A Place to Stand Essay

Learning how to read and write while he was in prison changed the way Baca perceived many things in life. He felt the loss he had endured throughout his whole existence until this point by not bothering to read or write. When he first started reading, he “became so absorbed in how the sounds created music” in him, that he forgot, for a while, where he was (Baca 54). At first, Baca did not want to believe that he was missing out on anything special, but as he started reading, it dawned on him that language was such a critical part of life. Reading gave him the chance to visit another world and, for a moment, it did not matter to him that he was locked up in a jail cell. He could connect with the outside world for a while and not have to worry about spending the rest of his life imprisoned unjustly. Baca was able to release all of his anger and repressed feelings that he had bottled up inside of him his whole life with no way to vent them out before. He realized that language was truly a gift that he had been lacking for the first twenty years of his life. Learning language was such a fortunate thing which allowed him to escape the horrors of life.

The criminal justice system is well talked about throughout communities, law officials, and etc. Through social media we hear about the criminals who go into prison and the prisoners who return to prison, but never about the ones who change or learn their lesson from it. It is believed that once someone has been arrested and sent to prison or jail, it is likely that they will return to their again at some point in their lifetime. We believe this because we think these criminals were made this way and don’t have the ability to change. The memoir, Dreams from the Monster Factory, written by Sunny Schwartz and David Boodell, talks about the life inside a prison and jail and how Sunny’s RSVP program gives prisoners the ability to change their life around. Dreams from the Monster Factory was Sunny’s experience about what she saw working behind bars. She directed her book towards the public and other jails around her to try to bring awareness about how the RSVP program came and helped out more prisoners to become less violent. Sunny proved this by giving personal stories from real prisoners, how the RSVP program came to help them. This essay is directed towards anyone who hasn’t read this book. In the memoir, Dreams from the Monster Factory, Sunny Schwartz and David Boodell use rhetorical appeals, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, to show her audience that by implanting the RSVP program

The writer, Jeremiah Torres, took the path of releasing the angry by showing how unjustly he was treated in the school newspaper. He also moved on with his life once he had exposed it. His friend, Carlos, took a path that allowed his anger to fester and it slowly ruined his life. He became a convict, because he threw a quarter at the back window of a Suburban.

In prison, the idea of survival of the fittest goes into play. People within the facility will rip others to pieces to not only protect themselves, but to show superiority. This causes the author to experience great feelings of despair, but also provides the catalyst for change. Baca’s poem, “ Who Understands Me but Me,” explains the negativity displayed towards the inmates yet, his response is ultimately positive. The poem includes, “In the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred, I practice being myself.” In practicing self-care, Baca learns to be mentally strong while incarcerated. For example, he was put into confinement multiple times and then sent to the dungeon. Baca lived in the hole more than once and because everything was stripped away from him while he was inside, all he had was his mind. He eventually taught himself meditation, which enabled him to focus and find his love for writing. He had pen-pals that would encourage him to continue his work and from the time he started writing to the time he was released, his knowledge behind literature escalated tremendously. Sometimes, what seems like the worst possible outcome is a gift that keeps on giving. Not only did Baca come to the realization that violence is never the answer, shockingly, he managed to turned his life around and became a well-known

The article, Jimmy Santiago Baca: Poetry as Lifesavor retells the challenges and hardships Baca experienced. Rob Baker, the author, informs the readers that past experiences will continually influence decisions in the future. In the beginning it is revealed that the characters parrents abandoned him at the young age of seven. His troubles only worsened as time went on for he dropped out of junior high, due to not performing well academically and socially. Therefore, he fell into the wrong crowds and was eventually sentenced to prison for five to ten years, at the age of twenty-one. Poety helped him to overcome the mental and emotional impact that prison imparts with the individual. Baca now uses his experiences to reach out to the community by becoming a teacher to encourage children to embrace their own stories.

After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests.

In the book Hole in my life the main character Jack Gantos a (gifted writer) is living in Puerto Rico working at his dad's construction site. Jack then gets addicted to alcohol and marijuana and because Jack wanted to be a writer he found himself struggling to get money to go to college and pursue his dream in writing. Jack was then offered ten thousand dollars to smuggle drugs which was a good but risky opportunity for him to make money for college.

How would you handle prison? Would you stay you, or would prison change you? Prison, its inmates, and its guards, have many harsh and unforgiving characteristics associated with them. The guards are cruel, and the inmates are frightening people who are often perceived as “crazy”. But why is this? In the summer of 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, professor at Stanford University, set out to answer this question.

Hassine begins his narrative as he is entering prison but this time as an inmate. Prior to his incarceration, Hassine was an attorney (Hassine, 2011). Even then as an attorney, the high walls of prison intimated Hassine (Hassine, 2011). As Hassine was being processed into the system, he expressed how he systematically became hopeless from the very prison structure itself as well as because of the intimidation he felt by uniforms. Prisons of the past actually had a goal to aid individuals through rehabilitation by instilling new values in order to correct the wrongs that one may have committed during their lifetime but today this is no longer true. . Hassine draws colorful depictions of how dim and unfamiliar a prison can be in which instills fear in an individual soon as he or she

This bitter conversation with the drug user would also be regeneration for the narrator. The drug user states he feels somewhat responsible in Sonny's arrest. In turn, the narrator faces the fact that he feels somewhat responsible for Sonny's arrest. As a result of his guilt and interest in Sonny, the narrator starts to ask the drug user specific questions regarding Sonny's disposition. The drug user has knowledge of the never-ending cycle of abusing drugs and shares this information with the narrator. In return, the older brother feels a regeneration of care for the drug user, who his is viewing as Sonny. This encounter concludes by the drug user requesting money from the narrator. The narrator feels sensitive of the drug users struggles (and failures) in life and gives him more money than requested.

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

The Stand by Stephen King was a very detailed, and engulfing story about a possible end to mankind. This “extermination” is caused by a man-made variation of the flu that is 100% fatal and spread through the air. It wipes out 99% of the world’s population in a month, leaving around 1 million people in the entire United States. The story is about how the population is split between good and evil and the battle that goes on between the two colonies. The story is presented from many different point of views, because there are around ten to fifteen different main characters.

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.

Prisons hide prisoners from society. “If an inmate population is shut in, the free community is shut out, and the vision of men held in custody is, in part, prevented from arising to prick the conscience of those who abide by the social rules” (Sykes, 1958, 8). The prison is an instrument of the state. However, the prison reacts and acts based on other groups in the free community. Some believe imprisonment

Do readers believe that any one person can turn their life into something beautiful, even when all they have seen in their life is ugly? Based on this non-fiction poem the narrator finally realized his life wasn’t as bad as it could be. In Baca’s “Cloudy day,” readers find a speaker very attuned to the outer world while being incarcerated. Born in New Mexico of Indio-Mexican descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother and later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age 13, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison that he began to turn his life around: Jimmy learned to read and write and unearthed a voracious passion for poetry.