On the Youth and the California Penal System

After the intentional and deliberate murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., the young African descendants in America became even more
of an endangered people.
There are 166,355 people incarcerated in California’s correctional
facilities. Approximately 55% of those imprisoned are of African
descent. An alarmingly high number of individuals belonging to this
social group have been in and out of penal institutions since childhood.
America calls them either habitual offenders or career criminals. For
many years I have been disappointed tremendously because of the
California judicial-penal system’s use of the term "habitual." It is
hypocritical that this same institution has never offered a sincere
approach to counseling programs for the hundreds of thousands labeled as
habitual offenders. In any other area of human activity that we label
habitual, people are automatically perceived to have lost the strength to
be responsible when it comes to certain activity. The Oxford American
Dictionary defines habit as:

1. A settled way of behaving, something done frequently and almost without
thinking.
2. Something that is hard to give up, especially an addiction to narcotics.

The system labels a type of offender as habitual, yet proceeds to
completely ignore emotional, psychological, and social implications
of that label. In other words, it is like a doctor diagnosing a
patient with a chronic ailment, then doing nothing to help the
patient, not even giving any meaningful, self-help advice. What is
even more tragic is that hundreds of thousands of children and young
teens are emotionally, psychologically, and socially ignored by the
judicial penal systems in the state of California, so that often
their delinquency evolves into adult habitual criminality.
Unfortunately, unsuspecting parents tend to believe that their
children are receiving counseling, etc. during their stays in youth
and penal facilities. For the vast majority of children and teens,
no help is offered. They are merely being isolated from society for
brief, unproductive periods. With no love from the family or
leadership from people in the children’s community, many turn to
crime and become gang members- both for emotional and financial
support.
The judicial penal system’s policies and concerns with successful
rehabilitation of youth and adults is about as responsible as would
be a plastic surgeon’s, who drops a bus of people with burned faces
off at a clinic and leaves them to operate on themselves. A few of
them may succeed at improving their looks, others would become even
more disfigured, however the majority would remain the same, feeling
as though they have no idea where to begin, and therefore left with
an even more debilitating feeling of hopelessness. This is the
racism that exists within the California Dept. of Corrections. Even
correctional officers of African decent, are racially biased against
prisoners of African descent resulting from a long history of
oppression.
I appeal and cry out to all my BPP members in the USA to not allow
our youth’s lives to be in vain to suffer in prison, or die at the
hands of the pigs. We must save our children. It’s my request that
political prisoners/prisoners of war reach out to all of the youth in
prison and the outside world. Remember the young people and the
children are our future.
I welcome all response from people and all my comrades, sisters, and
brothers. So please answer soon. Power to the people with one love,
always in revolution of the mind.

Bobby M. Dixon
NBPP
C-41652, H-207 Lower
P.O. Box 2000 / CMF
Vacaville, CA 95696-2000