Death of Dog Trainer Highlights Strenuous Heat and Working Conditions Inside Texas Prisons

[KY_EnviroGuy]

3. Symptomatic of a much more widespread problem of human denial and cruelty.

On and off for several years, I worked with men in jails and prisons as part of my early program of addiction recovery. What I learned from those guys through letters, visits and phone calls was appalling, especially for one poor fellow who had Crohn's disease. I would have never learned it otherwise because I'm one of the fortunate few of America's heavy drinkers that never served a day in jail.

What I suddenly came to realize is that America and most nations around the globe simply toss anyone not conforming to society's idea of a perfect money-making morally-conforming human into a place behind walls and fences so they can be forgotten, regardless of society's role in them being there and regardless of the fairness of justice that placed them there. And, rehabilitation in the United States if mostly a complete joke. For most, once imprisoned their lives are thereafter in a trash bin.

Once they are disappeared into a detention system, their entire existence is subject to whims of prison officials and guards that often are mentally ill from that environment themselves and whims of state and federal legislators anxious to cut budgets to bare bones. And, almost 100% of it is out of sight and out of mind of our general public.

Cutting health care and food costs, facilities improvement costs and rehabilitation costs is an easy and non-transparent way to achieve reduced spending, especially in red states that are adverse to any and all taxes. Politicians and prison officials get away with it because almost all of our detainees are poor and neither them or their families have any voice.

It's sort of a warped component of our primitive territorial self where we build fences around anything unpleasant, from an annoying next door neighbor to entire nations. You might say that the wall around your nearest city or county jail or state prison is no different morally from our southern border. At least the southern border is now televised.

Rest in peace, Seth ....

KY Rant Done.......