By: Ciera Terry
Choice is a curious thing.
I didn’t grow up in the best neighborhood, and I witnessed many children become products of their environment.
When a community is suffering from poverty, life cannot be seen as black and white.
Instead, life is about meeting day-to-day needs — there are no other choices. There is no time for dreams or hope when you are forced to gamble with a system that doesn’t accommodate your struggles.
When a person’s life has been about struggle, and survival, many people resort to actions that aren’t commendable by the government — but they are merely doing what’s necessary.
Life is no longer about what’s right or wrong.
As a person with family members who have been convicted and sentenced 25 years to life, my perspective on imprisonment looks different.
I have lost people due to crime by death and by imprisonment, and I cannot ever shame those who are prosecuted.
More often than not, when people in power speak of correctional facilities they say things like “Inmates get what they deserve,” and “Inmates shouldn’t do crime if they can’t do the time.”
In my opinion, about 50 percent of the prisoners shouldn’t actually be incarcerated.
Bold statement, I know.
And the American justice system is known to have implict racial bias.
According to Prison Policy Initiative, Black Americans make up 32 percent of the population in prison systems; however, Black Americans only make up to about 13 percent of the U.S. population.
In total 80 percent of all inmates come from low income housing and poverty.
And I wonder what that punishment is meant to do.
It’s a fact that imprisonment in America is dehumanizing.
How is stripping someone’s identity and humanity seen as “correctional?”
Is it meant to “correct,” like so many say, or is it meant to exploit?
Who gets to ask these questions?
Who has the power?
Who gets to decide who’s worthy of life and who is not?
It’s human to make mistakes.
It’s human to grow into a new person.
It’s human to be gentle and kind, but it’s also human to be angry and upset at the world.
There are those who are privileged and have safeguards to fall on: a savings account, a support system.
Most people think struggles could never happen to them, but life is hard.
Accidents happen, a tire blows out, a car breaks down, a support system starts to crack.
Life can be completely ripped from under your feet without you having any clue it was coming.
I don’t need someone to sit me down and tell me how proud they are of me that I “made it out.”
I write this only to remind readers that those who are incarcerated are undoubtedly human.
There is nothing that separates us from them, except pure chance.
When attempting to cope with the political climate we are entering, I often turn to art.
I’ve found the relationship between art and injustice beautiful.
Art can be the expression and the voice of the marginalized and the oppressed.
It can take up many forms, poetry, creative writing, painting/drawing, film, etc. — all of it can be proactive.
I watched the movie “Sing, Sing,” recently.
The film is based on a true story of inmates at Sing Sing correctional facility in New York, who created a theater program in order to cope with their incarceration.
“Sing, Sing” was released in July 2024, and although the movie was initially released in only a select few states, the film production team recently released it nationwide in theaters for everyone to watch.
In at least 43 states, the production team was able to give incarcerated people a chance to see the impactful film in their correctional facilities.
Not only that, but a majority of the actors who played inmates in the film were previously inmates, themselves, in real life.
Art forms such as film have a huge opportunity to impact and change how people view the world — expecially a world that may be so separate from the viewer’s lived experience.
When we talk about change and struggle, we must not forget that the most freeing act and strongest sign of resistance and change is always to create.
After watching this film, I sobbed in the theater because it asks the question that no one does: What does it mean to be imprisoned in America?
For me, it means to be disillusioned that imprisonment corrects anything.