"If you can't take care of them, let them go!"

When I was growing up in the deserts outside Phoenix AZ, I'd bring home all kinds of critters and creepy crawlies, always to my mom's dismay. One day, I brought home a fat lizard and showed my mom, proudly displaying this creature I'd "saved" from nature. She asked what it was. "I dunno." What does it eat? "Dunno." How am I going to take care of it? I may have blinked in response. I didn't think much past the actual capture. All the time lying in wait, pouncing and missing... I'd spend whole days at this: lifting rocks and wandering old washes, digging in old deadwood piles for snakes and scorpions. Every time I'd bring home a catch, I'd keep them in big ice cream jugs, trying to feed them and care for them to the best of my ability. My mom, bless her, saved many lives by making me release them.

The last person I saw die in the BOP was a few months back, on the softball field: heat exhaustion. I wrote about it. Negligence and ignorance and indolence were all responsible. I've seen many people die and lose body parts in here because the prisons just can't take care of so many people. Their standard method of "treatment" is to ignore it long enough till the inmate gets out. If few are maimed or die in that process, they'll pay out some minor settlements in lawsuits (if we have the ability to fight them. I lost my lawsuit due to sheer inability to navigate a very complex legal system: the very one that most people go to school for a decade or so to comprehend) and never need to alter their course because they're staying in their budget and no actual humans were hurt in the process, just inmates. The extreme pain from carpal tunnel and unknown nerve issues in my hands and a host of other ailments are mostly ignored. A friend of mine in here is a medical doctor and he knows exactly what needs to be done for his bone spurs and yet, the prison refuses.

I was told that there were no more blankets when I was given one that had been cut almost in half. I've organized full sit downs to get our weekly supply of toilet paper. I've had to file grievances to Washington DC to force the food service to give us the proper portions and the fruit were supposed to get, even if it is inconvenient for them to do so. I've been a part of many attempts to demand fair treatment and punished as a result of my efforts to make sure we get the minimum of what we are entitled to so we can survive.

It seems it constantly needs to be explained to them what they need to do to take minimum care of the people they are responsible for. It reminds me of those critters I'd bring home that my mother would make me release. It really seems to me that the prisons need a mom to tell them, "If you can't take care of them, let them go."