AMC 2012
Reply ID

R. Lindial
1584651
1401 State School
Gatesville, TX 76555

In the effort to bring attention to the criminal justice system, this country is the world's leader in incarceration. That one in three young men is under the control of the criminal justice system, that five million Americans can't vote because of felony convictions, and that thousands of women and children have lost welfare, education, and housing benefits as the result of convictions for minor drug offenses.

Most incarcerated women are not a danger to society. Women often suffer excessively harsh consequences for crimes due to mandatory sentencing. Majority of women who commit crimes of survival. Women also tend to benefit less from plea-bargaining because they can't afford a lawyer or are reluctant to testify against male partners they face. Even women convicted of murder have often killed in self-defense against a battering partner, yet not been allowed to plead self-defense. Justice should remove the bandages from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate. 1 A woman becomes the victim of domestic violence every fifteen seconds in the U.S. 2

Let's not forget: the U.S. puts a greater proportion of its citizens in prison than any other nation on Earth. We must work against this prison industrial complex that benefits only corporations building and running the prisons for profit. Obviously, knowing such facts is a first step to action.

Please don't forget me. I'm a daughter, a mother, a sister, a grandmother even now. I fought for my life. All I wanted to do was take in enough breath to live. He was strangling me. I only wanted him to stop hurting me. I hit him once, seven inches above his right nipple with part of a knife. I got off the garage floor. He bled to death in under ten minutes due to high levels of ethanol and amphetamine in his system. The state of Texas sent me to prison for twenty years. Because I didn't want to die.

What would you have done? I was trying to leave him. This occurred 12-25-08. He refused to let me go. He said, "We are both going to die today. You first though."

Do you hear me? Are you listening? It only takes one step in the right direction for the right reason to make things right!

1. U.S. Dept. of Justice Statistics, Bureau Division
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs
2. Schneider E.M. Battered Women and Lawmaking
New Haven CT: Yale University Press