Transcript
HUMILIATED By Sean Steele Prisons in the United States currently hold over two million people. The drawbacks from incarceration are so profound that it can affect a person and his family for generations. Prisons represent totalitarian systems across the world. Prison Guards are trained to exercise complete control over other human beings. Disobedience to orders can result in the prisoner being violently passaulted. For the prisoner, prison invades his privacy, destroys his family unit, and creates social disadvantages for him upon his release. Being stripped searched in prison is a big invasion of privacy. The strip search is designed to humiliate the prisoner, to show him that he is powerless in his position. To inspect the inside and outside of the prisoners body, prison guards force him to take off all of his clothes. Standing naked in front of guards, and sometimes other prisoners, he is ordered to lift up his “balls”, than he must turn around, squat, and spread his anus apart, exposing his insides to the guards. After pulling apart his anus for inspection, he then must turn beak around, open his mouth, stick out his tongue, and run his fingers across his gums. As the feeling of being coerced to molest his own self runs through his mind, the guards then orders him to get dressed. Then the guard walks away, leaving the prisoners sense of manliness lost in the moment of this psychological violation. This humiliation lives in the subconscious of the prisoner's mind for the rest page 1 of his life. To compound upon his humiliation, the prisoners family unit is destroyed by time and distance.p A lot of prisoners are currently doing lengthy sentences. There are prisoners doing ten, twenty, and up to forty or fifty year sentences. Others have life sentences or sentences equivalent to life sentences such as 100 or 200 I years. In the beginning, most prisoners familkies are there because everything is fresh on their minds. Prisoners are ahle" to receive financial support, visits, and mail to keep them focused and thinking about their family or freedom. But for those who have lengthy sentences, as time goes by, ones family tends to taper off or disappear. Relationships become strained because the different social environments between prison and society creates psychological separations. The family and the prisoner start to rely on old memories to keep the conversations alive, but then when those run out, conversations become fewer and fewer, then they eventually stop. After the ending of meaningful conversations, the prisoner must then begin to live life purely on the inside. He becomes cold and lonely and feelings of anxiety and regret creeps into his mind. It starts to gnaw at his conscious as he waits for a hopeful day of release. But even when he is released, if he is ever released, he must then face a mountain of social disadvantages. These disadvantages keeps him in a quasi-social prison for the remainder of his life. Most businesses will deny him for employment, preventing him from creating a honest source of income. This rejection could force him back into the streets for his own survival. In addition page 2 to having many difficulties receiving a job, the ex-prisoner is also prevented from obtaining certain licenses or positions, even if he has the desire to become self-sufficient and create a better life. It becomes difficult for him to get accepted into college or practice law and he is often prevented from running for public office. These drawbacks can create a very severe drawback for an ex—prisoners future. Despite all of these controversies a prisoner must face, a prisoners future is very important. The mode and condition in which a prisoner is released still affects events that go on in society. No one should be humiliated and triggered to feel less than a human being. These rejections add to the virus of crime within our society and does not create a cure. The restrictions imposed upon a prisoners family shouldn't force them to socially separate or cause abandonment. And once a prisoner is freed, after paying his debt to society, he should have all his rights and privileges restored back to him. To make our society an even better place, the prisoner must be cared for and uplifted by the whole society. —Sean Steele November 29, 2018 page 3
