19th, May 2025
- Black Lawyer
- May 19
- 2 min read
Entry Title: The Cage Was Never Empty
Filed under: Crime, Punishment & Psychological Warfare
Dearest Diary,
It is a truth most bitter and most avoided that the criminal justice system was not built to correct the wrongs of society—only to manage the people it deems unmanageable.
And so, once again, we return to the cage.
Melanated people fill the cells of this nation not because we are more criminal—but because we were always the intended tenants.
The prison was never merely a place. It is a plan. A pipeline. A profit model with a cafeteria.
The polite classes call it “privilege.”I call it infrastructure—laced with malice and maintained with clinical indifference.
For what, pray tell, happens to a person’s mind when it is locked away like a misfiled document?
When time becomes a punishment in itself—dragged out like an old symphony no one requested?
When the food poisons, the silence maddens, and the therapy is offered by someone who thinks trauma can be tamed with worksheets and whispered prayers?
The meat is engineered.
The healthcare is theatrical.
The water comes with disclaimers.
The “rehabilitation” is performative.
And the humanity? Stripped—on arrival.
We do not reform the incarcerated.
We ferment them.
Then, when their sentence is done, we set them loose with a plastic bag and a warning label.
No money.
No healing.
No plan.
And we wonder—why do they return?
Because the system is not broken, darling.
It is exquisitely calibrated to ensure they never truly leave.
Some return to prison.
Most simply carry the prison with them—in their breath, in their posture, in the way they scan a room for exits without realizing it.
Freedom in this country, especially for the Melanated, is not a right.
It is a privilege.
And more often than not, it is revoked without notice.
This is not about justice.
This is about control.
About a system that feeds itself on Black bodies and sells the illusion of rehabilitation while quietly reinforcing the architecture of despair.
It was never about crime.
It was always about containment.
So let’s call it what it is, Diary.
A cage with branding. And an exit with no door.
I remain as ever, permanently outraged at the lack thereof.
Disclaimer: This diary entry is a satirical but sharply accurate account of a system working exactly as it was designed. If your discomfort is rising, good. That means the door just cracked open.
Tag someone who knows we’re not being rehabilitated—we’re being recycled.
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