Several centuries ago insane asylums hid "mad, crazy people" incarcerated and brutalized in straight jackets. "Men in white coats" took people away from society and did little to help them. At that time thousands of mental health victims were locked up behind closed doors and never seen again. Many times there were malicious motives to get rid of family members to gain inheritance and other benefits.
Dear Ones,
At the same time men went to prison when they were in debt, which was stupid since they couldn't earn money to pay for what they owed.
When I did research for portraying Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane from Apollo, Pennsylvania) I discovered she worked for Pulitzer's World Newspaper in New York City. Besides sending her around the world in less time that Phineus Fog did in eighty days in Jules Verne's novel, he hired her to investigate a New York City insane institution.
Posing and acting as a mad woman she was admitted with ease, and no doctor's recommendation. As a reporter she then wrote all about unjust human rights violations as an inmate. When front page headlines hit the fan, the city, followed by other towns, called for strong reform for these institutions now called psychiatric hospitals.
Today the United States has an even worse problem when people become prisoners behind bars and the public kept ignorant about the corruptions going on behind closed doors.
Often innocent people are held for years or lifetimes because of many reasons such as clerical errors, mistaken identity and corruption.
I would like to propose these American criminal institutions be transformed to educational facilities where the inmates are enrolled in schools to be reconditioned to society. Here they would have no time to commit even more or worse crimes.
They would have jobs to provide for institution needs, that wold also cut down on unemployment. This would give them responsibilities and teach them how to get along with inmates through teamwork.
Such a societal change for a better would would educate inmates for future careers of skills for employment within the facilities or if they earned their freedom.
This urgent proposal reveals just a few insights for benefits that these schools of enlightenment would provide, located in the same buildings. Reformatory institutions are obsolete. If teachers succeed in worldwide scholarly success, there is no need for reformatories and the corruption that goes on behind closed doors. Let the sunshine in!
Mame,
helenesmith1.blog spot.com author of essay Erase Race!
