“It’s a Different World than where you come from…”
Tuesday 5, 2007 our class went to Parchman, a maximum security penitentiary located in the Mississippi. I had never been to a prison before and I didn’t know what to expect. We started off with an introduction from one of the inmates who is in prison for drug possession and selling. His name is Rafeal King and he was passionate during our talk with him and he repeated that he was going to keep it real. One interesting point he brought up that will remain with me forever is that he wished that he was actor performing so that he could go home. Often, I try to forget what conditions are like in institutions such as prisons. Prisons are often portrayed in films but there is nothing like actually living out your days, weeks, months, years and for some lives in prison.
Parchman definitely has an “old school” feeling to it. There are fields and prisoners that work them with hoes and there are field guards that carefully oversee the inmates. A few of the people we were able to speak to told us that Parchman is known for housing some of the worst criminals of the state with common crimes being murder, rape, drug possession and selling, assault and others. Two of the inmates we spoke with told us that pedifials are treated with the lowest amount of respect and are on the bottom of the food chain. All three of the men we spoke to said that they would give up anything to not be in prison because of everything that they have missed out in especially dealing with the development of their children’s lives. King told us that he has never seen his son play football and that his son is the star of a winning team and that his dream after release is to have all his children together so that they can enjoy one another. That comment was really powerful and it made me think of the value that parent’s have in their children’s lives. Also, the men we spoke cared about future generations and wanted the message to get out to our group that prison is not a place that anyone should want to be.
A ward in the prison that stuck out to me was the AIDS ward which houses a good percentage of men in Parchman. The goal is that this will keep down the spread of the disease. I think that this ward is really important because after watching a documentary, I learned a lot about the secret lives that many men have in prison. There are so many young college age Black men today entering prison instead of attending college. Also, another point made today that really shocked me was the demographic of many of the prison guards in Parchman and other prisons today. I fit the description of a lot of the prison guards today, an 18 year old Black female. When this was mentioned in our class discussion, it brought up the point that there aren’t many opportunities for employment in that area and the Mississippi Delta in general. This also connects with the situation viewed in Lalee’s Kin on how low the socio economic status of many of the Black and White people in the Mississippi Delta. Prison life is truly a different world and in my opinion the justice system has some serious issues with the determining the length of sentences. I’m grateful for this experience and more students need to have a similar experience in a state penitentiary.