Alright. Hi, this is Raymond Jenkins from Corcoran State Prison. And first, I want to say Happy Valentine’s Day. I know that was tomorrow, and I hope every female got what they loved one was able to give them, and hope everybody was blessed.
Today topic would be “Suicide in Prison,’ and the reason why I’m doing this topic, because we’d had a couple suicide in prison, or [unclear] on Black America. It is a big problem, because nobody, nobody ever acknowledge and know that we do have suicide in prison, and the rate is like a full, I think it’s 12%, percentage. So, I want to be clear on that. But we do have guys that come to prison for the first time. They have no knowledge of what’s going on. They have no knowledge. They have never been to jail in their life and when they come into prison, it’s more like a nightmare, and they don’t know how to cope with the society in prison.
So, prison is a different society than from the outside world. In the prison system you have your prison gangs, you have your homosexuals, and you have others. So, when a person comes into the prison system that never, never, experienced none of that, he gets to panic, and he gets paranoid, and he gets schizophrenia, and his way of thinking is not correct. So, his way of thinking is the easy way out. A lot of them cannot handle what they need to do to avoid suicide. They do have practice, but it’s not enough, because peer pressure in prison is one of the biggest things in the prison system. It’s like monkey see monkey do, and you do have influence people that, not a leader, but a follower, and they try to fit in with groups and fit in with things that they wouldn’t do out there.
Nobody’s perfect, but we have a society now that judge, so when they’ve been judged at 18, 19 years old, coming into the prison system, they have no clue, because they have never experienced that. When you easily influence out there in the real world, and when you come in here, you’re going to be easy to influence. This is a big, big monster of a system. This system swallow you up if you definitely close your eyes and close your mind to what’s going on.
It’s like ice cream and cake. Cake doesn’t taste good without the ice cream or the whipped cream and strawberry shortcake; without the strawberry and the whipped cream, the strawberry shortcake, it’s not a strawberry shortcake. So, it’s the same when you, when you bring — when a young, young man or young woman come into the prison system for the first time, we have sharks, and they bait, and the sharks look for bait. It’s like fishing. Without a bait, you can’t get a fish. So, when in the prison system, it’s the same thing. They look for newcomers. They look and they prey on them, and they prey to see who they feel that is new, and according how they act.
So, my thing is that we have to be able to seek out these sharks, and they have not been to be able to. So, I’m looking for any, any feedback on that to say that opinions, and to see what do you think, what needs to be done, and you can write Sacramento. You can write the Secretary of the State. You could write the Attorney General and to speak on it, because you might have a loved one in the prison system their first time, or you might know somebody that have a loved one in the first time they coming to the prison system, so you need to be educated on it.
So, I’m hoping that you feedback now, you can, like I say you can write me at, Mr. Jenkins, CDC number BM-4522, B, excuse me, 4B-3RC58, P.O. Box 3481 Corcoran, California, 93212. Like I said before, you can go on gettingout.com and be able to open up account and you will be able to text me and I will be able to text you back. So, I would like to hear from you and continue this conversation in the next week. That Thursday, I will be talking about the politics. When I say politics pertaining, we have a debate on Biden and Donald Trump, and that’s going to be a good topic, because in the prison system, politics, when we watch it, it’s really heavy. So, I wanted to say, be safe. Thank you. And enjoy your day. Enjoy the rest of your day. And I talk to you next week. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
