Presented through superhero comics and Saturday morning cartoons, the prison system seems near perfect. Bad people who do bad things get separated from the good people who don’t do bad things, and while they’re separated, all they need to do is be on their best behavior to rejoin society. Unless, of course, they did a really bad thing. Those people die, which is the only suitable punishment for doing things that are bad.

When met with reality, and politics, the system quickly falls apart.

In the US, thousands of innocent people are met with wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project, which works to free these innocents and decrease the number of convictions in the US, has successfully exonerated over 200 people. Their clients had a collective 4,102 years worth of wrongful incarceration.

It’s a shame that one must appeal to innocence in order to give sympathy for those inside.

My mom works in prisons. She and her business partner run a non-profit, Bridgeworks Oregon, bringing volunteer programs into several different Oregon prisons. She’s been doing this work since 2017, when I was 10 years old, and so I’ve grown up having Bridgeworks around for about as long as I’ve been a fully conscious person.

One of the most notable parts of their work is the ponyXpress, a newsletter with writing and art from the inside of prison. My mom’s writers have all committed crimes, but unlike the popular idea of those incarcerated, they are not a part of the evil/innocent dichotomy. Like every other person, they are humans. 

The entire system is broken and cruel. It’s shaped by police bias, by bigotry and by ignorance. Because of systematic inequalities like redlining and the school-to-prison pipeline, Black and brown men are overwhelmingly pushed into illegal activity and more likely to face discrimination in the court system. 

Within prisons themselves, inmates are subjected to inhumane treatment. They are exploited for slave labor, starved, locked in solitary confinement (a punishment that leaves lasting mental scars) and stripped of the right to vote. 

Incarceration leads to higher death rates, and even if someone serves their sentence fully, they are likely to end up back in prison again. There is no consideration for whether or not someone has resources waiting for them on the outside. Some people, after their exoneration, are left without legal identification, funds or housing. They’re left to navigate that on their own, which is a skill prisons don’t tend to give many avenues to hone. 

Here in the US, we are a nation entrenched in Christianity. This article, to be clear, is not speaking one way or the other on Christianity, but as a religion, it is undeniably deeply concerned with punishment as atonement.

Punitive justice doesn’t really do anything. 

Sure, it feels good to see someone who has caused you harm feel harm themselves, but it does nothing to prevent something like it from happening again. All prisons do is breed more injustice with no regard for the context of crimes. 

Yes, there are some people who are dangers to themselves and others. 

The solution is not to lock them in prisons, nor is it to kill them. It is to invest into harm reduction programs, as incarcerated adults overwhelmingly suffer from substance abuse disorders. It is to combat systematic inequality and poverty, especially where it has been racialized. It is to create spaces where those suffering from mental illness can get actual help, especially if that requires around-the-clock care. 

A recent project from the ponyXpress was “letters to a younger self,” where the incarcerated writers were prompted to write to themselves years in the past. One of the writers, Philip Luna, had a part of his piece I feel is quite thematically fitting for my purposes. 

“So instead I offer a small pebbles tossed into the pond in which we swim, in hopes that they might ripple through the waters of time, influencing your life at the right moments.”

Luna is currently serving a sentence in Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, where he is the editor of both the Echo, a newsletter inside EOCI, and the 1664, a monthly newsletter across several prisons. He has been interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud and has been working with Bridgeworks for years. 

Humans are capable of doing bad things, things that cause incredible harm to others and things that can never be forgiven. We are also capable of change. We are capable of reflection, and we are capable of growth. 

The justice system, as it is, does not acknowledge this. 

That’s why we need to tear it all down.