Survivors Guide to Prison Page #12

At that time,

we had several organizations

that would just patrol

that area.

So it was pretty safe.

We had the Black Panthers,

Ron Karenga's

whole organization,

United Slaves.

We had the Nation of Islam.

It was pretty cool,

you didn't have to worry

about people coming in,

holding you up and everything.

Didn't have to worry

about that type of stuff.

But it was after the COINTELPRO

when they got pushed underground

that everything just seemed

like, you know, went crazy.

All the thugs came out,

and then, you know,

you were fair game then,

the store operators.

That's when we started having

a lot of robberies,

a lot of burglaries.

My mother, she's just

a little, bitty 5-foot-4 lady.

She was beat up and robbed

one day while I was there.

And he grabbed her,

threw her to the ground

and kicked her and beat her

after he got the money.

Then he figured it wasn't

enough money, you know?

And I was a little kid.

I was probably about 11 years

old at the time, you know?

And he had this gun on him,

and she was hollering at me

not to move and just...

you know,

and this dude is kicking her

and demanding more money.

He got all the money we had,

you know?

[Matthew] Dwayne's mother

wasn't robbed once.

She was robbed over

and over again.

I had a good friend.

He would always be commenting

about me being so uptight.

And he smoked weed.

He said, "Man, just take this.

You need,

this, like, medication."

That led to other things.

You know.

That led to cocaine,

it led to PCP,

Which ended up leading

to my crime

that happened that sent me

to prison, you know.

I went to prison

for a second-degree murder.

Some dudes robbed me.

They were supposed to have been

the middleman

going to get the drugs,

and they end up robbing me.

Because it had happened to us

in our business,

the family business so much,

this guy,

he wasn't just someone that

was robbing me all the time.

He was the image of somebody

that had been victimizing

my family.

And all these other times,

you had got away,

but this time,

you weren't going to get away.

So it was kind of like

a revenge thing,

a retaliation thing

for you and your kind.

You're going to pay for that,

and so what I found

is that what you can't forgive,

you end up becoming.

What you can't forgive,

you end up becoming.

So I had to learn how to forgive

and let that go,

and I had to learn

how to forgive him

and let that go

because he was also after...

I got to see his record,

and this guy had a rap sheet,

you know, from here...

from one side of the room

to the other, you know,

and I could see that, you know,

he needed the same help

that I needed.

We are generally taught

to imagine

that there is such a thing as,

for example, a murderer, right?

So in other words, a murderer

in the public imagination

and in most of our minds,

whether we've thought about it

or not, initially,

is someone who likes to murder

and who would murder

given the opportunity, right?

It's like a vocation, right?

That's what murderers do.

They go around murdering,

right?

And that's why you don't let

them out of prison

You let them out of prison,

they're going to murder again.

The reality is that murder

is almost always a context.

It's a situation.

It is,

statistically speaking,

very rarely driven

by a compulsion

or a desire to do harm, right?

It's a reaction to some set

of circumstances,

to a real or perceived threat,

to some extreme emotional state.

It's not a propensity.

Basically, we're confusing

the profile of a psychopath,

the psychopath we've read about,

you know, the serial killer,

with prisoners in general,

right?

If we as a society

stop and imagine

that the people in prison

are fully human,

incredibly diverse,

have often been through

some of the most extreme

and difficult situations

and conditions,

some of which many of us

couldn't even really

begin to imagine, then suddenly,

all of that judgment

and all that hostility

and all that vindictiveness

doesn't have such

a natural place anymore.

Many of our students

have committed murder

and felt horrible

about their crime

as soon as it happened.

It's not like they needed

to sit in prison for 15

or 20 years to realize

they'd done a bad thing

or to never want to do it again.

There's no human element...

to the criminal justice

system.

There's no human element.

They're not there to help you.

They're not there

to help society.

They can say that that's what

it's set up for all they want.

That's not what it's there for,

not in California

and not in a lot of places.

It's a system set up

to punish people,

and they take a bad situation,

and they usually

make it much worse.

You know what the official

success rate of state prison is?

Nearly 80% of all inmates

go back within five years.

[man]

That's a success rate of 20%.

Imagine if we had those

requirements of airplanes.

Wow, eight out of 10 airplanes

falling out of the sky.

It's a little bit crazy-making.

And that is

Department of Justice data.

That's federal government

research.

Dr. Michael Coyle

attended Harvard University,

has a PhD in justice studies

and is a professor

of criminal justice

at California State

University.

Dr. Coyle says that prison

not only increases

criminal behavior

but has a deleterious effect

on society as a whole.

What happens to a family

when the wage earner is removed

from society and thrown

into prison for 10 years?

What happens to those children?

How are they impacted?

What are their chances

of success in life?

They start to go down.

How does that impact

the community?

Loss of resources

in that community,

more demands

on the community now to help...

to help this family,

maybe the other parent,

maybe the children.

It's just so clearly

a failure

by every measure

that you look at it

that I think we just need

to rethink the whole thing

and not just keep trying

to put lipstick on this pig,

'cause that's what we're doing.

I think it is difficult

for people to imagine

a world without prisons now.

We've become so accustomed

to the idea of prisons that

it's hard for people to imagine.

Well, what do you do with people

if you don't put them in prison

when they've done wrong?

There are other alternatives.

Dostoevsky said the degree

of civilization

in a society could be judged

by entering its prisons.

Hebrews, 13:
3,

remember those who are in chains

as if you

were in chains with them.

If we don't,

we put everybody at risk.

My husband, Dan,

was a police officer,

and he was killed

in the line of duty.

My goal at the trial

was to get the man

who killed my husband

convicted of first-degree murder

and be given the death penalty,

and that's what I got.

That's what happened.

I thought okay, here it is.

I got justice.

I'm gonna be free from this.

And it didn't happen.

It was... it was just a lie.

It didn't change anything.

[Susan]

Aqeela Sherrills is famous

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