Trek of Transformation

Thursday, October 01, 2009

11:00 PM

Dear Mom:

            Currently I feel sad, but not for me. I feel empathy for these guys. Occasionally I’ll get a very clear glimpse of the heart of one of these guys. It’s painful to see a person face such dire consequences when some of them didn’t even do enough to justify such a punishment.

            It’s not easy to explain what I mean. I can see through the veneer of so called justice and I don’t think the punishment matches the crime at all… not even close. How does a man cope with 20 years prison for making methamphetamines?

            When I was in Florida, I was in a cell with a real nice kid who was addicted to methamphetamines. He only had to be in jail for a couple weeks. My 6 month sentence for fighting with Ruthie was a whole lot longer than his 30 day sentence. Here in LCDC, we have a guy who agreed to 50 years for manufacturing methamphetamines. He even felt like he got an okay deal.

            A homemade lab only makes about an ounce of methamphetamines at a time. Some of these guys have never been in trouble before. All, or nearly all of them are going to be in prison for a very, very long time. One guy came back from court today after agreeing to 9 years for passing bad checks. Mom, these are not big checks and it’s not a lot of checks, either.

            It’s hard for me to know for sure if these guys are hostile toward me at times because I’m a Christian, an “outsider”, or because I only got a 6 month sentence for trafficking crack-cocaine. If I were treated the same way that they are, I would have gotten 5-10 years; probably 7 or 8 years for having as much crack as I had. That’s all they found, but what if they had found everything? I may have been sent away for 20 years, too!

            Ohio would have put me in a 6 month drug program. These guys are not going to ever be able to live a normal life. That option is over for them. The more thought I put into all of this, the more certain I am that I cannot walk away from here and stay gone. Somehow I have to help these guys. If it goes on this way, the inmates will outnumber the people who are free. It probably won’t even take a whole 10 years before this state of Kentucky has more prisons than any other place in the entire world… seriously!

            One man ran (who could blame him?) and the cop (Sapcut) shot him dead – killed him for what? For running away. Look it up. You’ll see the whole story. That cop is still on patrol! The suspect is DEAD and his family is all in pieces over it, Mom.

            God did not spare me from all of this corruption for me to run away from it all and pretend I don’t know about it. I seen it and my heart is grieved because of it. I must help somehow – God help me – let me be of some assistance to these guys. It’s not ever going to go away from me. My heart will always grieve for these guys. I must help them somehow.

Love,

            Neil