JULY 4 AND TEXAS PRISON CONDITIONS
The Declaration of Independence is especially relevant to efforts to transform prisons into public agencies that promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. An incarcerated person has rightly or wrongly been deprived of their liberty. Responsibility for that person has been assigned to the state. When that state fails in its responsibility to protect the life of those in its care, it is the right and the duty of the incarcerated, their families, and taxpayers who subsidize this “system”, to insist on change.
“ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…..”
Incarcerated individuals are dying when they have not been sentenced to death. Prison staff are harmed as well by unsafe conditions, as are the families of each. There are multiple causes:
1: Super-heated prisons due to lack of air-conditioning.
2: Hopelessness due to excessive sentences and extended periods in solitary confinement.
3: Helplessness because of lack of resources to legally challenge their conviction and sentence.
4: Inadequate mental and physical healthcare.
The Governor has not shown a willingness to effectively address those and other preventable causes of injury and death. These issues have been clear as day for decades. What has been lacking are bold, Texas-style solutions. Just as the Declaration says, when leadership “becomes destructive”, the need for change is self-evident. In the absence of leadership from the top, the responsibility shifts to those on the bottom, the public, to ramp up the pressure.