Transformation In Prison, and How It Dehumanizes It's Inmates.

Orignal Document Download Available At: http://st3.flipstylenetwork.net/Transformation%20in%20Prison.doc

"Today, while on the yard, all of a sudden we were made to get down. Then for no apparent reason, they brought about 30 guards on the yard, and made us strip down to nothing and get searched. In my opinion it is just another way to dehumanize us here. There were even female guards standing watching as we were completely naked. There is one certain lieutenant that likes to do that to us here. They found absolutely nothing on anyone. The only person that got handcuffed, and taken off, is one guy, while sitting down, tossed a couple of pebbles at some other inmates. That's how petty they got."

- This happened on B yard., the letter is dated Nov. 22, 2002

Penitentiary is a derivative from the word penitence, which is what was originally planned to be used in by all prison systems.

Prison Industrial Complex #occupysanquentin

English: Female prisoners in a Mississippi state p...

View from Hoover Tower observation deck of the Qua...

But it seems that has been lost and forgotten within the past. Today's corrections systems do quite the opposite, making offenders worse, along with raising the recidivism rates. We need more then a new system, but a new way of thinking. "Reformation or rehabilitation is not something that can be imposed or forced, on another; i.e., it cannot be wrought in the individual offender by the imposition of external measures. When we seek to bring about rehabilitation in this manner, i.e., by imposing external measures on the offender, then we are simply treating the offender as an object rather than as an autonomous personality/being. When we proceed in that fashion we are operating in terms of behavior modification models which are merely techniques of manipulation and control; and, any technique based on an object to be changed rather than a human being to be accepted does little more than...