Prison Radio
Joadanus Olivas

“Prison: My University.”

As an inner city youth, there was a higher chance of me entering prison than a university here in California. There are more prisons than universities in California, 34 prisons to be exact, prisons, camps, and juvenile facilities. And it costs more to house me in prison than it does a university.

And actually, I could receive my AA degree here in prison free of charge, or medical free of charge, electricity, appliances, and a myriad of other things. But how, where does this money come from? It comes from taxpayers.

That’s why I received 44 years of life for attempted murder plus gang and gun enhancements since I was 16 years old, as a juvenile. The path I traveled was set up strategically before I was born to generate wealth that will be coming out of the pockets of the working class citizens to house me in a place like this for the rest of my life.

$100,000 in some odd change to years what it takes to house me here. What if less of this money was used to divert me from prison when I was say 10 years old, and then I ended up on a different path and help others that come from the same neighborhoods as me to miss prison and be diverted to better lives, and then $100,000 of taxpayer dollars wouldn’t be wasted?

As such, if there were more facilities built here in California to educate us youth and less imprisonators here, there will be less criminals. You see, crime is obviously needed to generate wealth here in California. That’s the message is depicted. Come on, use reason and logic.

Taxpayers are being bamboozled. They’re not profiting none from the myriad of prisoners housed with your hard earned money. The Norwegian method of prison is much different. Their recidivism rate is much less than the U.S., and we house much more prisoners than anywhere in the world, and we are far from the biggest country in the world, so why do we have more prisoners than any country?

Come on, ask yourself that question, think about it. It’s because prison generates wealth just like slavery, which is the foundation of this country. Obviously if you were the one benefiting from prison, why would you want all of this imprisonmen to stop? But you are not profiting. You’re actually losing. With half the money it takes to house me here. I could be in college or the military or learning to trade and you will be safe. We need to spend this money from taxes to divert the youth and shut down prisons.

Thank you.

These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.