| obviously you have never been in prison. I have been in a few, usually for very short times until I went to court. but in virginia I was locked up for 3 years. during that time 3 people I knew died because of a lack of medical care (which of course violates federal and state laws but nevertheless is not uncommon in many states). their families had to PURCHASE the bodies from the Dept of Correction to bury them properly. because the Commonwealth of Virginia OWNS its inmates according to the law.
By the way, I have never met a single inmate whose spirit was so broken that it had any effect whatsoever on their beliefs or behavior once they were released and off probation/parole. Oh, in Virginia there is no parole but every inmate is on probation once released and it requires a misdemeanor arrest (sans conviction) to violate in which case you begin serving your entire original sentence all over again minus only the time you actually spent in the state prison system. and you are not allowed to drive nor to be out of the house after evening... nor to associate with a convicted criminal even if you are married to them. nor to have an alcoholic drink. nor do you have the right to refuse search of your body or your home. and the probation people call you at home and at work at all hours of the day or night and you better be available to take the call. if you happen to be in the shower, on the pot or in the hospital, if you miss 3 such calls you are violated. not Me, I was too smart for them and forced them to transfer My 5 years of supervised probation to a different state thousands of miles away and out of their reach... at least theoretically out of their reach. if they decide they want Me I have no legal excuse to resist, they have been known to go as far as Thailand to kidnap and force return of a probationer, without even registering with the government there.
they make you work, pay 15 to 35 cents an hour for most jobs, including those in which you are exposed to toxins. you have no choice in what you eat or when. if you wish to practice a religion of which they do not approve such as Judaism you are not allowed any of the prayer books, use of chapel, head coverings, prayer shawls, to fast and then break your fasts properly, to pray with fellow Jews, to observe the holy festivals or to have group Sabbath prayer services or study groups. I know, I fought them over these resxtrictions and won some of the rights but have received letters that since I was released they have taken back many of these hard won rights...
of course inmates own their own minds. so did the slaves in Egypt and America. what silliness to write that they don't own you because you can still think. they can do as they wish with you physically. they can deprive you of sustenance, they can lock you up in solitary, they can waterboard you, they can actually physically assault and torture you, they can refuse you all the basic human rights that most people think you still retain. and they do these things in American prisons on a daily basis.
your previous employers did not control your every minute of every day and were thus not obligated to give you health care... you were expected to get it on your own. this option is not available in prison. they are required under national and international law to provide medical care but, especially in Virginia, they often do not do so and they hold themselves above the law.
poor baby lived with inlaws and had to practice Wiccan prayers and rituals in his head. in the prison system of the United States of America one's rights to practice his or her religion according to the accepted tenets and laws of said religion is supposed to be sacrosant. in Virginia (and many other states) it is not. and the inmates have little recourse to the courts in spite of laws that supposedly guarantee the right to judicial review.
I understand that for you, thinking your prayers and rituals is sufficient. that is not the case for most religions and most religiously observant individuals.
you respond with words about purchasing luxuries like a little piece of chocolate. in Virginia D.O.C, custody you cannot get shampoo or toothpaste unless you can buy it at the canteen (well, they give you small tubes when you first come into the system... but when that is used up you are on your own)
yep. once you die you most likely dont give a damn about your body. unless you are religiously observant in which case how your body is handled is of extreme importance and can in fact effect how you will spend the rest of eternity.
needless to say, those of us who are strong fight back while inside, I did in spite of warnings from the administrators and from My friends and family. and My probationary period is almsot over. in countable weeks I will get high again and I will travel at will again and I will go to political demonstrations again and I will vote again although virginia law says I cannot do so.
that is because I am too tough too be owned, I grew up in the streets and alleys of Chicago and I am smarter than anybody who ever worked for the Virginia D.O.C.
but I watched hundreds of men who were owned and who had no idea of their rights or how to stand up against the pig establishment. and who will spend the rest of their lives going through a revolving door of incarceration. not because they are in heritantly evil or bad but because they do not know how to shake off the shackles of slavery with which our penal and justice systems have chained them.
it is easy for you to talk, sir. you still walk free by the luck of the dice. I hope for your sake that you are not one of the tens of thousands (no exaggeration) who are thrown into American prisons for no good reason annually.
G.C.
GypsieCowboy wrote:
In the Commonwealth of Virginia once you are convicted of any crime and sentenced to jail or prison - the Commonwealth owns you and you are nothing but property.
No, they want you to think that. It's part and parcel with the whole break your spirit so you learn that Prison is a hellish place that you never want to go back to again.
They do not "own" you. They may act as if they do, they may have control of your actions, but they cannot control your mind and that's where you are still your own person.
therefore 1- they do not have to provide health care and if you are seriously ill they in fact do not do so.
Neither did several of my previous employers. They didn't own me.
2- they do not have to allow you to practice your religion and in fact only allow those religions which are followed by so many inmates that the prisons could not handle the uprising that would result were they to refuse to allow those to be followed... they include only muslim/islam and a handful of Christian sects. they do not allow Native American, Buddhist or Jewish, for example, inmates to practice according to their own religious laws.
How can they stop you from praying to the Great Spirit, The Lord and Lady, Osiris, or whomever one wishes to pray to in the quiet recesses of the mind? How can they stop the Divine Spirit in whatever form it chooses to manifest itself to you from hearing that which is in your heart?
As a Wiccan who found himself living with his in-laws for a while, I had to do all my rituals in my head and in my heart. They were no less meaningful than when I had my altar unpacked, set up, and the circle cast.
Again, it's all how they want you to think so they can control one.
3- if you want to be able to purchase toothpaste, shampoo, etc you must earn money to do so... or have outside income from family or friends ... in order to work you have to be very very lucky, there are few paying jobs and they earn a grand total of 13 cents per hour! and the items sold at the commissary cost at least 20% higher than on the outside.
More control. They want you to not have the luxuries or to have to work so hard for them that you're grateful for the tiny morsel of Chocolate you worked your ass off to the bone for.
4- if you were an inmate and you were to die in custody (which occurs on a very regular basis) your body and belongings are property and your immediate family cannot see your dead body, cannot get medical reports, cannot get any of your property without a court order and above all, if they want to bury your body they have to buy it from the Commonwealth, from the Dept of Corrections... AND they must prove to the D.O.C. that they will dispose of the body in a way that is agreeable to the D.O.C.
But when you die, depending on your belief structure your body ends and that's game over and you are beyond caring as to what happens to your body, or your spirit moves to another place and again you're beyond caring about what happens to that chunk of worm food that used to be your body.
If you believe in a soul and say for the sake of argument that you either were innocent of the crime that put you in jail or that you properly atoned for your sins (confession, last rites, etc), once you die you are free from the prison and can move on to the afterlife and will forever be beyond the unfeeling nature of prisons like that.
In prison, one still have choices. Limited they may be, but one has them. One can choose to follow the rules, be a model prisoner and be released (if the sentence allows for that). One can also choose to fight the system and not allow them to break one's spirit and be released and then commit another crime. One can make a choice to incite a riot, to stab another inmate, to stab a guard, to offer to help and become a trustee, to get a job, to take advantage of learning if it is offered at that prison...
There are still choices and the only one that can make them is the person in question. Even if the choice to give it all up and fall into despair, it's still a choice.
No one can own a person but that person. Yeats, being poor, spread cloths made only of his dreams under your feet, asking you to tread softly. While I, equally poor, prefer to worship you with pain for My love, exalt you by training you towards Perfectability. If you seek perfection look for your self in My eyes.
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but no criminal record. 
