Jimmy Santiago Baca's story of his imprisonment is, in fact, a demonstration of the total failure of the entire system of which prisons are a part. That is not a failure of that system to "serve" Jimmy or others like him, or the broader society of which they and all of us are a part. Rather it is failure of the system at issue to do exactly what it is designed to do, even if there were never any conscious designers. It is the failure to that system to disempower those to whom it applies itself.
Read moreThe Power of Non-Compliance
Jimmy Santiago Baca found freedom while confined in an isolation cell in Arizona’s Yuma Prison. He found it in learning simply to refuse to comply with the orders of his jailers, merely ignoring them instead.
Read moreLiberating Imprisonment
Those who erect prisons and then lock people up within them may, altogether irrespective of the prison-builders' own intentions, end up liberating the very persons they have so imprisoned. Those whom such prisons are designed to hold captive may, through that very captivity, find themselves set free at last--inalienably so: never again at risk of being held captive by any captors. Henceforth, their capacity will always exceed their captivity, springing open their prison doors, no matter how tightly locked they may remain.
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