Public Secrets - Third Blog Post

          Public secrets, by Sharon Daniel and Erik Loyer, gives the audience an inside look on the prison-industrial complex in central California. This female correctional facility is the largest correctional facility in the United States. Sharon Daniels is a legal advocate who spent three years collecting information, recorded some of the women inside the system, and allowed them to narrate their experiences while also giving a look at the conditions they were living in. The majority of the general population has no clue about the types of personal or environmental situations these women are put in everyday. This piece of work helps in exposing the secrets of the prison system, and gives those on the outside a better understanding of what actually happens within the prison. The piece is truly compelling both in content and in presentation. The viewer is given the choice to either explore secrets from within the prison and secrets that the women have from their time outside of the prision. Small blurbs of texts from different stories display themselves all over the screen and the viewer must choose which one to pursue by hovering over the text with their mouse and clicking on the text to engage with it. The individual story will begin playing, from there the reader can choose to either listen to another story on the same screen or to look further into other related stories by clicking on a suggested topic within the viewed blurb of text. It also helps in creating different ways one can view and consider the issues brought up in these women's stories. 

          Stories like these that came from a correctional facility in California were unheard of due to a "ban" that prohibited journalists from one-on-one interviews with inmates. The ban also stopped prisoners’ correspondence with the media, and banned the use of cameras, recording devices, and writing instruments in interviews with the media. Also, inmates did not have access to computers, cameras, or any type of media equipment. In fact, Assembly member Tom Ammiano created a bill in 2012 that would have allowed the media access to prisons in California. This bill was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown who stated, “Furthermore, giving criminals celebrity status through repeated appearances on television will glorify their crimes and hurt victims and their families… I agree that too little media access may be harmful, but too much can be as well. This bill gives too much.” In response, Tom Ammiano stated, “Press access isn’t just to sell newspapers. It’s a way for the public to know that the prisons it pays for are well-run" (https://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com).

During the time this piece was published, it was and still is eye opening. In fact, it is especially eye opening to someone who is unaware of all the restrictions these women face. Yes, they are prisoners, but they still deserve some type of basic human rights even though the California justice system thinks otherwise. 

There are so many different stories from all types of women within this piece. If fact, it is hard to believe that everything is true… it is prison culture shock. One women protests that she believes the judicial system has the assumption that women are easier to contain than men. She also witnessed a man with a hefty record and a women who was never gotten in trouble before getting charged with the same exact crime from the same judge.  However, the man got 16 months, whereas the woman got five years. One may ask how something like that makes sense? Another women talks about how correctional officers who do not like an inmate will intentionally try to instigate fights between that inmate and another since the officer is not allowed to physically hit the prisoners. Another woman tells a story of a 23 year old who was arrested for throwing a beer can at a squad car and got sentenced 60 years to life. So many sections of this piece are baffling and start to burn a fire inside of the reader with disgust of how the judicial system is set up.

It is hard to get through all of the stories just because there is an abundance of them, it is sad listening to many of them. The television series ‘Orange is the New Black,” was based off of some of the situations in this piece and personally after watching the television show and reading some of the pieces, I began to make the connections. It is sickening how women in correctional facilities are treated in today's society. The United States also has the largest prison population in the world, and it is because of facilities like this. All of this is mostly based on how inmates are treated… both men and women. There is no opportunity for improvement while incarcerated in which it becomes what is best known as the "revolving door." This is when inmates who are released are more likely to return for committing more crimes because they have not learned any better while in prison.