Young Woman in Prison Speaks Out

I have made various plans and back up plans for my fantasized future only to be met with resistance. My question is why? Is this not an environment that claims to have a duty and desire for rehabilitation? Apparently only when it is suitable for my keepers to extend this courtesy. I am taught to "channel" my anger and frustration appropriately through things like journal writing. So here I am an inmate but not just an inmate, I am an inmate said to have great potential and intelligence, but is it only when I speak the language that asks no questions?

I am said not to be a credible individual due to my history of "lying and manipulating," but why am I credible when it comes to stating praise for the programs I have completed through this system? I have to have good things to say because you need to use me as your promoter for your own manipulation tactics, the ones that society accepts through their delusions of what my rehabilitation is all about. So where was my rehabilitation when I watched my friends get the shit kicked out of them by uniformed guards? These are the upstanding productive members of society who are employed under this so-called oath of dedication to my rehabilitation? I am sorry if I appear confused, wouldn't you be? Where, I ask, was the "rehabilitation" when my friend was assaulted and humiliated by male guards who had to remind her just who was in control?

Ok, I get it, you can justify this to her family by saying you had to use any force necessary to ensure the good order of the institution. She was the aggressive one huh? She cut herself to express the pain she felt inside her heart and you respond to her in this way? I will know better for the next time. It is not ok to feel. Security first, rehabilitation second. But I am in jail right, so what do I expect? Well I will be more than happy to respond to this question by saying I expect you to meet only one thing set forth not by me, but for me. I expect you to feel your oath in being dedicated to my rehabilitation. I understand this to be just a little too much to ask as this would also require a level of humanity to be integrated into your manipulative tactics.

The bigger and more recognized you become to society, the smaller and more insignificant and forgotten I become. I gave one explicit example of my questionable rehabilitation. I can not prove or provide evidence that what you did was not only unnecessary, but wrong. I experience such deep frustration sitting every day with thoughts of all the subtle and unrecognizable abuses that occur every day.

So what of this? Another time maybe. So this is to be what you would like to call my rehabilitation huh? Well, no thanks. I have found my own form of rehabilitation that does not impinge on anyone's right as a human being, especially my own.

While being incarcerated, spirit means a lot. It defines who we are as people and I believe that a person should hold onto their spirit while they are in prison. Don't give in to Corrections and lose that spirit, because that would be giving them what they want, another "programmed robot."

They can strip me of my rights, they can take every material possession away from me, but they can not and will not take away my spirit.

18 Year old incarcerated young woman, Burnaby Youth Secure Custody Centre, April 2003