https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/24/meek-mill-jay-z-colin-kaepernick-prison-probation-protest?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=253905&subid=23868035&CMP=GT_US_collection
The story of probation. Well many of you would not believe my stories if you witnessed them yourselves. Probation, Prohibition and Police have made my life a living hell. I know my mother who is about as straight laced as they come never believed me, well until she experienced the trauma of our systems by living with and loving me. I remember the day I walked into my probation officers office. Well, first you sit, and wait, and wait. You see, you wait, they do whatever they want, you are now at their mercy. They can behave any way they want, and you, well you suffer. You are being punished. SO, you will wait, and it does not matter if you have to work, if you have a child to watch ….none of it matters, you are to suffer and you are to do it quietly with a good attitude. I remember how the officer told me she was going to make sure I got what I deserved, in fact, I had a notation on my case. If I failed one drug test I was to be put on 100,000 bond. It did not matter about anything else, one slip and that’s it jail for good! She taunted me with that drug test, and of course I failed the test. I remember looking at the wall in the probation office: it said something about the probation officer was to partner with me and help me complete probation successfully! BULLSHIT! She was verbally abusive, difficult, and downright awful. I would get physically ill before I had a visit with her. She did not believe I had mental illness, she did not think I was trying. Of course she saw all my drug charges and decided that I just was spoiled and nobody every punished me good enough. You see, this is the problem with solving mental illness in the court system. You have people who are not equipted to handle people with complicated mental and emotional troubles punishing them, and enjoying every minute of it. Most men I know do their time and ask to just finish it instead of being put on years of probation where they are going to be charged insane amounts of money, be subject to inspection, forced to keep and maintain a job-(even when that is impossible), and not use drugs (even though most people who are addicted are clearly unable to just stop using drugs and they violate their probation even when there are punishments like 100,000 dollar bonds put in place to help you make better decisions around drug use. The system is not set up to help you succeed, it is set up to ensure you fail. The NC court system is now using “quick dips” for infractions, but I must tell you, you can do everything right, and one thing wrong and nothing but the one thing counts. Keeping your money paid up is the most important thing, if you can get them paid this is a plus. The money you are forced to pay for someone to provide some form of punishment counseling is beyond my ability to understand. My probation officer gave me homework. Homework that was suitable for a 10 year old. It was worksheets about my drug use and my behavior….I could not believe i had to fill out the garbage she was asking me to complete and beyond that she was not qualified to discuss my life and my emotional difficulties. I did not feel safe sharing anything with her so it made no sense to engage in the little game of fill the paperwork out and put the “right” answer in the blanks.
Example: Most people get in trouble at some point in their life becasue the rules are just too hard (true or false) It was questions like this (pages of them). I am a 42 year old woman I don’t think answering questions like this to a insane woman determined to fuck up my life makes very much sense….we were both wasting my time.
Nothing about the criminal justice system makes very much sense…its all designed to make you feel like you have no power, teach you that you have no worth and reinforce that you have no value.
People that are not familiar with how our criminal justice system works are blind to the injustices that take place everyday in America. Minorities, poor people, stigmatized members of society all suffer at the hands of citizens who lack of insight, lack of curiosity, lack of desire to seek truth. Open your eyes citizens of America our democracy is broken and our freedom, well it does not exist. #RESIST
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