Reducing Prison Violence with Agreement.

As our national and local news report on President Biden's trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland to pay homage to the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement (GAF), I am sorely reminded of some of the changes here within the prison system as a result of this 10-year anniversary of the largest prison hunger strike in United States history.

Last year in 2022, marked the 10-year anniversary of the Agreement to End Hostilities (AEH), a self-imposed agreement to taper down on the racial violence. Well at least at this prison, it has tapered down, but I don't know if that's saying much.

The buy-in to wanting to go home. The buy-in to take classes is profound. But for some of us, not so much. The system is still playing games with some of us. I think I'm pretty jaded about it all. While others are positive, I am totally negative about the prospects of being released. And it's not my fault that I am less enthusiastic than others. I want to be optimistic about going home, but I also want to be a realist at the same time, because who is going to protect me from my mental health, as I go through the trauma of not being released?

Two things I've seen break a man, the parole board, and a death sentence. Now what do they both have in common, a social signal of never being released.

Maybe some other time, I'll go into detail, as to what occurs when men are denied by the parole board. They disappear into a shell. Just like the word is used, shell shock.

And for the guys who get sentenced to death, that's a whole nother story. Most men I had known say that they wanted to be sentenced to death, rather than the alternative of life without the possibility of parole in prison. To me, their argument made sense, F-the-state, why should they get that type of time up out of a person. You mean like this quarter of a century they've dun taken from me, exactly.

When these guys get sentenced to death, these shyt talkers, their continence changes, as though they have just seen a ghost or some other supernatural entity. Prison has changed since the signing of the AEH, it's less violent amongst the races.