Help for the Chained Hands, Minds, and Hearts

Written by Lucy M age 17

People mess up. They do stupid things. Trauma does that to people. Mental illnesses do that to people. What if you did something, no matter how messed up it is, and were called a monster for it? What if you were stripped of your right to being a human? What if you were treated like an animal? All because of one thing or multiple things that you did because you have a messed up mind, awful past, and no one to help you or be there for you. Aren’t you just going to feel worse? You are going to feel worse and worse until you do bigger, more terrible things and no one will forgive you as you get locked up in a prison cell. As you are forced into a world that is for monsters that need to be caged and not thought of as humans. 

There is no help for them. No support. No love. No kindness. Just them, their minds, and madness surrounded by others who are in the same position. 

When a person is traumatized, you are supposed to support them. When a person does the wrong thing, you are supposed to reroute their mind so that they do not need to do it again. You do not traumatize them more. 

The United States has the highest Incarceration rate in the world. But you know what? We still have a high crime rate. Our prisons are overflowing. Our people are as messed up as ever. 

Do you want to keep on throwing more people in cages and traumatizing their already traumatized minds? Or do you want to try and help them out of the situation they are in? Stop wasting the money on more jails and instead spend it on rehabilitation centers. Create a system that will provide enough support for each person so that they are shown the care and love they deserve. Support is an incredible thing. 

What if you were punched in the face and no one cared? This is how prisoners have felt and feel right now. 

What if you were punched in the face and you were cuddled and cleaned up right after? This is how everyone else has been treated. 

If you do not want to do it to help a suffering person that has done terrible things, do it to stop wasting money on cages that only create more messed up people. Do it to create better people.

Anyone involved in the system is messed up eventually. Just look at what happened in the Stanford Experiment. 

You will not think that prisoners are the only ones who are monsters when you realize that every human being can easily turn into a monster under certain circumstances. There is enough evidence on that. 

So why not help others who are just like us, but who are in those certain circumstances? If each of those people could have had a life of support after all their trauma and mental illnesses, they would not be in the situation they are now. They would not be what we call monsters. 

We would not think of them as some sort of inhuman creatures that deserve to die.