Son of Khoi reflects on his experience being incarcerated through a story of planting a green pepper tree in a pot, nurtured from seeds: “I am the plant in the pot.” This is Part 4 of a series called, “Bearing Witness: Firsthand Accounts of Incarceration.”
Opportunities for incarcerated persons to achieve education have increased, but often bettering ourselves makes us the enemy of correctional officers. The strange thing is that the resentment does not come from high-ranking officials, but from low-ranking ones instead. Here’s a first-hand account of life inside the walls of a correctional centre.
Individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) have been barred from “polite” society throughout history. Many will eventually find their way to prison, behind a different set of bars, where there is little incentive to treat. Have we simply traded one form of confinement for another, even more cruel one?
Release from prison is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of another struggle. A first-hand account of post-carceral life.
A personal account of being in solitary confinement in a Correctional Centre in South Africa – 42 days in an infamous section of the prison where several people in prison have died since 2023.
Survival in a world built on punishment is not just an act of defiance but a testament to the resilience of those who have been criminalized—Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and poor communities. Their struggle is not just against incarceration, but against a society determined to strip them of dignity and opportunity long after they’ve been released.
In this conversation between Chris McAuley, Black Studies Collection Editor at Lived Places Publishing and Maurice Tyree, author of The Darkest Parts of my Blackness: A Journey of Remorse, Reform, Reconciliation, and (R)evolution (co-authored with Katie Singer), they examine the numerous problems and possible solutions to the disaster that is the American carceral state.