I just received your issue on suicide rates in California prisons. Thank you for drawing attention to another one of California's dirty secrets. I am an inmate at CMF-Vacaville, which supposedly has programs for inmates that have attempted suicide.
My story is not unique - as a first time offender, I was arrested and charged with crimes that would have resulted in a 300 years to life sentence. Recognizing my old capitalist life of leisure was over, I tried to take my own life. The country's reaction to this was to keep me in solitary confinement in a cell with nothing but a toilet. I was naked, cold, without glasses or any reading material for over 58 days. I would compare this treatment with the worst any other nation can dish out.
The CDC's treatment plan is to keep me out of any jobs (I'm a security risk due to my lengthy sentence); produces procedures to prevent me using the lousy "library;" provides contact with a psychiatrist every 3 months for 1 minute; dispenses medication like a winning slot machine; and then wonders why I would prefer death by lethal injection to this existence.
I try to provide a purpose and meaning to my life, but the state does not want any of its convicts to improve themselves or society. It is now very clear to me that we are pawns of a massive political network designed to keep the populace dump and numbed. I used to be an extremely active liberal political activist involved in local politics. Now, I can see how easy it is for our "system" to shut down speech and ideas that are contrary to the dogmatic, religious theocracy that is dominant in this country.
Thank you for providing a voice of reason and shining a light into the dark recesses of California's own Gulag Archipelago.
- a California prisoner, November 2005