Reading Rashad

Rashad El is a poet who writes a collection of insightful poems from his cell in Jefferson City Correctional Center reflecting on his life experiences in order to make others aware of the challenges incarcerated individuals face both inside and outside of prisons. 

“Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

These questions that Rashad El repeatedly asks throughout his poem, Invisible Me, most likely run through the minds of the two million people who are currently incarcerated in the United States today. Throughout the poem, El is struggling between trying to do better while contending with the racial stereotypes that society has placed on him as a Black man who is incarcerated, which subjects him to face systemic invisibility. 

When people hear the words “prisoner” or incarcerated, they immediately think of violent characteristics society associates with a criminal, which ultimately leads to individuals being discriminated against based on structural and perceived stigma. In doing so, society dismisses the mistreatment of prisoners within and outside of prisons. 

Although many nations have adopted the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners to ensure humane treatment of prisoners, human rights violations take place in prisons or prison-like facilities (detention centers, mental institutions) every day.  Overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, sexual abuse, lack of medical care/necessities, solitary confinement and captive labor are just a few challenges that the incarcerated population has to face. 

Rashad El sums this up the feelings this evokes for him as he writes “Or am I just your circus freak that’s caged; mistreated; paid the cheapest wage and expected to be displayed when there is a tour?”

This is even more concerning considering the justice system has been proven to be racially and economically biased time and time again. Rashad El acknowledges this injustice when describing his eagerness to be better but expressing how he is ignored because he is “still that colored boy that fits every cop’s description of who robbed the victim just because of my skin’s darker pigment, even if it’s not consistent with the real truth”

The majority of prisoners are either people of color, of low socioeconomic status, or mentally ill. People of color are five times more likely to be stopped by the cops than a white person. People who are arrested and are unable to afford an attorney may settle for a plea bargain, unfair sentencing or an attorney that may not adequately handle the case. One in five prisoners have been arrested for drug offenses. There are people who have life sentences just for possession of a substance alone (Prison Policy Initiative). In the New York Justice system, people who aren’t convicted may be held in prison for years until they can have their time in court. 

Historically, mass incarceration of people of color and low socioeconomic status followed the abolition of slavery. Loitering and begging laws were created intentionally to coerce freed slaves to return to labor at their former plantations. Michelle Alexander often refers to Mass Incarceration as the present day slavery or Jim Crow in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander writes that “the vast majority of people convicted of crimes will never integrate into mainstream white society. They will be… denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit.” (Pg. 231) 

More than twenty-five percent of people experiencing homelessness report being arrested for activities that are a direct result of their homelessness, like loitering, sitting, lying down, or sleeping in public. (Reentry and Housing Coalition) 

National research suggests that up to fifteen percent of incarcerated people experience homelessness in the year before admission to prison. And city- and state-level studies of homeless shelters find that many formerly incarcerated people rely on shelters, both immediately after their release and over the long term. (US Bureau of Justice)

Rashad El makes his poem more powerful by bringing readers attention to a bigger problem that has stemmed from these inequities, the prison industrial complex, which makes the incarcerated human commodity (http://www.realcostofprisons.org/writing/key-human-commodity.pdf )\showing that mass incarceration is “present day slavery”

“Because I feel mute; they tried to make Rashad a mime; just a walking dollar sign that got confined with a lot of time” 

Rashad El understands the psychological toll one faces when held to stereotypes that causes you to be overlooked  which can escalate if they have a particular illness or trauma in their history (A Conscious Rethink).

These marginalized groups are often criminalized, disregarded and oppressed which can lead to an array of problems including identity crises, mental illness and even drug abuse.This is concerning when taking into account the statistics of incarcerated individuals experiencing these problems. There is growing recognition of the extent to which “mass incarceration” in the United States both reflects and participates in the structuring of race inequality in contemporary society generally, and in health in particular (Alexander, 2012; Bobo & Thompson, 2010; Foreman, 2012; Schnittker, Massoglia and Uggen, 2011).

About 30% of people who are chronically homeless also have mental health conditions. About 50% have co-occurring substance use problems. (Harm Reduction Coalition)

The number of people experiencing “serious psychological distress” in jails is high, yet one in four percent of people in federal prisons reported not receiving any mental health care while incarcerated: 66% + In state prisons: 74% (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/mental_health/)

Rashad El leaves us with a more pressing problem. Though we are aware of these problems, why do we constantly ignore the voices who have experienced first-hand the injustices of the system?  To open his poem, Rashad El asks:  “Or have you chosen not to listen to someone locked in prison who’s fought the system; in opposition for ten years flat?”

By choosing to not see these individuals, are we shutting our eyes to social problems that compound and get worse without addressing them?