The Big Debate … How harsh is too harsh?

Letters from prisoners, Stateville Speaks submissions, prison reform laws, articles on prison conditions, …  The list of sources for debates about prison conditions and our justice system are endless.  And while I’ve enjoyed learning about these situations so far this semester, I can’t help but recognize a conflict within myself. I have not personally dealt [...]

Sonia’s Response to the Elderly in Prison and other thoughts

This week’s readings were fairly depressing. To begin, geriatrics in general in this country is not a focus of medicine as very few doctors choose to specialize in it. The principle stays accurate when applied to institutions like prisons and nursing homes as the populations of aged adults is overlooked and pushed to the back. [...]

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 [...]