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Prison Minorities and Racial Inequality Essay by Evangelist Victor Andrew Apodaca Sr. LEA County Correctional Facility 6900 West Millen Drive Hobbs, New Mexico 88244 Essay Summary: This is a subject that I have expertise on. As I am both a prisoner and minority I understand the problem and not only on the two subjects, but I once was a law abiding citizen. I believe the following pages will bring light to the problem America is facing. We must ask ourselves why is the U.S. imprisonment rate extremely high and why is it mostly the majority brown or black prisoners depending on were at you are in the U.S. borders... This disparities in the punishment rates of brown and blacks and the current penal regime is somewhat to, the racial caste system of some third world countries. Our neighborhoods that are in large cities are at this time breeding grounds for gang membership, and our prison system are the colleges for the future mass murders of America. Ask yourself why? It is cause and effect-this is well been acknowledged as a socioeconomic system. It was not so in the 30's, 40's and 50's but since then the American dream has been destroyed the family has been destroyed there are more single mothers and broken homes in America at this time then in the history of any other world power in known history. Shouldn't you want to know why? As a current prisoner, it's been truly hard on the inside. I've watched movies and then there are sitcoms that show someone's idea of prison life, they do not scratch the surface of what life is like on the inside. I lost a friend in 2003 to 2004 to a staff infection, there was someone who used that needle that had it. At this time there was an epidemic of staff throughout the prison system. This is when I knew that YHVH was with me, let me explain I had gotten caught with tattoo items and then I was placed "in the hole" or segregation for a month and my friend dizzy went a few weeks after myself. I spent all 30 days in the hole, and then went to B-pod House 1 at G.L.L.F. and dizzy followed later and he come to me one day and bothered me to do a shot with him, "but I do not do drugs in prison anyway," well he wore me down and I said "Yes," he got really happy and said I'll be back later, so we can party. Well when you do that stuff you don't remember anything or anyone, he went and did a Big-Shot with an "old school" and that was that. He started getting really sick in the span of 3 days, he was in a wheelchair by the third day; and we knew he was dying, it was then Corizon Medical Health Care System and the whole pod started kicking the doors and beating the windows so they came and took him but it was too late he passed away on the way to the hospital in Albuquerque. The "old school" got saved "I would see him later" but I got so upset that my only friend was dead that I got sick and it was my appendix that went bad. The same nurse said it was "gas" but by the third day I couldn't eat, sleep, or move so I got the captain and told him if he did not get me in front of a doctor I was going to contact my family and start a civil suit against the G.E.O. group and they took blood and it showed that my appendix had gone south but that was only the beginning of the hell I would go through in a short span. So at this point they rushed me to Santa Rosa hospital and they could not do anything for me as I waited another 18 hours in pain as they would not give me anything for any reason they had called around to see if a hospital could send their emergency vehicle or any help at all they said they wouldn't pay for a flight for life. It was around 10:00 p.m. and the officer in charge said enough go get a rover van and chain me up in leg shackles and handcuffs and put me in the back seat and get me to Albuquerque. As they did this I got to the hospital they placed me in the custody of the State of New Mexico. The guards grab me and held me up to move me as my appendix ruptured. The doctor told me they had the surgery for emergency for over 15 hours as I was laid on the cart they began to prep me but my appendix had caused me to stop breathing and as they frantically attempted to save me I fought them tooth and nail until I passed as they wheeled me into the room. "This is where my belief came to be real to me. It was outer darkness the absence of YHWH that frightened me" and since that day I've tried to understand what I must do for salvation as I hope to never return to that place. It reminded me of my youth as I feared the darkness because I knew who was waiting on me. "I have began my memoirs I hope to get published one day." So I woke chained to a bed and had a clear plastic bag with a clear hose running into my side and stuff was running out of my side into the bag. Well the doctor came and told me I was lucky as my appendix had ruptured and the only reason I was still alive was that I had a belly and the fat around my stomach soaked up the poison and he explained I should sue the prison but I tried to but no attorney would help me at that time but I did finally study up on civil law and now I am a nightmare to the New Mexico Department of Corrections and the G.E.O. group and Corizon medical. It took 16 years but it's all in YHWH's time I've learned. But that was only one nightmare in a sea of hate by the people put over me to insure my protection from the civilized world as we are less than human not worthy of helping. We deserve the mistreatment by the Corrections Department and its employees. We are to be punished and mistreated as the U.S. Constitution... But in Yeshiva messiah is peace, joy, and love. As an ex-combat veteran I served my country when it called I went to give me life if need be but when I came home my whole life ended. The people I loved tried to have me killed and when I attempted to receive help from the very people I would have given my life for they turned their back on me. When they tried to send me to the loony bin they stopped it and at the time I didn't know what P.T.S.D. was but I attempted to kill my wife and her soldier boyfriend in self defense but I was arrested every time he tried to kill me. Finally I took my 3 children and went A.W.O.L. and 6 years I was given a less than honorable discharge if I signed my rights away. As a combat soldier I had over 20 medals 2 combat patches, etc. Now I was an outcast and I started to self medicate. I lost everything for the calling of my country. I served for God and country. I didn't ask for a bonus or the G.I. Bill. I wanted to be a soldier and the romance of John Wayne's movies in combat was what I wanted but war is not romantic. It's detestable and inhuman. It's the greatest crime you can commit to another human being and to this very day I still see, feel, smell the war in Desert Storm and Desert Shield is nothing compared to what my eldest son has suffered as he has 3 tours in Afghanistan and now my youngest son is going to serve in the United States Air Force. But I've transgressed. That was the very beginning of my new life as a citizen of the United States. My crimes which are violent in nature started in 2006 when I was caught. I was awaiting the 3 day waiting period as my girlfriend's both where to buy me a weapon that I was going to go to a very crowded place and commit mass murder but I had attempted in the two weeks prior to kill 13 people .It was only by the grace of YHWH that I hadn't killed those people. My son and girlfriend were the last two. My son is now awaiting trial and may never see freedom again. But the greatest injustice and the worst criminals I have every right to hate are in the justice system and the Corrections Department. They have made a hardened criminal of myself and every other convict in the prison system and I will now go into an essay of what is wrong with America and hope to shed light on a national crisis in America criminal justice system... From Bertrand Russell, Autobiography: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: The longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair... We abhor crime, and adore justices; we boast that we live by the rule of the law, violence and vengefulness we repudiate as unworthy of our civilization, and we assume this sentiment. To be a national disgrace is what Americans don't understand about the criminal justice system and it's not only our problem but a world wide problem. You yourself are included among the crimes that make up the total are those which were committed by you non criminals. These are not in the tabulations. They are not listed in the statistics and are not described in the President's Crime Commission studies. But your crimes help to make the recorded crimes possible, even necessary; and the worst of it you don't even know you are guilty. I mean your love of vindictive "justice," your generally smug detachment, and your prevailing public apathy. I propose this Essay and the ones to follow to examine this strange paradox of social danger, social error, and social indifference. I shall do so from the standpoint of one whose life has been spent on the inside and I am not illusion-proof. These conclusions of mine are a revised "common sense" solutions which were the best I could do- until you've learned better. Crime problems have been dealt with too long with only the aid of common sense. Catch criminals and lock them up; if they hit you, hit them back. This may be common sense, but it does not work. Think of me as a doctor to whom inmates come to talk about their troubles, and talk very frankly. They may spend most of their time talking about the acts and attitudes of other people, people with whom they interact. Crime is everybody's temptation-it is easy for you to look upon us with proud disdain upon "those people" who get caught-the stupid ones, the unlucky ones, the blatant ones. These facts disturb us, or should. They give us an uneasy feeling that we are all indicated. "Let him who is with out sin cast the first stone"... You think about those villains, thugs in the park, drug pushers, car thieves, rapists, killers? You could not do those terrible things. It is "those people" that the police are too easy with, those who prey upon society and do terrible, violent things. Most crimes go undetected, including yours, and even those of you who have "forgotten" your own offense, hoping they will have been forgiven by God (YHWH) if not officially by man, will not deny the casual experience of criminals wishes or fantasies of criminal acts. And there is one crime we all keep committing, over and over. I accuse you the reader of this-and myself, too-and all the non-readers. We commit the crime of dawning some of our fellow citizens with the label "criminals." And having done this, we force them through an experience that is soul seeking and dehumanizing. In this way we exculpate yourselves from th guilt we feel and tell ourselves that we do it to "correct" the "criminal" and makes us all safer from crime. You commit this crime everyday that you retain your present stupid, futile, abominable practices against detected offenders. In the name of "justice". Cause & effect have long been acknowledged. Disorganized childhoods, inadequate education, child abuse, limited employability, and delinquent peers are just a few factors involved. I am despised in communities there damaged, neglected, feared and held in contempt "I am one who speaks as I was raised in the projects or other side of the tracks trash not worth of help. I was abused at the hands by teachers and professionals in the courts, in the mental health care system and I tried to escape this life of crime but I could not because of the lack of education and funding the U.S. Government and the Army turned their back on not only myself but countless other combat veterans that would have gave their lives for God and country. The prison system is broken. We are not given a fighting chance. No employability, they have taken our education for lost and given it to the convict as I make $20.00 dollars a month. I must pay $165.00 dollars to $275.00 dollars for one accredited class of 3 credit hours. It would take me at least 2 years and I still must pay for books and supplies. Is that correction. I must put my life in God's hand daily to survive as I filed a civil lawsuit against the medical health care system called Corizon and was retaliated against by placement in a unit where gang members wanted to do me harm. Then when that did not work out they placed me in another unit and placed a person who was an informant and a child rapist and murderer and that ended badly for the both of us. I still bare the scars where I was shot by the guards in the back by a non-lethal round and then charged for them items used. The guards knew that this inmate was an interstate prisoner and they wanted me and others to attack him to kill two stones at the same time. I've spent 5 years and more if you count county jail in 24 hour lock down in a 9' by 11' cell. No human contact except when they put handcuffs and leg shackles to take you outside to a cage or to the shower. The violence by inmates and staff against ourselves is beyond words. Every day is a test of pure survival at any moment you can be beaten, stabbed or killed for the smallest infraction of prison rules. I have luckily kept myself alive by sure will. Some of my friends have not either in here or upon release. If you are interested in my accounts of violence and medical maltreatment here are my case no: New Mexico Tort Claim Santa Fe, New Mexico D-101-CV. 2014-01993 Joinder Case # D-101-CV-2014-02220 under the Honorable Sarah M. Singleton and civil 1983 in Albuquerque, New Mexico case no# 1-15-CV-00061-LH/LH and case #2:16-LV-00096-NV-LF and 2:16-CV-01227-GF and read into just one inmate's time in prison and what prisoners are subject to. But I have not given in I've made my own way possible for my future on the outside. I am currently on my Doctoral Program. I have a Bachelors "Magna Cum Laude" in Theology and a masters in Nouthetic counseling "Summa Cum Laude" and currently trying to finish a Associates of Liberal Arts at New Mexico Junior college. I have 14 credits to go. Somewhere around a 1,000 dollars to finish but at 20 dollars a month. It's a future that at this point is unattainable but I have full faith in my YHWH as He has led me this far and even when it took me three years to pay for the legal copies and legal mail in my civil suits I did not want for my needs. He supplied them they not being a high dollar sample like body wash or brightening tooth paste or second hand T-shirts and the such. I have been taught in that 5 years in the hole He educated me in such a way He took what teachers in my childhood called a retarded and gave me straight A's and B's in my colleges that I have been blessed to have by his might hand. I have a set of essays that I hope to complete and send in a series to you but I want to close with a speech by a "slave" Frederick Douglass: Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in the Deceleration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessing resulting from you independence to us?...I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn... If you truly want to help look up how many civil suits are against the New Mexico Corrections Department and Corizon and Centurion Healthcare Systems and G.E.O. group. There are over 200 alone in this state times that by 52 that should outrage us as a country that we are destroying ourselves from the inside out. YHWH Bless you and Shalom Sincerely an old soldier Victor Andrew Apodaca Sr. M.N.C. "S.C.L." Th.B. "M.C.L.: PMI ASS Evangelist "Doulos" in service of Yeshua' messiah Minister of the Word "Shalom" Critical Resentence Abolitionist Activist. Please write if you would like more information on the prison conditions at New Mexico. Shalom!
