Saturday, August 09, 2008

Censored on FreeSpeech.com?

The below is a partial reprint of something I wrote on FreeSpeech.com as blogger, Vikingas. After I testified at this hearing, I was the main and sometimes only blogger of FreeSpeech.com, and after [this video] was made, FreeSpeech was off the web for quite a while. I was getting 5000 to 10,000 hits a day. When someone did a word search on "Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland State Police Misconduct Judicial Corruption" often something I wrote came up as number one. That was until I went out live on Connecticut Government Television, CT-N:


“What is Prison Really like?”

Blogger Steven G. Erickson tells of his experiences in prison here in part 1 and later in part 2 which has been reprinted below with his permission.

A society is only as good as how well it takes care of it’s most vulnerable members. In this case, the US is doing a miserable job. People who don’t have any political or judicial clout (or massive amounts of money) can easily find themselves on the wrong side of the law, even if they have committed no crime. Their rights are trampled, their lives are ruined and no one is held accountable. The US prison system is growing out of control. The US now incarcerates over 2 million people, the highest amount in the world. Over the past few decades the justice system has dropped rehabilitation for long prison terms and gives mandatory sentences for non-violent offenders. Non-violent offenders enter the system as prey for the hardened criminals. The US taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars more each year on prisons than we do educating the children of the country.

When will enough be enough? I would appreciate it if anyone has any links to organizations trying to reform the prison and justice systems to leave them here. It’s time for justice FOR ALL, not just those that have the money for expensive lawyers.

“What is Prison Really like?” Part 2 The Aftermath

The easiest way to tell if someone has been in prison is how they are around food and their willingness to answer ANY question without suspicion on why you asked the question.

Former inmates are more likely than not to have tattoos especially crude ones.

Everything and everyone is taken away from you when you become an inmate, so your value system is forever changed. Life is temporary, relationships are temporary, and owning anything, even a pencil, is temporary.

Information, associations, and potential opportunities are the new sources of wealth and power inside the walls of a prison. A meal might be traded for toilet paper, use of a pen, or a place in line to read an old newspaper. When you get visits in prison, other inmates will want to know their names, address, vehicles etc, to sent their friends on the outside to rip them off, knowing they are visiting you.

You are only allowed about 5 or less minutes to eat an entire meal, so if a former inmate is daydreaming, the whole plate of food and the drink might be consumed faster than you have ever seen before. Place your hand near the plate and your hand is struck or grabbed and you get a look like you are about to be killed, there is a good chance you are eating with a former inmate.

Every nuance of your life is exposed while you are prison, figure others have gone through your most private belongings, your clothes, vehicles, everything. If you drove yourself to court in your own vehicle and were sentenced, your car and the belongings are already long gone.

If you are in long enough, you come out without a valid driver’s license, your cloths have been thrown out or donated, so you walk out the gates with unclean, donated items that may not match and possibly aren’t even your size.

Most likely you are on parole, have a strict curfew at your new address, if you are not in a halfway house as most 2nd stinters have no one left that will associate with them, and 1st timers see who their friends really are, and how fragile family connections really are. Your children, siblings, and parents may not even accept mail from you, never mind talk to you.

Rape in prison?

Well, it is a distinct possibility. But you are more likely to be roughed up by guards or other inmates, fights occur almost all the time. If you are raped in prison, you may have to register as a sex offender, according to what I read on one of the posted sheets at a Connecticut Prison on the subject.

I was able to grow a full beard in relatively short time, and looked like Charles Manson on steroids so even hardened criminals looked at me with at least a little fear. One African American with no family on the outside receiving about $3 or so a week for commissary items, was willing to pay the $2 in trade to the floor barber to shave me and cut my hair.

Youthful or easily intimidated individuals are treated ferociously, and give up food, cloths, their toothbrush, and their only towel in absolute fear. Showing fear or telling on a guard or another inmate could mean the severest of consequences or even death.

Being on the outside it is possible that you have no belongings, bank accounts, credit cards, credit, a phone, recent job history, family contacts, friends, decent cloths, or even any great amount of on hand cash.

An inmate may never save money or accumulate possessions as they may fear losing everything at any given moment and know how temporary everything really is.

Fear of authority, lack of respect for those in authority, and knowing really how petty and wasteful Big Brother is, becomes knowledge that you will have above all others that don’t know what human nature and how ugly its head is ALWAYS there.

Others that know that you are on parole might try to have you violated and sent back for sport, or to extort something out of you. One argument with a jealous lover can send you back for years and years.

Prison should be reserved for those that are not able to be reformed when all other forms of punishment have not worked.

A 2nd DUI offense may land a person in prison and wreck their lives permanently, their families may never recover. Retirement and comfort are gone with the wind.

At home confinement, where families stay intact, jobs, home ownership, and credit stay intact, should be a consideration. Families, children, parents, and friends are punished along with the inmate, and they are completely innocent.

-Steven G. Erickson (Vikingas)

Additional Notes:
It is hard enough to get a job in the current market, try and get one after being out of circulation forced to be idle with nothing to do for long periods of time and no mental stimulation, with no recent job history, a criminal record, and having to report to a probation or parole officer and special classes at the most inconvenient times, multiple times in a week and actually get a job.

Just having an arrogant, life wrecking, power ego maniac call where you actually get a job, checking up on you and see if you keep that job you struggled so hard to find.

People that knew you before or even asked you advice can now slam a door in your face, insult you calling you “inmate,” or “jailbird,” not ask for you expertise or advice, avoid you, or inform others of your demise if they even ever acknowledge your existence ever again.

If you have ever pissed off even one police officer, every step you take in prison and on the outside will be met with difficulty and PAY BACK.

I may have pissed off the head of the Connecticut State Police and every member below him, with what I wrote in newspapers, emails, and proposed as legislation limitting police powers making police responsible to the people, not just to officials interested in taking our last dollar and our rights.

I tried to have multiple officers fired, the prosecutor who prosecuted me twice fired, and tried to have the judge who sentenced me removed that sentenced me for two years actively BEFORE I was railroaded for ‘overreacting’ while being beaten from behind in my dark driveway after being stalked and threatened, and nearly robbed by an alleged police informant that was allegedly encouraged by police to harass me because I had complained to legislators and in newspapers about police misconduct and had proposed ‘Civilian Oversight’ of police, the express route to prison and out of a state.

Free Speech has a price in America, prison!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2004 at 11:15 a

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