Dedicated to humanizing incarcerated people through the expressive vessels of their art and literature. Committed to accelerate higher education and careers post-conviction.
Listen as Q speaks at the rally about what it’s like to be incarcerated right now, and what it’s like to do too much time. He also addresses all of us out here and reminds us how much WE can take action and show up as families of the incarcerated. Thank you to Voice for the Voiceless, Humanization Project, Delegate Don Scott and others who were able to show support today. The work isn’t done!
Thank you for allowing me to express my take on a piece of legislation that’s beyond what a person has done wrong in life, but how he or she responded to what they have done. “THAT’S MY DEFINITION OF SECOND CHANCES.”
As I sit back and reflect on how the United States has more people incarcerated than any other country, it leads many people to believe that incarceration is more about politics than the crime or the victims of those that committed those crimes. Since Jan. 1st of 1996, Virginia got tough on crime and came up with one solution, “85% and no parole.” So now I pose this question, is that the real solution? Of course not! That’s because most of the inmate population will be released one day, change or not!!!
It’s about time, it’s long overdue for us Virginians to put in place legislation that focuses on Second chances. Giving individuals the necessary tools to be able to tackle not only what led them to prison, but beyond prison is the REAL SOLUTION. So why not put in place a system that restores good health through therapy and allow the judicial system to evaluate a person after a period of time for an early release, because there are plenty of people in prison that are still being punished for who they used to be, rather than who they become. Enclosing, it’s not a matter of if this piece of Legislation is enough. It’s about getting back to what this country was built on, second chances!!!
Leroy Williams
Deerfield Correctional
When will we, as a country, began to see crime as an extension of a vicious cycle of victimization?
I myself – a ‘convict’ – have been beaten, abused, shot, and stabbed… ridiculed, rebuffed, and victimized. None of my assailants were arrested, or put to trail. Even now, I do not wish the harshest of punishments to befall them. I wish only for a chance for their hearts and minds to be changed…
When I see people who have been victims of crime profess that the people behind bars should face more punishment, I wonder to myself how easy it is for people to forget that they (the ones incarcerated/the “criminals”) are victims themselves: victims of financial oppression and social oppression, victims of mental illness, victims of emotional dilapidation. It’s so easy to ignore the voices of those victims… easier to sacrifice the tears of ‘con-victims’ to appease the ‘real’ victims.
Do not misunderstand, I do not disregard their loss or abuse. NO ONE should have to go through such, life itself is hard enough. I merely want to offer a perspective that may hopefully open the mind’s eye and get us on a path to ending m the vicious cycle of victimization.
I hear the testimony of state senators about constituents as victims of rapes and murders. I also hear the testimony of incarcerated constituents as victims of molestations, fathers and family members lost to wrongful deaths, poverty and abusive upbringings… what I see, what I hear, rings a tone of hurt people, hurting people… is it right? NO. But neither is the outlook that the prisons that span this country coast-to- coast do not house the majority of the greatest victims of society.
This is an injustice that will only serve to further the vicious cycle of victimization… and continue to cost lives… to the grave of the prison system.
– Q. Patterson, BrillianceBehindBars Creator, #1392272
Brilliance Behind Bars 