Laughter echoes off the walls as blood spills. Who will be the next victim as taxpayers unknowingly fund and supply the torture and abuse of incarcerated people? Not only are federal agencies, such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Environmental Protection Agency and Homeland Security stockpiling massive amounts of weapons and ammunition, but state prisons are operating a lethal administration with political ambition. As the inhumane conditions of incarceration skyrocket, incarcerated people are being used as target practice and punching bags.
Designed as a “modern day Hunger Game blueprint,” Texas prisons welcome physical combat for employee gratification. A structural gauntlet for the infamous fight night has made a statewide spread of under the table revenue. Fight Night is a day when correctional officers make bets in cash and pit inmates against each other in brutal brawls. These vicious battles compare the gladiators fighting in the Colosseum. The inmates who refuse to participate in the correctional officers’ games are immediately gang-jumped by the officers, beaten unconscious, sometimes within an inch of their life.
These underground boxing matches is weekly entertainment for officers who thirst for blood; a profitable black market scheme of police brutality inside prison walls where many times, drugs are also exchanged between officers. Many times, those same drugs are given to the inmates too. The death toll of incarcerated people is high, and the true cause of death is not listed accurately and not properly investigated. Either death or overdose from illegal narcotics, or internal bleeding and blunt trauma from the wounds sustained from assault is truly the fact. This devastating mistreatment is a political abuse of power, utilizing violence to dehumanize and torture incarcerated people.
Is this what you pay taxes for? We need reform, protection, ethical conduct, and solidarity. Through resilience, I persevere. Communicating from the barriers of solitary confinement, this is female to male transgender, Xanden Gully, for Prison Radio.
These commentaries are produced by Prison Radio.
