Johnny E. Mahaffey
September 25, 2017

The Novelist Portent

FORGOTTEN PRISONERS

Being removed from society blocks us from a healthy social evolution, and the idea that a person could just be locked away, with no access to the outside world, and then --one day-- just tossed back out into it to function normally, is absurd. And it's irresponsible of the prisons, and those governing the state laws relevant to incarceration.
I'm glad to see a nationwide movement of prison writers.
Today I mailed off an essay, entitled "Seeing Myself" to Hamilton College, for their American Prison Writing Archive, APWA:

http://www.dhinitiative.org/projects/apwa/

And, I also mailed a few poems to various literary journals for consideration. Ten years ago, I was one of only a handful of prisoners doing this kind of stuff. But today; we're EVERYWHERE! Truth is a very powerful thing, and I've learned that if I write from the heart, I can't go wrong; and people seem to want to hear what we all have to say. In fact, they are breaking down barriers of resistance to get to the truth. No one takes the government's word as an absolute; not anymore.
Corruptions in our judicial system have created for us the world's most unjustified penal system, with an overflow of prisoners doing more, more time that what their crimes call for. Search U.S. prison statistics in comparison to other countries, along with crime rates of today and decade, for two (or three) decades back. You'll be shocked at what you find: that the current rate is unacceptable, it makes no sense of why we have so many prisoners. The only logical explanation is that the entities of law enforcement, law makers, jailers, courts, and prisons, have turned into a business.
But now, the truth is spreading.
Things are already changing.
Prisoners are being see, and we're being heard thanks to the Constitution.

M