i went to northern state prison with some people from church and pastor abe - he's a peace officer there. My head is still spinning a little. I came in having no idea what to expect sitting crosslegged in the lobby waiting for the others in my little pink shirt biting my nails. My hair falling around my head in waves. My big class ring. My braces.

Yup, I'm tough.

I feel like a little there is a little cigarette burn on one of the places in me that used to be soft and pink. The guard made a point of telling up that there is no real rehabilitation that really happens here, they're all crazy monsters who don't change. I understand how he could think that, but I refuse to believe thats true. we would walk through the hallways by the cells and the inmates would press their faces againt the window - as if we were a glimpse into the outside world -and yes they would howl at us (the girls at least).

I wasn't scared. I don't know why ,but I was totally unfazed - totally unafraid. There I was, in Newark, face to face with a man who raped an 87 year old woman and then slit her throat. He was 16. Now he's fifty-ish.

We don't think about people in prison. They scare us. They're bad and they don't deserve our niceness or our attention only our scorn. I mean, we live in a system that throws people that we don't know how to deal with away isntead of helping them. In this overcrowded prison most of the inmates have an elementary school education and some are completely illiterate and there are almost no programs in the prison system to educate them. When they get back into the free world what are they going to do with a third grade education except make trouble and end back up in the pen?

This is all really bothering me. I was talking to my mother about it (read: ranting to my mother about it) and she said that if it bothered me so much, go get my little theology degree and be a chaplain or something.

my head hurts. this week has been crazy as hell.