Citizen Reflection Paper

I sat in a small, dirty and crowded holding cell in Fort Bend County jail. Sitting here waiting to get processed and see the nurse, Mane! These men in this holding cell were all fucking trifling. There were cells for suicidal inmates, crazy inmates, murderers and those going through drug withdrawal. The smell of musty underarms, alcohol and feet made it unbearable to breath. It was time for me to live with the consequences of the choices I had made. The newest consequence was the foreboding environment of a small, overcrowded county jail.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

Have you ever been to prison before? Unfortunately it is not uncommon for many people in the United States to end up in prison at any given time in their life. Chances are, if you have not been to prison you know somebody that has been imprisoned, as America has the highest rate of incarceration in the whole world. Although America’s population only accounts for 5% of the world's population, we have the highest prison rate at 25% of the whole world’s incarcerated population (Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2015). Why do we continue to see these prisons overcrowded, and how exactly does this affect the inmates?

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,526,800 American adults that were incarcerated in 2015 (Carson). The United States incarceration rates are catching the attention of the American people, as well as major news outlets. Not only is the incarceration rate being recognized, but the privatization of the prison system is receiving recognition. Those arguing in favor of lesser and more lenient sentencing have the unique challenge of convincing people to empathize with inmates. Most Americans have difficulty empathizing with the situations that inmates face leading up to and after their incarceration due to loss of freedom being an unordinary situation for an American.

Despite the large amount of criminals in prison, the crimes: murder, rape, and others has only “accounted for 10.6 percent of the total Crime Index” (Access Integrity Unit). The vast majority of criminals locked up are held on drug addiction or petty theft charges and not more serious offenses such as murder or assault. To put it simply, the cells that were built with taxpayers’ dollars holds 89.4 percent of criminals that are of no real threat to society. While the jail cells continue to fill up with occupants that has no business being behind bars, the general public will not feel any safer until new laws are passed to insure lesser offenders can get the help they so desperately need.

The dream of a life of freedom in a world that has endless possibilities begins in the United States. Sadly, this is not a privilege for everyone to experience. Although, when speaking of confining and isolating individuals, the realization of this luxury of freedom is not granted to everyone. These few words pierce into the heart of life as a inmate. Nevertheless, the suffering of one is felt by more and more individuals on a daily basis. Yet, those living free on the outside do not see a problem and many refuse to believe or even acknowledge that there is one. However, the United States has paved the way to create a cycle of endless incarceration for many people but especially for those of color. Such as the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act and the lack of substance abuse treatment in prisons. Overwhelmingly, mass incarceration has had a great impact on families, communities and society as a whole. As illuminated through the parable by inmate Joe Martinez, this continued cycling of inmates in and out of prison is devastating to the growth society.

When we think of prison, we imagine it’s existence only for the good of our society, its purpose to lock up the “bad guys” and keeps the streets safe and people from harm. But what if, in the recent years, imprisonment has shown different results? While in the past couple of years, the rate of crime has declined, it seems as if the rate of incarceration has only gone up. Well, that’s because it has. Reports show that, “In 1974, 100 out of every 100,000 citizens of this country were in prison; today, there are roughly 700 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 Americans” (Madden 14). Despite these statistics, this rampant imprisonment of people, especially of color, has negatively impacted our society. By discussing the harmful effects of the large rate that men of

9/11 was a tragic event that also opened the eyes of American citizens. It showed that America is not invincible and how the corporations can’t solve a lot of problems like hunger, poverty, and war around the world. It was an event that made Americans come together and stop depending on wealthy corporations and businesses that take advantage of poor schools and universities for advertisement. Instead, they started depending on themselves and on the true heroes: policemen, public safety officers, and more. Also, 9/11 gave a chance for educators to seize the opportunity of redefining education. As a final point, interdependent citizenship and civic education is very crucial

Whether guilty of crimes or innocent, our incarceration system is an issue that many activists rally around in terms of its success and promise in correcting and rehabilitating criminal behavior. So, to read letters and hear the voices of those who are living on the marginalized edges of our society, but who rarely have a voice in the issue that’s being nationally rallied around, is an uncommon circumstance that should be noted and have more attention and action drawn to. Their desire to educate themselves within the confines of a prison wall is real and heard by those of us who take time to spend their weekday evenings in the bottom of a church basement, sorting through donated books, and reading literary wish-lists of those who are incarcerated.

When the average person thinks of jails and prisons, they typically think of horrible criminals being locked up in order to protect the rest of society. They think justice has been served, and those who did the crime are now doing the time. But what goes on inside a prison, and inside the minds of the inmates? What about after those offenders have served their time, and are now being released back into the general public? People don’t really think about how prison affects a person’s mentality, or how incarceration impacts both relationships the inmate currently has, or ones that will develop in the future. Although it isn’t something most people think of first, incarceration is an experience that can have a negative psychological impact on a person for quite some time.

I have never attended a community meeting or any meeting regarding my community therefore, attending this meeting for the first time was a great first experience. I was able to see how a meeting is ran and how the organization works in order to help make improvements in my community. When I went into the office the meeting was being held, I was offered an agenda and other informational forms regarding the meeting. The agenda provided information of how the organization of the meeting would be and who will be going over what topics. The meeting was a timed meeting where Richard Hernandez and Bill Houtt managed on recording to keep data. The issues that were discussed were citizen’s request for city improvements, a short review of the 2016 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) Accomplishments, which is a grant that helps build homes for low income families and was reviewed by Rhonda Haynes a community developer. Lastly, the Sidewalk at Divisadero and Rinaldi, North Visalia citizen report were also discussed by Bill Houtt a member of the committee, and construction issues in N. Visalia discussed by Lt. Brent Abbott.

This has been in my thoughts as I’ve been drafting my way into my own dissertation ideas. My background in critical social studies means I am very familiar with building arguments, so some of this uncertainty is expected. AT the moment, I know enough to say I am on the right track with my research ideas and know that public administration, and public policy in particular, is the right field for me.. However, I also feel rather critical of the policy process literature. It has been claimed, “public administration exists to realize the governance of society” (Raadschelders, 1999, p. 288). Yet, what society believes policy to be, and for whom, changes over time and across place. I feel at this moment public policy in the United States will change dramatically and I worry that our field is ill equipped to deal with these changing views of policy. Consequently, most of my underlying thoughts and reflections have been on understanding how can we adapt to this changing atmosphere.

For the service learning project, I teamed up with three of my classmates to volunteer at a lady’s conference at Imani Restoration Centre church (IRCC) on the 16th of September, 2017. IRCC is a non-profit organization which is a Kenyan community founded that focuses on bringing African immigrants together to support and learn the things of God. Samuel Mwangi, the senior pastor of IRCC, said that through the counseling sessions that he holds at the church every Thursday, he discovered that most ladies go through the same challenges. Therefore, he thought it would be great for him to organize a lady’s conference, so that ladies could come together to share and support each other (Personal communication, September, 16, 2017)

Now that the different facets of the multiverse theory have been explained, what about society’s reaction? My hypothesis is that society will freak out and eventually progress into a nihilistic and existential society. Inevitably, there will also be individuals who react differently. I believe society’s reaction will mirror that of what happened when Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. Because society went haywire when their view of the world was changed, no doubt society will react in a similar way because their view of the entire universe itself would change. A majority of the population sees our universe as a singular entity that exists on its own. Outside of our universe, there is nothing, since everything we know of is contained within the universe. But the multiverse theory claims that other universes exist outside of our own. Those universes contain other versions of ourselves in different contexts, different jobs, different socioeconomic levels, and with different passions.