be honest - almost everyone that age has driven drunk, even.
Or hitting or shoving someone.
(My minister friend is in for breaking up a fight.)
We are hypocrites.