Whose Justice is This?
At the age of 15 I was arrested & charged with grand larceny. After months in a concrete cell, I was offered "a way out" by getting my mother to sign off on me being 'certified as an adult', at that hearing I was, afterwards I was transferred to the adult jail & given a bond, I bonded out, six months later my mother & I were at the county court house where I pled guilty (I was now a 16 year old convicted felon) & placed on probation. Nine days later my probation was violated when I was arrested for being out past juvenile curfew & drinking beer underage. I have been continuously incarcerated ever since. I was sentenced to 5 years in the state penitentiary for the probation violation. There I was indicted & convicted & sentenced several times over for fighting, Eventually I was sentenced to LWOP for killing a man on death row. Afterwards I was moved here to the United Stated Supermax ADX. Here I have been for the past 12 years. Here in this poured concrete tomb.
Prison is a place of violence. Gangs, divisions & racist idiocy rule. Human beings packed into concrete warehouses. Violent macho ruling the environment. No real examples of hope or growth. Violence a necessary means of self defense.
I've witnessed beatings, butcherings, starvation, murder. The prison guards not caring or capable enough to protect - only isolation cells offered as "protection".
Isolation is torture, not protection. Period.
No language captures the pain.
Blank faces & judging eyes.
I moan, I weep, I pray.
Jesse Wilson [ID]
ADX Florence, CO