Member-only story
Do Over-Crowded US Prisons Make for a Ready Army of Cannon Fodder?
Russia recently scoured its prison system for inmates willing to go to Ukraine and serve as cannon fodder. The prisoners were told that if they fought for six months and survived, they would be freed from the war and prison.
“Russian prisoners were lucky to be offered an opportunity to go and fight. He felt that any prisoner in America’s prisons, given the chance to remain in prison or go and fight on a front, would jump at the chance to fight.”
One of my family members, who has spent the last 13 of his life in and out of the system, expressed this “desire” to me recently.
“Most are going to either die inside or outside in some violent way, so why not take out some of the enemies and also live a little before it is your time.” He is only 30 and it pains me to hear him speak in such a way. “To live a little,” is what he called it. It sickens me to think that he and many others in U.S. prisons would consider going to a better life somehow.
He also told me about the white bread. They eat a lot of white bread in prison. Like in any institutionally-run kitchen, the cheap, life-less bread containing almost no nutritional value is good at filling up…
