It’s Monday, the start of a new week. I read an article in Sunday’s paper titled “It's Easy to Send People to Prison - Hard to Keep Them Out”. It was about the new re-entry programs that County of San Diego has launched. Helping inmates prepare to re-enter their communities. This is very important, because 95% of the people sent to jail or prison are going to come back to our communities. When they do get out, do you want them breaking into your car or robbing your house, dealing drugs on your street, or stealing your identity ? Of course not. We would rather they get out and stay clean, get a job, no longer commit crimes, and give back to the community and neighborhoods. Rather than destroy them. For so long we put people in jail or prison, offer them no rehabilitation and put them back on the streets to commit more crimes. 65% of felons return to prison within 3 years of release. We have to break the chain somewhere. The programs are a start, but we have a long way to go. But, hopefully the trend to have re-entry programs will grow and continue over the years. The goal should be to help these people with substance abuse, mental health issues, housing, job training, life skills, get back on track, and end a life of crime. There is a lot of work to be done for women and I hope in the future I can be a part of and contribute to the San Diego Re-Entry programs and services.
Tonight we had a new deputy. She was training with another deputy. Training with the same deputy who wrote up everyone in our unit who was not wearing their blue shirt under their sweatshirt to the chow hall. This deputy is a real peach. I am debating who’s worse. This peach we have tonight or Miss Personality. They both are a real piece of work. Unbelievably rude, mean, and disrespectful. I know we are in jail, but we are still human beings, not garbage. She wasn’t too bad during the evening, because she was training. But, she did not hand out mail until after we were in bed asleep and then proceeded to wake us up at 1am to check our wristbands before giving us our mail ! I don’t know what procedure this is, but we usually get our mail handed out during evening dayroom time, if not, then it’s given to us at night count. Not tonight, I was woken up to get my mail that I can’t even read because it was dark ! Then breakfast rolled around. We were all aware of how this deputy is and no one was going to chance anything with her. So, as soon as we come out of our cells, the new deputy is asking and checking to make sure we have our blue shirts on under our sweatshirts. Once we are all in line, Miss Peachy Personality, comes by yelling at everyone and starts doing a blue shirt check. Everyone is showing her their blue shirts under their sweatshirt. Then she goes to Wyonna, who is in her late 60's, who can’t hear, has trouble walking, and has no clue what the deputy is asking. So, the deputy pulls up her sweatshirt and sees her nicely tucked in blue shirt. Instead of moving on down the line, she yanks the old lady trying to untuck her shirt and roughly man-handles her to make sure she’s not wearing her night gown underneath. Wyonna is taken back and looking at her like what the heck is going on ? She’s a little old lady. Why did you felt the need to treat her that way ? The deputy was just out of line. This morning, Wyonna told our day deputy how mean she was to her. My bunkie was so heated about it, that she filed a grievance on the deputy this morning. She was really fired up and she’s right, it was really uncalled for. I hope we don’t have her all week. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of my bunkie’s grievance.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”
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