Academia inside Prison Walls

As criminal justice students, we often have few opportunities to read work by prisoners or ever hear what prisoners have to say about prison. What we are exposed to, however, are scholarly articles, written by academics, maybe with a little input from prisoners themselves but information gathered mostly from statistics and other quantitative research. I [...]

Reaction to Tamms Letters

Regarding the letters from the prisoners, I was extremely surprised as to how well some of them could write. Specifically, the way they formatted, structured, and used intelligent vocabulary to express their feelings and concerns. Like many people, initially stereotyping criminals as uneducated and simpleminded, I enjoyed reading the letters because it was truly the [...]

I had never cut myself

Since I arrived at Tamms things have changed dramatically for me. Before I came to Tamms I had never cut myself but after coming to Tamms I started cutting on myself was placed in restraints numerous times was placed on psychotropic medication both voluntary and involuntary which I had never taken before coming to Tamms, [...]

tired boxer’s head

Since being at Tamms, I suffer symptoms of depression, frustration, paranoia, mental anguish, sleep disorder, deterioration of my physical health, general mental torture… These symptoms are made worse when the administration uses mentally ill prisoners as tools, or as torture device to either drive otherwise normal prisoners over the edge…the mentally ill prisoners drive the [...]

this knowledge overwhelms us

This facility functions more as a mental institution than a prison of rehabilitation and it serves no penalogical purpose other than to warehouse prisoners. As the duration of our isolation drags on and the degree of our conditions of confinement deteriorate you begin to see the psychological effect that this place has on us. We [...]

Essay #1

Essay #1 (posted 3/5/2008) I begin in reflecting back to when I was a child, captivated by the lifestyle of the glamorous older guys before me, who held down the corners. Their lifestyle of selling drugs, having the cars, money, nice clothes and the respect of both men and women grasp my attention, creating within [...]