Like yesterday

From the Cell lof JEFFERY A. SHOCKLEY-[ID] SMART COMMUNICATIONS/PADOC -SCI-FAYETTE, P.O. BOX 33028, ST. PETERSBURG, FL 33733 Like Yesterday If I could have back just a moment of time for each time I did not live up to my potential or abilities, perhaps I would not have been born, yet, today and the world will not have known the pain of so great a loss... Like yesterday. I am a 60 year old Black man who now resides inside this space I have placed myself in from not living up to whom society and my parents hoped I would grow up to be. Disappointingly have yet to see. Raised seperately, apart from my family with my grandmother who loved me through a childhood of faults developed in my young age that gave me reason to be someone I was afraid to be... Myself. How do you hold true to who you could ever become when some say you are nothing but this lowly stinking inmate? Ingrate incapable of the change prison is supposed to make within the environment you sadly must spend the rest of your life now in. "We want them to have self-worth, so we destroy their worth of self; We want them to be responsible, so we take away all responsibility." "We want them to be part of our community, so we isolate them from our community; we want them to be positive and constructive, so we degrade them and make them useless." "We want them to be trustworthy, so we put them where there is no trust; we want them to be non-violent, so we put them where there is violence all around them." "We want them to be kind and loving people, so we subject them to hatred and cruelty; we want them to quit being the tough guy, so we put them where the tough guy is respected." "We want them to quit hanging around with losers, so we put all the losers in the state under one roof; we want them to quit exploiting us, so we put them where they can exploit each other." "We want them to take control of their lives and their problems, so we make them totally dependent. on us."1 1. [Adapted from: Makiing IT Right: A Common Sense Approach to Crominal Justice] by Dennis Chaleen (1986)