Absence of Light is a project created in collaboration with incarcerated people at Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York. This is an account from Absence of Light Columnist Clifford Graham, who recently transferred to Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York. In this miniseries within Absence of Light, Graham describes the paradoxes he sees within the prison system.

Water shares the good and bad qualities of the strata through which it flows, and man, those of the climate in which he is born. The current climate in today’s society is moving as fast as light. This message is urgent or else one finds himself trapped in an abyss. 

The current climate in today’s prison society is also moving faster than it has in generations, with few bills discussed, a sprinkle of legislation and a lot of disappointments coded with futuristic hope of change. This narrative — this paradox — I am about to reveal to you is presented with that hope of change that someone reading may be moved to enforce that change. 

A very wise man said that, short of the multiplication table, there is no truth and no fact which must be proved over again, as if it had never been proved from time to time. Criminal justice reform has made surprising advancements in today’s realm, causing those in opposition to desperately find pathways to counter its accomplishments, creating kilometers of mazes. 

Many of us who are trapped in these illusionary mazes, looking back, had we been shown other options, we’d stop whatever it was we were engaged in cold turkey to rome those open pathways. Making matters even more trivial, those who oppose reform have taken shelter under the current pandemic, abusing its emergency measures in all walks of life if you take notice. 

For the courts, judges — having the power over life and liberty — confronted with statutory and constitutional issues denied defendants relief that the law affords them. Lawyers, exhausted over pressing to have their clients’ cases heard, collapse from overwhelming dedication. District attorneys, having home field advantage, relish in the delays that the pandemic has created.

For the Department of Corrections, those in charge of running these prisons and institutions will later realize that their negligence could have been sharply avoided.

Those that they have employed to oversee their operations will also later realize that taking advantage of their bosses negligence was a low blow that created one of the most catastrophic conditions inside the prison industrial complex that man has seen in generations. 

To the police departments who think that the world is against them, only if you knew how far you are from the truth. Your positions have caused your minds to think that you are superior to the ones you are there to guide towards a productive life. A disease that history has shown is so hard to eradicate. 

So, this is a call to all those in positions to make a change. Where are you?

Cliff Graham, # 15-B-2973

Syracuse, New York.

Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York.

I can be reached at JPay-Inmate Tablet Program via email for any opinions, comments or wise counsel.

Published on October 3, 2021 at 8:51 pm