What It’s Like in Prison
Imagine, for a moment, what you think it is like to be in prison. Do you picture rusted bars and guards walking on catwalks armed with shotguns? Do you picture all those inside as tattooed, angry-faced gang members? When you hear the word “felon” does the image of a man wearing a black beanie while wielding a crowbar pop into your head?
If so, then these perceptions you have aren’t realistic — they’re stigmas.
Unfortunately, many Americans share these views. In our opinion, this mindset makes it hard for prison reform to move forward and prevents positive change. To address the stigma surrounding the incarcerated, this site provides first-hand evidence that prisoners have the potential to better themselves through education, healing and rehabilitation. Our goal is to show you that the incarcerated are human beings deserving of basic human rights and humane treatment.
To achieve an effective criminal justice system in the U.S., prison reform is vital!
Our Mission
The mission of Heathen’s Vox is to share the experience of incarceration thereby exposing the need for prison reform, advocating for a fair and effective criminal justice system, advancing the needs of incarcerated veterans, giving a voice to the incarcerated, and showing the world that those in our nation’s prisons and jails are human beings deserving of basic human rights and dignity.
Offenders are incarcerated AS punishment, not FOR punishment.
There Are Four Main Purposes To Prison:
Though inmates are deprived of certain rights, such as freedom of movement, they retain basic human rights, such as adequate medical care and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment as protected by the Constitution.
Sadly, reality is much different.
The daily challenges that come with being incarcerated are countless: inadequate medical, dental and mental health care; overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions; nutritionally-inadequate food; threats of violence; cruel and unusual punishment practices; psychologically-damaging solitary confinement; abysmal work conditions; and much more.
Being in prison, the loss of liberty, IS the punishment. The forfeiture of basic human rights, the loss of dignity, dehumanization, degradation, mistreatment and abuse is not part of anyone’s sentence. With the highest incarceration rate in the world, the United States’ criminal justice system is in desperate need of reform.
It’s time for change!
