Prisoners Are People, Too
All people will make mistakes at some point in their lives. That is simply a part of humanity. We make mistakes, learn from them and carry on. Some mistakes carry larger consequences than others, but they too fit a similar pattern for the most part. The mistake is made, a consequence is suffered, the lesson is learned. In American society, however, when the magnitude of the mistake is great enough, we forget that the fact that we make mistakes is evidence of our humanity. Instead, society decides that only monsters can do things terrible enough to warrant them time in prison. We take away their right to vote, we force them into labor with barely any pay, we make them less than human. Perhaps some people in prison are truly monsters. However, in a country with mandatory minimum sentencing, whose criminal justice system is clearly plagued with racism which lets white people walk for crimes that would leave a colored person behind bars, there’s no way that every person in prison deserves to lose their rights. Should we really punish someone for being unlucky enough to have been born black? That said, no one is born with the divine position to decide that a certain person is less than another. The moment that we justify the abuse of one person, we provide a precedent to justify the abuse of all people.
The system that we have in place that justifies stripping rights away from prisoners is predicated on the belief that by committing whatever crime that landed them in there, prisoners have proved themselves lacking the judgement necessary to make them equal members of society. This belief skates over the fact that prisoners are disproportionately black, and ignore that black people are often imprisoned for crimes that white people are allowed to remain free for. Why should a black person be punished and have their rights taken away for doing something, while a white person would just get a slap on the wrist for the same thing? This justification also ignores the nuance inherent in criminal cases. It makes assumptions on the motivations of those that commit crimes, and of the situation that they found themselves in. Unfair convictions are skated over, because of their rarity and the fact that there are pardoning mechanisms in place. The subjugation of the innocent few is justified because there aren’t enough of them to make a fuss.
All humans are deserving of certain unalienable rights, no matter what they may have done.
Making exceptions to any supposed absolutes is a slippery slope. The moment we provide a justification for taking away the rights of some subset of people, a precedent is set. The justification for taking away the rights of prisoners is that their imprisonment proves a lack of judgement. Many things can be argued to be proof of a lack of judgement. The next thing we know, following a certain religion could be argued as proof of a lack of judgement, and thus a justification to have rights taken away. In a nation where attacks on Muslim citizens are becoming all too common, that doesn’t seem very far-fetched. In allowing the oppression of one group of people, we may be inadvertently justifying our own subjugation.
It’s easy to forget about prisoners. They are cloistered away from the rest of society, out of sight. Many of them have clearly done something that makes them less sympathized with. However, we must not forget the humanity of our prisoners. People are still people, no matter what they’ve done. All humans are deserving of certain unalienable rights, no matter what they may have done. To erode that is to erode the codes that our society lives by. Prisoners are people too, no matter what.