Reflecting...

This week as I walked into the prison, I could feel the tension welling up in my body. I was so overwhelmed, and it wasn’t just me, the other tutors were as well. I can’t describe the immense amount of pressure that is placed on me each and every time that I walk into the prison. On our way to the prison this week, the other mentor and I had a long talk about that mental and physical stress that working in a prison puts on you. Every week we walk into the prison with our hearts and minds open to help, and educate, and every week it feels like we leave with a burden on our hearts. Sometimes it’s hard to go into a place so full of pain, and heartbreak and not be able to come out changed. As my semester is coming to a close, and this internship will no longer be a requirement it has given me a lot of time to reflect. Throughout this internship, I have learned so much and grown as well. I am honestly surprised at how much I have learned just from spending a few hours a week with inmates tutoring them for their GED.

I can’t believe how often I think about their lives, and how hard it is to live the way they have to live now. It really makes me think, that it only takes one mistake, one mili-second and your life can be changed forever. I think that is the most important lesson I’ve learned thus far. I said I chose to do this internship because I wanted to learn more about the legal system. Our system of reform is not truly reforming anyone. In my opinion it is merely supporting and economic system that continues to empower America, and trap those who have become complacent within in that system. Walking into the prison each week and seeing this kind of inequality is really disheartening.

Throughout this semester in conjunction with my on-site experience working in the prison, I have also been reading a book called, True Notebooks, by Mark Salzman. In this book, the author, Mark Salzman, is a college writing professor, who like myself, decides to go into the prison, and he beings a writing class. He starts this writing class in a juvenile prison, and throughout the book he combines his experiences and the experiences of the young boys in the system to paint a very real picture of the prison system. Prior to this internship I had no knowledge of how the adult of juvenile prison system works, and now that I have been socialized in this way I realize that for a lot of these men they never even have a chance. A reoccurring theme in this particular book was how quickly and how young boys move from juvenile system to the adult prison system. In many instances this boys (children) only made one of two mistakes at the ages of 13 or 14, and are sentenced to juvenile prison. In many instances the inmates would go directly from juvenile prison to adult prison, from the ages of 14 and 15 they never have a chance to live. Reading this book was eye opening for me. I could believe some of the stories described in this book. Children would go to trial and at age 14 listen to the judge tell them they would never be able to have children, get married, be alone, or live on the other side of bars again – there is not room for change because these boys never had a chance. Reading stories like these, and seeing inmates in the adult prison, the same age as me made me realize the immensity of the prison system.

Having these experiences have only encouraged me in striving to succeed in my goal as a judge. I have seen and heard the experiences of men who have been trapped, and locked into a life, I have heard stories of men who are willing to change but have nowhere to turn for help. I have been socialized into the United States prison system, and I want to change it. I now have the understanding of where I could potentially be sending a criminal, and I now understand what “America” considers justice to be. I don’t agree with that justice, I choose to disagree; I choose to make a difference. I am choosing to become a judge, and for the few people that come into my court room, I can only hope to judge them fairly with a sound heart and mind; and with my abundance of experiences. I can only hope that true justice and equality will one day be a part of the United States prison system for every person who has to experience it.

I now have three cousins in the United States prison system; they are 22, 21, and 21. I can only hope that they are experiencing true and equal justice, but from what I have seen, and read I fear for their lives and the lives of their children because now they are in the hand s of “justice” or “injustice….