CELEBRATING CRIME AND THE LIVES IT'S DESTROYED
Saturday
September 9, 2017

Yesterday, the entire prison was placed in a state of lockdown so that prison officials could celebrate the 30th anniversary for Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP). To say that I was upset would be a bit of an understatement, but not for the reasons you might think. As an inmate, I'm used to being locked up in my cell. Shortages of staff, flights on the yard, riots, holidays, I've even been locked up so officers could watch the Superbowl without being interrupted. This lockdown, however, was different.

For starters, there's the obvious, the fact that people who get paid with taxpayer dollars aren't doing what they were hired to do. Instead of watching over us as we went about our daily activities, they were all gathered together partying. To me, this is yet another indication of the corruption that's so prevalent in the prison system, made doubly worse by the fact that these are the people who are supposed to be setting the example for those of us trying to rehabilitate ourselves.

While partying on the taxpayers' dollars is certainly justification to be upset, what really got my goat was the reason given for this particular party, the 30th anniversary of the MCSP being open, and more importantly, what that really meant. Think about it for a minute... Why was there a need to build the MCSP in the first place? And why does there continue to be a need to build the MCSP in the first place? And why does there continue to be a need to keep it open? The short answer is that it was built because people were raped, murdered, and robbed. Cars were stolen, frauds were committed and children were molested. In other words, lives were destroyed. MCSP has a capacity of approximately 4,000 inmates. Over the course of 30-years, this means that we're talking about hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions, and the fact that they recently expanded the prison to hold close to another 2,000 means that whatever they're doing isn't working, and yet, they chose to celebrate anyway, but the question is, exactly what are they celebrating?

I don't know about you, but when I think about prison officials celebrating the anniversary of their prison's opening, what I see is a bunch of monsters celebrating the fact that crimes exist, that lives were destroyed, and that both of these have continued to happen for 30-years now. And yet, not only do they continue to celebrate, but they do so on a yearly basis, out in the open for the whole world to see. As an inmate trying to rehabilitate himself, I'm appalled, but nowhere near as appalled as crime victims should be.

Shawn L. Perrot CDCR# V-42461
MCSP Cell# C-13-229L
P.O. Box 409060
Ione, CA. 95640