El elefante rosado

Abstract

Through this writing I attempt to empty some of the accumulation my soul has gathered inside along this path I have been forced to go through for 17 years, 3 months and 3 days. The purpose of this essay is to strip the prison system of the mask that has allowed it to disguise itself as a benevolent entity that seeking and promote the well-being of those trapped inside. I try to unmask at least some of its real face, remove its holiness and sanctity, and expose their wickedness and their reluctance to follow through with their own philosophy of rehabilitating the individual. I attempt to walk the reader down the thorny path that leads to the institution‘s mishandling of innumerable lives. The prison system is supposed to work to rehabilitate the person who commits an offense and work to help the society that he will one day be reentering. My voice rises in the silence of these written words to denounce that prisons are not the healing entities that they claim to be, they are a sewer of diseases, diseases that choke the spirit and strangle the soul until there is nobody left to dwell in. Yes, prisons are not the remedy, they have never been. They are only a means to get rid of an immediate problem, send brainwashing propaganda to the citizens and exalt the government. The success of our country‘s leaders is not measured by the achievements of generation growth, but with the apparent decline in crime, arrests, and lengthy prison sentences. Here I show you that their apparent success is the failure of our society, and more than that, it is the failure of our humanity. The individual who commits an offense doesn't need to be condemned, but educated, does not need correction, but education. While still early in a prisoner‘s confinement, at risk individuals need help tearing down the walls in which they have been held captive. They need to be shown the universe of possibilities and alternatives that have been deliberately kept from them. This writing has the firm and sole purpose of calling out to the free world; to those who have ears to hear and knowledge to understand, to those who have the power to generate change, that the individual who commits an offense, the prisoner, the culprit, the convict, the confined, but above all, the person behind all those names, does not need any more jails or prisons, but more opportunity for a genuinely thoughtful and compassionate education.