Cornelius Harris is incarcerated at Ohio State Penitentiary. He participated in the May Day hunger strike, and then resumed the strike solo when it took too long for the warden to make good on their demands.
Ongoing Injustices, Prisonersolidarity.org
Ongoing Injustices, Prisonersolidarity.org
By Cornelius Harris
Injustice is a cancer in the U.S.
In today’s society, if you know the right person or
have the right amount of money to retain competent counsel, your chances of
being prosecuted to the fullest extent are slim to none. On the other hand, if you
don't have the right connections or sufficient finance, your legal protections
and rights are sabotaged. In a fictitious show
of justice, the State provides each
indigent defendant with counsel, i.e., a Public Pretender. These Public
Pretenders are underpaid and too inexperience to understand the practicalities
of the law, thus
they do as little as possible to defend their clients.
In fact, most of their time and energy goes toward trying to persuade their clients
to accept plea deals instead of representing them. As a result, most defendants
are compelled to accept plea deals, not necessarily because they're guilty but
because they know they will not receive a fair trial with such poor representation.
Therefore, they plea guilty to cut their losses--that is, to reduce the amount of
time they receive.
There are few exceptions, however, where it doesn't
matter how much money you have or who you know, because if you are a target of
the State, it will fabricate evidence against you and create the circumstances for
you to be found guilty. While this is typical in death-penalty cases , it is not limited to them. Such injustice is found in
almost all high-profile cases, where the victims are white and the defendants are
poor.
Injustice does not stop at the conclusion of one's
court proceedings, though, it continues throughout a prisoner 's incarceration
and nothing is being done about it because society has become --through indoctrination,
misinformation and propaganda-- detached and desensitized from prisoners' daily
struggles. For example, instead of being provided meaningful rehabilitative programs
that will help prisoners better themselves, prison staff are merely warehousing
them and pocketing the money they annually receive for rehabilitative programs.
By doing this the State creates worse criminals, and idle minds which are a
devil' s workshop.
Just as there are rules and regulations for
prisoners to follow, there are rules and regulations for correctional staff to
follow, but they don't. There are routinely unreported cases of staff
corruptions--from prisoner beatings to false conduct reports to having intimate
relationships with prisoners. Officers beating prisoners is a common occurrence
that society pays very little attention to. It only seems to matter when a prisoner
is murdered or receives life-threatening injuries. And even then, it still doesn't matter because it was only an "inmate". However, when a prisoner
harms an officer in self-defense or for justifiable reasons, the "inmate"
is looking at a list of punishments.
My conclusion is: Instead of society basing their opinion
of prisoners on what they read or see on TV, they should research the truth for
themselves. Anyone can fabricate a story about defendants or prisoners to make
them seem like monsters, but the truth is they are just ordinary people. While there
are prisoners who do deserve some of the stereotypes society has placed on
them, the majority are simply real people who made real mistakes. All prisoners
have two things on their mind: surviving their incarceration, and making it back
home to be with their family and friends. I'm hoping this article will be
received well by those in society, for it should be a duty upon everyone to
have some compassion and understanding for all human beings, especially those
in prison .
Cornelius Harris, #525-945
Beautifully said....
ReplyDelete