Dear Comrades: Environment
Dear Comrades,
I feel that since I've gotten to Sing Sing, the feeling of being "jailed like a lowdown prisoner" has been lifted. I'm still incarcerated, of course, but when I say that I mean it in the most oppressive, subordinate, and slave-like way that you can imagine, because being "up north" for 16 years has drilled those ways of being jailed into me. I'm too used to waking up everyday ready to battle at the drop of a dime if need be. I feel institutionalized in that way. Normalized to being troubled in the mind.
Coming here, "downstate," if you will, has been a welcome change in that regard. There are no COs yelling at you for every minor infraction. There are no stupid jokes about the way you talk being thrown around. There mainly are no nasty dispositions to throw off your day. The difference between here and up there has been nothing short of night and day. Comfort, just from a standpoint of peace of mind, is something I would choose to purchase over any amenities a jail could offer. For those of us in here, I think our mental health is the key to our rehabilitation.
To simply wake up everyday and not have to be angry, frustrated, or loaded with trepidation about what the day might bring is a luxury in prison that many incarcerated individuals don't ever experience. To be spoken to with dignity and respect on a consistent basis is unheard of. To be looked at and not looked through, talked to and not talked at, and to genuinely laugh with staff is simply not prison. This ambiance of collective humanity that pervades whatever this culture is here is different. Hands down. And it made me think about what life could actually look like after abolition.
We so often talk about abolition, but many don't understand or can’t imagine what the world would look like with no prisons. They fear having no mechanism to enforce accountability. They think without prisons the world would crumble and anarchy would ensue. They cannot imagine a society that doesn't use punishment as a tool to enforce social control. I can say that for me, having this experience has shown me that, without a doubt, the key to our healing post-abolition lies in the people who we choose to help heal us.
Put me in prison with a scammer, and I can bet I come home with 100 different scams. Put me in jail with a robber, and I'll adopt the tenets of those who steal. Put me in a room with monkeys, and I bet I'll swing right through your neighborhood because at the end of the day birds of a feather flock together. Successful people have successful children not because it's embedded in their DNA but because it's embedded in the people, places, and things they have crafted for themselves. It's hard to go out and break the law when you're constantly surrounded by civility.
One of the main mistakes made with prisons is that it keeps the incarcerated together. That might not be a popular viewpoint, but it's evident. Mixing criminal dispositions at varying stages is toxic to the incarcerated. The second and connecting mistake prisons make is not surrounding the incarcerated with people who care, people who understand that mental nourishment is the key cornerstone to success. It's like in the NBA - sometimes teams just have a losing identity, for whatever reason. Only when you break that team up and bring in players who know how to win, veterans who not only know what it takes, but understand how to transfer that mindset, does the team actually start to have success. Rehabilitating those who have broken the law will always start and end with putting them in positions to win. This is because many of the environments we come from have been programmed to produce losers. By putting these individuals into conditions that force them to change through assimilation, saturating the mind with a different way of being, seeing, and doing, rehabilitation and accountability can be achieved without punishment and disenfranchisement. The road to abolition turns at embracing and including people. Surveillance and punishment is a dead end.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be dropping short Dear Comrade letters filling you in on the ways I’ve been targeted over the past several years and keeping you posted on my current journey as I approach my release in the fall of 2027. Please join me, get to know me, and give me your feedback. You can send messages to derek@weareunchained.org, and our team will make sure your notes get to me. Your thoughts matter.