I really enjoyed the documentary today on the Angola prison. However, I feel terrible for many of the prisoners who are serving life sentences or close to it. If I were in the position of one of the three men looking at the inmate’s petition for parole, I would feel so much sympathy for this him. I would feel inclined to give him a chance. I know every prisoner would want a chance for parole and it would be incredibly hard for me to choose who gets this opportunity. Maybe this is just me because I am not familiar with seeing tons of these cases, but who knows.
When the man entered the room in front of the three men to try to get parole, it seemed to me that these men already had their minds made up. It was not a surprise to me that he was denied parole because I could already tell so right when he entered the room. With this said, this man wasn’t even given a chance! This is terribly sad because some of the innocent people might be looked upon in the same way.
Did y’all pick up on this in the documentary? What do y’all think?
3 comments:
I definitely agree that I felt sympathetic towards the prisoners cause, however the members of the board are probably desensitized to cases by now. Documentaries like these are meant to shock people. They are created to cause change. Film producers show us their perspective, and hope that we'll willingly accept their views on the situation at hand. I am in no way saying that the corruption shown is a product of the film makers capabilities, but I think that they shed a light on only one side of the prison. The board probably hears from hundreds of prisoners each year, many of whom for certain committed the crime they are locked away for, and most of them probably don't act in the same civil manner that the inmate we saw acted in. They have probably heard of crimes so gruesome that at some point their perception of each prisoner that walks through their door changes and morphs into one whole feeling of, possibly, distrust. The board members jobs are not to feel sympathetic; they are there to determine if people have actually been rehabilitated and are ready for a chance at parole. I am not saying this bias is fair, because it in no way shape or form is, but if the board members were a group of people who felt sorry for every life sentence inmate they heard from then I don't think they'd be very good at their job. Although there are probably a few inmates who have been unfairly punished, there are a lot of inmates in Angola who ripped lives away from families, children, and friends and haven't thought twice about it. I definitely do feel for the inmates who were wrongly imprisoned, and I hope they can find justice in their own individual pursuits, but I also see why the board members act in the manner that they do.
First of all, I thought that the documentary was really well put together. It discussed conditions in Angola while giving detailed profiles on certain inmates and asking them about how they were and how they felt. One inmate who I was particularly fond of was Ashanti Witherspoon. He was sentenced 75 years for armed robbery and had already been in prison for 20 years during the making of the documentary. However, and even in his own words, he seemed like a changed man. He was learned, educated, spoke with and displayed proper etiquette, and overall carried a radiantly positive attitude and was a role model for other prisoners. Thus when I looked him up after watching the documentary, it was no surprise to me that he was given parole in 1999, just a year after the release of the documentary. I think Ashanti is a prime example of how one can reform themselves while in prison.
I recall from listening to the Ear Hustle podcast episode about death row how some of the inmates have changed their entire mentalities and turned their lives around from within prison. The system is definitely stacked against the inmates, as many times they aren't given fair representation or the same degree of trust as someone testifying against them. Life sentences and the death penalty seem to me like condemning a person to being a criminal, and never changing. This seems like the antithesis of what the prison system aims to be. I don't mean that death row inmates are usually not guilty or wrongly convicted, but it's difficult to see them reform themselves where the system has failed only to be denied the freedom promised by their efforts. Also, side tangent since nobody else has brought it up yet: the clown?
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