When we think of the United States, many of us think of hamburgers, Hollywood and popular culture. Yet there's something else that arguably defines America: prisons. Astonishingly, though the United States contains only 5 percent of the world's population, it is home to a staggering 25 percent of its prison population. Indeed, from the experiences of her own family, the author learned about America's love affair with incarceration.
By the time the author was 16 years old, both her older brother and her father were in jail. Was prison the right place for these men? The author believes it wasn't.
For instance, her biological father Gabriel, was a loving father and a gentle nonviolent person. Gabriel's only crime was that he was a drug addict. Instead of trying to help him overcome his addictions though, the American justice system simply locked him up. She recalls that the last time he went to jail, he managed to get his sentence reduced by several years. How? He agreed to be a first responder to the dangerous wildfires that often break out in California. Under the terms of this shocking deal, her father and other prisoners were forced to tackle dangerous blazes before firefighters were on the scene. In other words, her father had to risk his life in order to buy his freedom.
The author's older brother Monte also spent time in prison. Like the author's father, Monte also had a drug problem. This gave rise to his developing Schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental-health condition. Despite the fact that Monte was deeply mentally ill, the state of California decided that he was well enough to serve five years in prison for attempted robbery. His crime? He had been caught trying to crawl through a house's front window. When Monte came out of prison, his mental health had deteriorated considerably. Shockingly, he had been kept in solitary confinement during his time inside, something that has been proven to exacerbate mental-health problems. His jailers had even withheld medication from him.
The author later learned that there are more people with mental illnesses in America's prisons than there are in all of the country's psychiatric institutions put together. She believes that his is further proof that the state is more willing to imprison ill people, like her father and brother, than treat them.
