How the destruction of self esteem breeds monsters

In Just Mercy, we see many examples of cruel and depraved behavior taking place within the prisons.  While it is easy to assume that this is the natural result of the congregation of morally defunct individuals, I will argue that these results are not natural, and furthermore it is intentional and by design.  The intrinsic flaws within the American prison system are such that they self protect; they generate the behaviors necessary to justify the exploitation it plans to enact.  For example, it is cruel to justify inhumane conditions including limiting or denying access to proper food, healthcare, clothing, and the ability to represent oneself in a positive way.  All people are born with a natural intrinsic sense of personhood which should be preserved beyond the very humane characteristic of fallibility.  To be clear, the fact that a person has committed a crime is not justification for violating personhood.  It is true that a person should be held accountable for crimes; however we as a society owe our brethren the respect of viewing the entire story including history, background, extenuating circumstances, and true nature of an individual including their good deeds.  Furthermore, true accountability is centered in the correction of the negative behavior which is rooted in rehabilitation, not in lashing out at the individual out of anger at their imperfection.  Yet the American prison system is inundated with depravation at the hands of those in power, masked by passive aggressive pseudo attempts at providing the proper infrastructure and rehabilitation.  One may ask why those in power would go to such lengths to appear to be positively affective while truly enacting the opposite effect and the answer is this- there is profit in exploiting broken people, and therefore people must be broken.  As a result, inequitable prison sentences are levied and inadequate resources are provided which creates an imbalanced hierarchal system where a pecking order occurs; under equipped, overworked staff take their frustrations out on the prisoners, and the strongest prisoners take their frustrations out on the vulnerable.  Subsequently, self esteem is then based on one’s ability to avoid the bottom tier; to at least have someone below you in the pecking order, and that desperation and fear drives people to abandon reason and humanity in favor of status, access, and privilege.  In this environment you see humans engage in behavior that they would find abhorrent if they were allowed to maintain their person hood.  Most sane and rational beings would agree that it is wrong to rape a child, yet young boys that are deposited into the prison system with adult men are vulnerable to rape in spite of the fact that prisons are not just holding pens for rapist, but contain people with all sorts of infractions, from drinking and driving to unpaid taxes.  Bearing this in mind one may question how this foul behavior is allowed to occur considering the number of prisoners with no desire to rape and the guards, one would theorize that there would be enough opposition to the rape of a child in spite of the fact that there may be some prisoners that desire to do so.  Furthermore, why do we fear prisoners after they exit prisons?  This phenomenon speaks to a subconscious understanding that American prisons do not rehabilitate and are rife with dehumanizing, psyche breaking abuses.  We fear that prisoners because we fear that they will enact the abuses that we as a society have forced them to endure back upon us, so we isolate and ostracize them and force them to bear the result of our shame at the result of the injustices that we have forced them to endure.  All of this is done for profit, as for profit prisons abound and businesses exploit prison labor while simultaneously leaving the prisons in slum-like conditions, providing little to no true rehabilitation, and creating an environment so rife with violence that it is difficult for a prisoner to do their time without infractions or altercations that extend their sentences.  Although much anger is owed to the prison industrial complex on behalf of the prisoners, I would argue that American society also has cause for anger.  Civilized societies need a means of dealing with citizens when they break rules and that means should appropriately hold the individual accountable, provide rehabilitation, and return the citizen to society undamaged so that that citizen can continue to contribute to the society is a positive manner.  Instead, the current system takes citizens that have made a mistake, psychologically breaks and dehumanizes them, exploits that brokenness for profit, and (sometimes) returns them to society in a state that some of us fear.  I think it’s time that we all start looking at these institutions more critically, and hold them accountable for the injustices that they have dealt society as a whole.  Likewise, I think it is important to show empathy to those who have been incarcerated and provide positive, non-exploitative means for restoring their humanity .