Transcript
Socially Implosive The name of the Department of Corrections is a deceptive, misleading, illustration designed to project an appearance that they are actually fixing the men and woman they isolate from society. Change comes from within a person. Isolating someone as you micromanage them, under exaggerated rules, may create a temporary compliance but not any lasting disposition to yield illegal behavior. The prison is expected to obey and follow a set of rules. The rules are enforced by the staff which are also expected to follow correct procedure. When there is no accountability then power corrupts the system. This is the normal course of business her in the Illinois Department of "Corruption." There is a group that consist of Illinois Department of Corrections staff and they are joined in, what they call, a union. This seems odd to me that the men who claim unity are divided in pay, rank, and priority for position. At any rate the union and IDOC administration go basically unchecked. The avenue provided for the inmate is one that is always started on the side of defense. The name of the form that I am provided with, in order to bring an issue into question, is called a grievance. A cause of distress. So the only course of action provided for me is reaction. The only accepted form of reaction from me, towards any type of misdeed done to me, is a written account. Any type of violation of my rights, injurious, unfair, unjust, wrong, disservice, bad, immoral, evil, raw deal or sin I can only write a grievance describing the incident to the best of my ability. The procedure that I have to follow, when filing a complaint, goes through a three phase process. I put the grievance in the box and it goes to a counselor who responds. I get the grievance back and send it back to the grievance officer and they respond. I get the grievance back and I must send it to the Administrative Review Board and they respond. When all of my avenue for redemption or relief is exhausted, on an internal level, my grievance has passed through the counselor, grievance officer, warden, the grieved party, a second grievance officer in Springfield, IL and the director of IDOC. The process takes about three months and usually there is no relief from the punishment by this time. The issue that the inmate grieves is not investigated properly and everyone knows that the whole process is a sham purporting to be genuine. I have filed a handful of grievances for various violations. It doesn't matter that my rights are violated or if a staff member doesn't follow the rules. The staff can lie about what they did, or did not do and the investigation is over. Twice since I have been here, at Western Correctional Center, I have been directly offended by the actions of IDOC staff. I grieved the issues and the staff simply told their investigating superior that what I was claiming wasn't true. Both instances the staff just told the story of what they would have done, in the situation, if what I was saying was true. The investigating party in both instances then found that my claims were unsubstantiated. This is a very common occurrence and every inmate knows it. It creates an attitude of defeatism and I believe this is the objective. The staff of corrections is made up largely of former members of the armed forces. There are even t-shirts and other attire that they wear that are labeled "Veterans and Corrections." The dual function of providing our countries men and women with a state job and filling a security position are announced with pride by this union of the two defense related areas. This makes the general attitude, of IDOC staff, militant in mannerism. The way they are trained to deal with people is not conductive with reforming. There is a constant feeling of threat here from either other prisoners or guards. Instead of creating an environment that would help prepare a person to live a productive life, in a free society, they are creating, (on purpose), an environment that causes many to regress. We are housed arbitrarily, strip searched, random cell searches and urine test and many other forms of harassment. Men here are degraded, provoked and insulted to cultivate the feeling of despair and anxiety. The cost of resistance is exaggerated by invoking demeaning punishment. Self esteem is kept low in order to reduce any of the ideas and convictions of an individual, or group, to animal level concerns. Many of the people here are withdrawn into a state of disassociation with reality, paranoid and suspicious of all things that are affiliated with, any type of, authority. Its impossible to maintain a normal, natural outlook of reality when I am under anxious, nervous, restless, upsetting, worrisome conditions. I have problems with concentration, memory, depression, hypertension and headaches. It's very difficult to be goal oriented and stay positive in this anti-social, controlled environment. It's almost as if they want me to learn how to be helpless instead of being able to perform the regular functions expected of me once I am released. Everyone has basic needs to be loved, cared about, and accepted by others. In here I think those needs are amplified by being alienated from society and also by the need to be free. I feel like those needs are, not only recognized by IDOC officials, but exploited by them in order to control, and also manipulate, behavior conductive to submission and subserviency. This is my everyday reality. The staff here utilizes these techniques all of the time in a ritualistic manner that I'm not even sure they understand is by design. At least not at the lower levels of the administration in general but they carry out their orders like a good soldier. We are dehumanized and the staff is taught to look at convicted criminals as a vile, animalistic, stain on society. Its a lot easier to treat me with conscienceless disregard if I am less than human and also easier to justify. When the need for public safety is coupled with this exaggerated, overstatement of danger, and the dehumanization of this inmate animal, then all manners of treatment are much easier to defend, maintain, support and excuse. Its hopeless for me to expect complete freedom from the humble social and economic position, into which I am forced, merely by trusting in the moral sense of IDOC officials. It is equally hopeless to attempt developing sufficient power to set against my oppressors through violent rebellion since change of an individual can only truly be achieved from within then the development of a conscience may be invaluable towards any attempt to cultivate a sense of duty in the inmate population. I sit and wonder what I am supposed to be getting from sitting in a tiny room all day. I get out for about 3 hours a day, usually, and that time is micromanaged by any variety of characters who are hired by the state to do so. I think I am supposed to dislike this place, and the ridiculous conditions, and I do. I think I am supposed to fear coming back here after I get released. I think that the powers that be are using this place, and places similar, to instill dread and fear. The systematic use of fear to coerce behavior is, be definition, terrorism. I think this concept is the root of recidivism. Demoralization, demeaning ridicule, and belligerent belittling are an every day occurrence that is not only accepted, among the IDOC staff and administration, it is encouraged. This practice creates or perpetuates a feeling of deep seated resentment or ill will between inmates and staff. This feeling of hate and loathing does not just magically leave a person once they are released back into society. Also the system as a whole is to blame, for the actions of the security staff, in the mind of the majority of inmates. Meaning that the bitterness goes out of prison with the inmate and all the withheld spite as well. Cops, judges, lawyers and anyone who represents any part of the legal system, or criminal justice system, are despised. Its much easier to resist being fault when a person blame's society's ills rather than their own individual psychological problems. I know that I actually needed a way to get off of drugs and not be around them but I dont imagine I needed 21 hours a day in a tiny room for 7+ years. How does that help prepare anyone to be a functioning member of society? I am basically cut off from social support and constantly dealing with controlled movement, threat of isolation, exaggerated importance of petty rules, food that is monotonous, and magnified consequences for minor infractions. I believe that all of this is, by design, rigged to control my perception. My attention is supposed to be fixed on my immediate predicament so that I become very concerned with myself while simultaneously developing dependence on this place and the staff. They are trying to brainwash me through oppression, psychological torture and other forms of behavior modification. I understand that I needed to change my ways of thinking and also that I am not supposed to like it here. Understanding the methods and manner creates anguish in which submission and conformity are next to impossible. I am in desperate need of change. I want to give up all my previous, drug influenced, beliefs and egotistical attitudes and build a new set of ideas that aren't adulterated with inferior substance or impure concepts. There is so much influence, direction, and regulation, designed, so that I should develop the habit of compliance, that I can not focus on the things I need to. I have wrote the warden, counselors and the director of IDOC. I have asked for help from the people that are alleged to be employed for the purpose of allocating allegiance into a criminal. I am met with either no response at all or advice that is a general, emotionless, textbook regurgitation and not relevant. I am in constant company of illicit felons, reprehensible crooks, disgraceful desperados and petty foolish culprits. Cultivation is virtually hopeless. The law requires me to submit voluntarily to the penalty it orders against me for my non-co-operation with the law. So here I sit in prison submitting cheerfully to affliction for what the law calls a deliberate crime. It is impossible to completely disassociate a bad social system from the personal moral obligation and responsibilities of the people who maintain it. A realistic view of the problems, of the department of corrections, reveals a constant and seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the needs of society and the individual. Society must strive for justice by all means while I must strive to realize my life by losing my previous attitude and giving up basic social / political opinions, sentiments, persuasions, and beliefs, and then find myself in something greater than myself. The highest moral insights and achievements of the prisoner, as an individual, are both relevant and necessary to the life of the society to which he is cast upon completion of his sentence. Justice cannot be established if the moral imagination of the prisoner does not try and comprehend the needs and interest of society. The prisons here in Illinois have degenerated into something less than justice and they can only be saved by something that is more than justice. Make no mistake because your freedom is a gift bestowed upon you, by the state, pending good behavior. We are all in bondage to the legal system in order that we may enjoy the freedom to do what the law permits. Redemption favors ambition and effort. By: Brian K. Potts 2/19/2019
