Normally I share a lot of stuff from my Adopted Dad and Groot.
But today a poem came across my feed from Prison Journalism Project author A.D. Hawkins, a Navy veteran incarcerated in California.
It’s heartbreaking. It speaks to the complete disservice by courts without veteran’s court initiatives.
People who have served our country and come back with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other health impacts deserve respect and understanding.
They deserve evidence-based outcomes with rehabilitation rather than scorn.
Measures of prosecutorial and court success should not be how many cases are rammed through; it should be by how many diversion programs they have, how many people they have helped, how much money they have saved rather than wasted in the pomp and circumstance of wasteful court hearings.
None of it, should be like this.
Want to support independent prison journalists?
Please consider donating to Prison Journalism Project here.
Thank You for Your Service
Children would smile, adults would shake my hand,
in my uniform, I felt like Superman.
Treated with respect both home and abroad,
things I took for granted, now shining through the fog.
Remembering why I joined, to make my daughter proud,
how the tides have turned, look where I’m at now.
How could this have happened, my arrest record was zero,
causing my family pain, when I was once their hero.
Never would I think, that this would be my fate,
15 years in prison, for my first mistake.
PTSD in EOP, hand feeding me my pills,
went from giving orders, to learning coping skills.
Valor once displayed is nowhere to be found,
knee pushed in my back, face pressed into ground.
What the future holds, this thought now makes me nervous,
incarcerated vets this is the state, saying thank you for your service.
This article first appeared on Prison Journalism Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
