en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2390750 Comments by Valiantd http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/21/if-prison-has-taken-anything-away-from-me/#IDComment145233521 This inmate points out the one scariest thing about jail to me. The loneliness of the jail cell. In your jail cell there is nothing to do except sit or lay in your bed and think or sleep. The knowledge that if you wanted to do something, you could not. It is such a depressing thought. I have sometimes laid in bed and wondered what would happen to me if I was confined to that state for the rest of my life. It is unimaginable. The only thing to do is look inward once you are in this state. Reflect on the past, present and future and come to terms with your crime and your place in life. You first have to be able to accept your current state to be able to move on and have some sense of happiness while in jail. I know that may sound weird, being happy in jail, but you have two choices: be completely miserable or less miserable (slightly happier). Some inmates use this inward reflection to find faith. As Sam Richards said during one of his lectures, in jail you either go crazy or find god. With so much time spent alone and in the same spot, you have to believe that some higher power is looking over you and loves you to stay sane. The inmate who wrote this letter talks about a women’s love and while that kind of love is probably not going to be found in prison, there can still be love in prison. Through faith, a prisoner can still feel loved, as a child of the creator. This will help put their life into perspective and as a result they will feel less alone in the world. Love does not only need to come through faith. There can be a sort of brotherly love that can be formed with other prisoners. Just because everyone in prison is perceived as evil does not mean they are. Just like anywhere, you can form strong bonds with people in prison, and in a sense find a family’s love. This inmate needs to come to terms with his position and make the best of it, or he will just end up falling into a bottomless hole where he just falls deeper and deeper into loneliness. Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:40:38 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/21/if-prison-has-taken-anything-away-from-me/#IDComment145233521 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/lifer/#IDComment143254472 This inmate’s letter was written in a very interesting fashion. This inmate does not disclose that they are an inmate until the end of the letter. At one point I thought I was reading a letter from the point of view of a Temple student since the inmate, attempts to hide who they are at the beginning. The inmate says they have worked with, had class with, and has seen Graterford inmates around. However, it took them until the end to finally label themselves a Graterford inmate. I found that intriguing as this letter is all about this misuse of labels on a human being. Labels are never a good thing. You cannot fully define a person with one word. However, I am guilty of using labels, as it is the easy way of describing a person. When responding to the letter’s of inmates on this website, I have called them murderers. But there is so much more to a person than the word murderer can describe. It is the easy way out to use labels, and I’ll accept that. But, just because it is easy, does it make it right? No, the connotation the word “murder” “felon” “inmate” carries can make a person seem so evil, so distant, possibly like the scum of the earth. However, not all inmates fall into this category. Some were just people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, or had to do something that is legally wrong, but in a sense morally right. However, there are also people who these words can’t even begin to describe their cruelty, disgustingness, and overall evilness. However, words will always be used to label people. Words are necessary to simply ways to express yourself. In fact, the topic of this letter takes me back to the first lecture on cursing. I’m sure every society has come up with words to describe killers, prisoners and the like. It’s a thing we as society do to be able to identify people by their actions and status in life. Does this necessarily mean all murderers are the same? No, but it does mean they have done something that does not coincide with the law. Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:00:59 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/11/lifer/#IDComment143254472 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/what-a-man-is/#IDComment141052268 This inmate has his own understanding of what is to be a man. However, they kind of seem like idealistic ways to be a man, with no real breakthrough. It is what we as men think a woman would say they want, if we legitimately put ourselves in their shoes. However, we can never really understand what it means to be a man. It is like a fish in water, the fish never truly gets water, as he has never experienced anything but water. However, we can also twist this around sociologically, woman can’t fully grasp what it is to be a woman because they know nothing else but living as a woman. It is only when males and females come together in an environment where they can speak freely where a real dialogue can take place on what men want and what women want. In this environment, it can also be established what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. However, there can never be a concrete definition because we all come from different cultures, environments and families. We definition of what it means to be a man or woman are shaped by factors and forces outside of our control. It depends on what values you were passed on as a child. It depends on what male figures you have seen throughout your lifetime. This inmate’s letter does not even touch on these. He attributes his definition of a man to what he sees on TV, which is so far off the definition. It is like that time in class we watched the music videos in class where woman were portrayed as sex crazed beings whose only satisfaction came from the attention of men. When these videos were put together collectively, they seemed ridiculous and even laughable. So, if you get your definition of being a man from the media, you will be in for a rude awakening when you finally realize what it is to be a man. However, I do not think this man knows what it is to be a man. If he did not realize it on the outside, there is no way he can comprehend it on the inside as he is only surrounded by men, just like a fish is surrounded by water. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 18:01:22 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/what-a-man-is/#IDComment141052268 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/what-a-man-is/#IDComment141051904 This inmate has his own understanding of what is to be a man. However, they kind of seem like idealistic ways to be a man, with no real breakthrough. It is what we as men think a woman would say they want, if we legitimately put ourselves in their shoes. However, we can never really understand what it means to be a man. It is like a fish in water, the fish never truly gets water, as he has never experienced anything but water. However, we can also twist this around sociologically, woman can’t fully grasp what it is to be a woman because they know nothing else but living as a woman. It is only when males and females come together in an environment where they can speak freely where a real dialogue can take place on what men want and what women want. In this environment, it can also be established what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. However, there can never be a concrete definition because we all come from different cultures, environments and families. We definition of what it means to be a man or woman are shaped by factors and forces outside of our control. It depends on what values you were passed on as a child. It depends on what male figures you have seen throughout your lifetime. This inmate’s letter does not even touch on these. He attributes his definition of a man to what he sees on TV, which is so far off the definition. It is like that time in class we watched the music videos in class where woman were portrayed as sex crazed beings whose only satisfaction came from the attention of men. When these videos were put together collectively, they seemed ridiculous and even laughable. So, if you get your definition of being a man from the media, you will be in for a rude awakening when you finally realize what it is to be a man. However, I do not think this man knows what it is to be a man. If he did not realize it on the outside, there is no way he can comprehend it on the inside as he is only surrounded by men, just like a fish is surrounded by water. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 17:59:36 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/03/what-a-man-is/#IDComment141051904 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/27/family/#IDComment139218273 This was the first inmate a genuinely felt a connection to. It may be because he used family as an emotional appeal. However, I admired that he acknowledge the fact that there are assholes in Rockview, For a while, I was worried that these letters were glorifying many criminals just because they made some improvement. However, he finally went out and said that there are a lot of bad people in Rockview. It is not a place full of rainbows and unicorns with all these “holy” people. I expect the people who make these vast changes in personality are few and far between. If most people made this change, then we would not have so many 2nd time offenders. However, the inmate also explained the fact that prison is not the stereotypical prison that most of us see on TV where life seems like anarchy and there is no control. There may be a few good men in prison who made a mistake that cost them the rest of their life. There may be a few who genuinely feel regret for their action, not because they have to to be possibly considered for parole but because it is their humanity. This letter also brings up a very interesting sociological factor, which is the sociological structure of the family. One of the factors of this structure is cultural transmission. This is where the inmate’s family failed. Cultural transmission involves the teaching of moral codes. Had it been ingrained into this inmate that crime was not acceptable, he would not be in the position he is in today. Another factor of the sociological structure of the family is emotional support. The inmate notes that only his true friends and family members have continued to visit him. An event like going to jail can open your eyes to who truly cares about you and who is just playing the role of a friend. Those who truly love you will visit you in jail, not just for the first couple of months but every time they get a chance. The inmate also states that the prison functions as a family. The prison meets one of the sociological factors of a family, providing shelter and meeting basic needs. There are people in the prison, like the inmate, who can provide emotional support for the other inmates. This inmate can teach the other inmates moral values in order to better themselves. So in a sense a prison can operate as one’s family. Fri, 1 Apr 2011 23:03:27 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/27/family/#IDComment139218273 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/b-s-response/#IDComment137611386 It is quite amusing how this inmate does not consider himself being a murderer. He was an accessory to a crime which makes him part of that crime which in turn makes him a murder. He tries to normalize himself by distancing himself from the murder. He follows the I did not pull the trigger mentality so I am not the killer. The fact that he felt a need to respond to the criticisms against him, shows that he has an ego that would not allow him to keep quite. He is a murderer, and a vocal one at that. If he had matured enough in jail and grown as a person, he should have accepted that he will always be considered a murderer and society will have a negative view towards him. He should not try to defend his position in the crime. Since he has not yet come to terms with his actions, I have no sympathy for him. I had an elementary school friend who robbed someone of their motorcycle at gunpoint with one of his buddies, and then the police went after them. The one felon took off on the motorcycle and the other took off in the car. My old “friend” was the one who took off on the motorcycle. The guy in the car ended up running into a mother and her 3 children and killing them all. I considered both of them murders. The state did as well as they were both charged with murder. Needless to say we are not friends anymore. We you decide to take part in a crime, you are responsible for everything that happens during said crime. Just because you aren’t the one who physically killed another person, doesn’t mean you did not kill them.However, getting past his arrogant nature, by what he has said, it seems he has taken advantage of some of the opportunities being in prison has afforded him. He seems to have a new found respect for freedom and life. I am left wondering if this inmate believes he should be let out of prison or if he thinks he should spend the rest of his life there. Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:36:57 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/24/b-s-response/#IDComment137611386 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/07/who-am-i/#IDComment135952358 When I first read this letter, I thought I had clicked some other tab besides the “getting life” tab. Once I realized I had not done this, I realized that this inmate has a different writing style than all the others thus far. The inmate does not mention his crime in this letter, not even alluding to it. He instead uses a creative style to describe himself. It seems like he has used the prison system as a means to educate himself about history. This is a great example of a prisoner who uses his life sentence as a means to better himself. As we talked about today in class, some prisoners have that time during their sentence where they wake up. They become aware that they will be spending their life in prison and decide to make themselves better throughout the process instead of sitting around sulking and depressed. This prisoner has done so. This prisoner also has a strong cultural understanding; he views himself as part of the whole world. Had he had this same view before he got into jail, maybe he would not have ended up in this situation. This is one of the problems with the prison system, brilliant minds are being held away from the community. Now, I like Sam Richards am not a person who thinks people in jail do not deserve to be in jail. I am a pretty tough person on criminals. I believe in the death penalty and some things that just cannot be forgiven. However, when an inmate shows such progress and a visible change in personality, he or she may potentially get a second chance, if and only if it was a first time offense. People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can cost them their whole lives. This just is not fair no matter what way you look at it. For example, the kid who killed the guy who raped his girlfriend. Just about anyone I know would say the rapist deserved it because rape is such a heinous act. Justice would not have been served if he did not kill the rapist. The prison system needs to be upgraded to a more efficient system. Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:29:19 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/07/who-am-i/#IDComment135952358 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/fear/#IDComment132490909 Fear is a pretty strong emotion felt by every human being. From prisoners to free people, we are all afraid of things. Some people have very irrational fears rooted from what they experience in the media and other such outlets. Some have legitimate fears based on statistics and actual data. The inmate in this letter obviously has irrational fears brought to him by his situation, being in jail. Fear is just one of the invisible strings controlling his life. He says he fears his past, although it has already occurred so there is nothing he can do about it. He fears not waking up in the morning, however, there is not a rampant prison death epidemic, so he is not likely to be killed in prison. This person lets fear control his life. His fear is solely based on emotion and his current state, not anything that can be linked to sociology. To him his fear is rational because he doesn’t have all the necessary information to see the irrationality of it. This is relatable to parents who will not let their kids walk to school alone. To a parent it seems like a rational fear that their child may be kidnapped if they are alone. But in reality the likelihood of that is fairly slim. These fears are put into parent’s heads by the overwhelming media reports of childhood kidnappings. Prisons are just like this, the media shows prisons as uncontrolled lands of chaos, with corruption everywhere and death imminent. However, prisons are pretty controlled structures with a good amount of security. The inmate states that his fears are his motivation to survive. However, we should not allow irrational fears to control our lives. They just make life harder on us, more uncomfortable and makes everyone in society skeptical about everything. To live a happy life fear must be minimized. This is why I think children are usually pretty happy. They do not usually understand why they should be irrationally afraid of things, so they are not. Of course, they are afraid of some things, but for the most part they are unaware of the fake threats posed to them. So children would not see the “harm” in walking down the street alone, while their parents would freak out about it. Fear must be controlled in order for society to operate efficiently. Fri, 4 Mar 2011 23:33:45 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/fear/#IDComment132490909 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/09/4092/#IDComment130697640 “Remember” is quite the poetic piece of writing. The inmate appears to be remorseful for his actions. He shows how his life has changed, but how he remains attached to his crime. In his writing, the inmate mentions his faith in God. He says although he hasn’t been forgiven by men, he has been forgiven by god. This is where the sociology comes in. This inmate is an inmate who has a religion. As we learned, people who are religious are happier. This inmate may use religion as a way to comfort himself from his actions. His friends, family, lovers, and all that was important to him has abandoned him. He therefore has two options, go insane through all the loneliness or turn to God. As a result of this, he doesn’t have to ask questions such as What’s going to happen to me when I die, how do I live with my actions, why did I do what I did. He has comfort that his God has forgiven him, so he doesn’t have to be upset with himself. He can easily live with his crime if he believes some higher force has pardoned him for his murder. If this inmate did not believe in God he would probably be more depressed or a little on the crazier side. Also, while I am on the happiness topic, this inmate does not have a vast amount of choices he has what we consider less freedom than the average person. Because of this, one may think he would be less happy than the average person. However, as we learned in class more freedom does not equal more happiness. It is quite possible that this inmate has a higher degree of happiness than the rest of us. More freedom produces a paralysis in people, so they wouldn’t be able to make a choice and just not participate in whatever it was they were doing. However this inmate probably does not experience this paralysis effect because everything he does is valuable to him in such a restricted environment. He also doesn’t have the higher expectations that more freedom causes. His expectations of things are low because he knows he lives in a restricted environment. As a result, when a minor good thing happens, he will easily be delighted whereas most of us wouldn’t care. Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:24:45 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/09/4092/#IDComment130697640 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/16/reflections/#IDComment128932450 When I started to read this letter, I thought to myself wow finally an inmate who gets the sociological actions of his crime. Then I read a little bit further and the human aspect came out and completely ripped out sociology. He starts with a view of the factors and forces beyond his control, but then negates all of them. He gives no value to the fact that his father was missing the first four years of his life, the fact that he grew up in a rough environment, and his drug abuse. He uses the human tendency to look for the individuality of his action. He wants to see himself as the cause of his actions. He blames his own sexual promiscuity for why his life turned out bad. He makes the experience about himself and throws everything else out the window. As we learned in class with the “cutting yourself” example, it’s not about the individual. The individual has invisible strings tied to them. These invisible strings are what can be attributed for your actions. So a sociologist would be concerned with the factors the inmate gives no credit to. On top of that they would ask what made him so sexually promiscuous. In turn they would find out that his private trouble is also a public issue. Sex is glorified in our society. Everyone thinks everyone else is always having tons of sex, as we learned in class. But the truth is the amount of sex people are having is less than what most people perceive it to be. The media also glorifies sex, so as a result teenagers are pressured to do whatever it takes to get laid. It is a societal issue because it doesn’t just affect just this individual, it affects a number of individuals. Our society is structure to make people want to have sex. This is what led this inmate to become sexually promiscuous. However, the inmate doesn’t get the bigger picture, he sees himself as the source of the problem, and that is not a concern of sociology. Individuals don’t matter, groups do. Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:34:07 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/16/reflections/#IDComment128932450 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/24/life-without-parole-001-blog/#IDComment126991754 No one can ever be entirely sure of their moral compass. It is just like in the fish in the fish tank example. The fish can never understand the concept of water because it is in water. The same applies to a person’s moral compass; a person can’t know what it is because they are it. Only outsiders can understand a person’s moral compass and whether it is good or not. This prisoner believes his moral compass is good, but he can never real know as he is in prison. His definition of being a good person is shaped by factors and forces outside of his control. One of these factors is his life sentence and the prison environment. He states that he shouldn’t lie, of course in a prison environment this is being a good person because one who lies will either be punished or beaten by their fellow inmates. If you go down his list, all his ways to be a good person seem to be shaped by the social environment of a prison. His moral compass is that of one learned in the prison environment, it would be entirely different if he had never gone to jail. Since he was arrested when he was 14, he didn’t have time for different worldly experiences to add more invisible strings to his puppet. He got into the prison with his strings, and has just learned to deal with those strings in prison. As a result he “mellowed out” in his thirties. Another thing this inmate talks about is the sentences the judicial system in Pennsylvania gives to people. He has a strong disdain for the life sentence because it does not take into account individual cases. There is no 25 to life, just life. However, the judicial system is a sociological system. And according to sociology rule number 27, systems are rational and so are people. If systems start taking into account individual cases, eventually they will break down. Should we give a lesser sentence to a person who didn’t mean to give that final death blow than to the person who did mean to? If we get into the specifics of a case like that, the system will break down because the rule set forth won’t be followed. It’s either all people have to follow the rule of the system or no one has to follow it. There is no room for dissent. Wed, 9 Feb 2011 22:07:11 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/24/life-without-parole-001-blog/#IDComment126991754 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/30/the-other-side-of-life/#IDComment125770541 This offender seems to have realized the wrong doing of his actions. It appears that he is close to understanding the sociological aspects of the reason for his actions. However, he is not there yet. He attributes his actions to having no moral or spiritual convictions, which may be part of the invisible strings in play, but he does not give us his childhood background. He may have easily fell into the child abuse or neglect category, which would have increased his likelihood of arrest by 59 percent. I am almost certain that he fell into the neglect category, because he states “I wasn’t important to myself.” It’s possible that if his parents didn’t care about him, he attempted to normalize this neglect by not caring about himself. After normalizing it within himself, he could have tried to normalize it within society by not caring about others. By normalizing it in society, he went too far and killed a person. Another important aspect in this particular case is that the offender was only 15 when he committed his crime. He obviously was charged as an adult as he got life in prison. As we discussed in class, at what point does a person become responsible for their actions. What if the offender had been 6 or 7 when he committed the crime? People would have been in an uproar over the waste of human, however just a couple of years later, it is perfectly fine. From the perspective of sociology ruler number 27, at whatever age you are, the charge should be the same. A system is rational… and so are people, therefore in theory there should be no leniency on anyone. Once an exception is made, the system starts to have problems and break down. If you gave this person a break because he was only 15, then you may have to give a 14 year old a break and so on. But if you look at it from a humane perspective, this was a teenager who made a wrong decision early in life, and now will never get to experience a real full life because of it. Thu, 3 Feb 2011 22:01:19 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/30/the-other-side-of-life/#IDComment125770541 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/what-does-it-mean-to-be-free/#IDComment124044893 Freedom is such an indescribable word, as it can be viewed from many perspectives. What one person considers freedom, another may consider limitation. For example, the Hindu religion considers true freedom or liberation (moksha) being one with Brahman (universal one existence). In order to do this a follower must free himself from all the constraints of the mind, whether it be emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. As these only serve to limit a person from true freedom. The inmate who wrote this letter sees freedom from a more cliché perspective. His freedom comes from what he can and cannot do. But as we discussed in class, every society has a different system of order which dictates what you can and cannot do. Citizens of North Korea feel like they have freedom, but from American perspective we would say they have no freedom. People in Amsterdam might feel that Americans have no freedom because prostitution and marijuana are illegal in the United States. People from different cultures have different values, which determine what freedom really is, that’s what makes freedom really difficult to define. The writer of the letter also stated that he is happy that he still has the freedom of choice in jail and goes into a paragraph about being the person he wants to be. However, we also discussed in class that a person really doesn’t have freedom of choice. He is not only constrained by his objective to possibly have physical freedom, but by the “invisible strings” that are attached to us. He thinks he lost his freedom by committing a criminal act, but in reality he has never had freedom. None of us really have freedom, because we are never fully responsible for any of the actions we commit. Our decisions are shaped by factors outside of our control. For example, this prisoner may have had abusive parents which increased the likelihood he would commit a criminal act. He therefore was predisposed to a criminal lifestyle. From a sociological perspective, he didn’t freely choose to commit this act, no matter how much he believes he did. So what does it mean to be free? It means not being human, not existing. Maybe Hinduism got it right. Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:20:31 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/15/what-does-it-mean-to-be-free/#IDComment124044893 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/19/rise-in-national-guard-and-reserve-suicides-whats-it-all-about-soc-001-blog/#IDComment122683679 Soldiers are predisposed to suicide. It is beyond their control. The cruel images of war is one of the factors that may lead a soldier to commit suicide. However, from a sociological standpoint, one may ask why were these people attracted to being soldiers? It may have been for a number of reasons, such as the basic “love for your country.” But perhaps there were even more factors like coming from a broken home, a need for group affiliation, and maybe even insanity. As we discussed in class, what’s more insane than going into a crowd and shooting people. If we step outside the box, and look at war, signing up to fight a war is just as insane as going into a crowd and shooting people. A person is literally volunteering to be shot at and kill other people. If put into perspective, soldiers are insane. War just enhances the insanity. This is in no way an insult to our soldiers, as they sacrifice so much to defend us, but it is necessary to evaluate the reason soldiers commit suicide. In the video one soldier said they got a high from killing people, that is insane. If any other person said that, they would be deemed a serial killer or a psychopathic nut. The video states “We are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy.” That statement unintentionally takes the individuality of suicide out of the picture. The use of the word “we” shows that it involves the whole group. As Dirkheim found in his study, a person’s group affiliation plays a part in whether or not they would want to commit suicide. Some soldiers who go to war come back thinking that seeing war is what makes them want to commit suicide, and therefore they make the decision to do so. If that were the case it would be an individual act, but if you dig deeper you find there are similarities in the types of people who commit suicide. These similarities indicate that these factors helped shape them into committing suicide. The increasing rate of suicide may also be attributed to the fact that particular groups of people are more likely to join at a time of war, groups that are already predisposed to suicide. On a side note, the soldier in the video ends the interview by talking about how soldiers receive psychological help and are prepared to go back to war. This may also explain the suicide rate. Soldiers who have to receive psychological help should not be sent back to war, as they fall into the group that are predisposed to suicide. After receiving mental health, they should be allowed to live their life in peace. Sending them back to war is the equivalent of healing a wound then ripping it back open. Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:14:42 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/19/rise-in-national-guard-and-reserve-suicides-whats-it-all-about-soc-001-blog/#IDComment122683679 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cs%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment120660792 SOC 001 Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:38:13 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cs%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment120660792