Growing up on a diet of explosive Hollywood blockbusters, and edgy TV drama, has created a unidimensional perspective of ‘the bad guy’. Gauntlet wielding purple maniacs, irredeemably cannibalstic geniuses, muscle bound henchmen, and angry bucket headed dark lords, with an asthma problem… I know, it’s good for popcorn sales, but in reality the bad guy doesn’t come from an alternate universe; he isn’t forged from fire and brimstone, or belched from the heart of mount doom. In the real world, so often the villain is not born, but shaped by their own painful experiences of abuse, neglect and trauma. They are a symbol of our own failure, as a society. No surprises then that virtually all prisoners in America have their own traumatic history of adverse childhood experiences; of hardship, struggle, poverty and violence. Each a spoke in a wheel of violence, that only knows how to spin faster and more ferociously. Yet prison is set up to punish these individuals further. Not to rehabilitate, understand, educate or help. And I get it. It’s easy to scoff and roll your eyes at such an idyllic idea; but forget about asking if these individuals deserve help, and simply ask – does such a system of punishment even work? Does locking a criminal up for most of their adult life achieve anything, but more criminality? Who does it help? I’d argue, nobody. So is it time we redefine how we see criminality, and changed the way we run the carceral system? #prisonreform #criminalmindsedit #criminology ~ Source, The Compassion Project  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

2022-11-20