'Victimization rampant in Prison!' – Inmate Shanoviah Thomas
“Up there is college… what you don’t know you will learn,” said Prison inmate Shanoviah Thomas.
Thomas is currently serving a ten year sentence for manslaughter by reason of provocation involving a domestic violence matter. She told the girls that prison life is no place for any human being much less a woman.
The prison guards for Ms Thomas while at the Follow the Movement (FTM) ‘I am a Lady’ workshop yesterday October 16, 2014, were a female officer and the head of Her Majesty’s Prison himself, Superintendant of Prison Mr David Foot and before she made certain statements Ms Thomas bowed her head for a short moment, swallowed hard and said, “In prison I might get victimized for saying this but I will say it.”
“Prison life is not nice. Go there and you gain weight, you lose your hair because of stress, you look old, it’s not nice. Whatever you could do to prevent coming to prison I advise you to do it. I wish I had somebody speaking to me like I am speaking to you now. To teach me what I didn’t know or to show me what I didn’t know was there,” said Ms Thomas.
She said that in prison you have no friends. “People does be fake to your face,” she said to a loud round of applause from the hall of young ladies. “The Officers, sometimes you don’t even know they are telling bad things about you, or telling lies on you.”
According to the inmate things are usually falsely written in their file that can prevent inmates from moving on with their lives easily after they would have completed serving their time. “Even if you change, if you were unruly, rough, bad… If you come out and you change people don’t believe that you change… so you are automatically a liar,” she said.
She said that women in prison are extensively violated and in no instance do they have any privacy. “When you go to bathe the prison officers could come and pull the shower curtain and looking at you. They have the authority to do that.”
The smell of one’s feces has to be borne by your room mate if you have one, she described. “The officers can come into your room at anytime, NO privacy, none.”
“Don’t mind I look fat, this is bread, bread and cheese, bread and spam, bread and tuna, bread and corn beef, bread and anything in a can. When you live in a can you eat from a can.”
She continued, “In prison if you are not liked for whatever reason, you are victimized. As an inmate you are automatically a liar. It doesn’t matter who you speak to everybody watch you as a liar and you are known as a cockroach, what you say don’t matter,” Thomas said.
Visitations rights are also a challenge for prisoners according to Ms Thomas who said that if you are not one to be liked by whichever prison officer that is on duty when a visitor comes, that person is usually turned back without seeing the inmate no matter how far they would have travelled to see them.
“And you have nobody to complain to because it’s the officers that are doing those things to you,” she said.
She challenged the girls to respect and honour their mothers as parents only want what’s best for them. “You think you could talk to your mother for ten minutes once a week, you seeing your mother everyday right? And some of you annoyed – oh my mother always nagging, she always doing this she always doing that. In prison you wish you had your mother… in prison your mother words don’t count, they can’t do nothing for you, absolutely nothing.”
She was firm in telling the girls, “You have control over your life now, don’t let prison control your life, don’t ever come up there for the prison to control your life… you cannot do what you want, you cannot wear what you want.”
She told them to enjoy life of being able to wear their shirt skirts and nice clothing because that’s not allowed in prison. “Weave is contraband in prison, really… a thong panty is illegal in there…” she said.
Stressing how challenging it is in prison she said, “Up there I see big man cry, big man go crazy.”
Her parting words to the girls were, “Think about where you want to be in the next four five years from now and don’t let it be prison, please I asking you all, I begging you all, please don’t let it be prison.”
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33 Responses to “'Victimization rampant in Prison!' – Inmate Shanoviah Thomas”
Our life relects the choices we make.
This is true for Ms Shonovia and also the deceased and each prisoner up in Balsum.
We are all where and how we are because of the choices we made knowingly and unknowingly.
Love and blessings to Ms. Thomas. May God use you as a vessel while in prison.
Shanoviah I pray that God will continue to give you the strength to press on. God is a forgiving and merciful God. Never let anyone make you think you are less than nothing. David was a murderer, Abraraham was an adulterer and a liar, Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, yet God love them with an everlasting love. He died so that you and all of us can be free in the name of Jesus! continue to be an example. Pray wityout ceasing and ask God to give you that peace which passeth all understanding. The memories may linger of the crime done, it may hurt when you remember, you may question your self over and over why, why.... or If I had known, but that's gone, press forward, lift your head up high and count it a joy that you have a God who love you like no other no matter what others may think of you. He that is without sin, cast the first stone. You are special and you are a great woman. I wish you the best.
I am sure your words will sink deep in many of us who are on the outside looking in.
God bless and favor you...
Please educate me! Where in the book of Law does it state that a prison officer may deny the inmate to see their visitors based on the officers personal feelings towards that inmate the "I don't like you, so this is how it will be" clause. Where does it say that they are allowed to write false notes in an inmates file? Why is it that they are allowed to pull back their shower curtains? To find what weapon may I ask?? A loaded ak-vagina?! Search them before they shower (I didn't say feel them up now), search the bathrooms regularly for any prison made weapons. But what is the need to see them showering??? Nothing but a perverted, rapist pig attitude right there! and we allow this fowl behavior because they are prisoners?? THEN write it in the Acts please! Let it be written that officers are allowed to be pigs in uniforms!
ersonal problems and take it out on the inmates, they treat the inmates like children. The situation at the prison needs to be looked into. Basic human rights should be afforded to prisoners, they are put in prison as punishment not to be pubished. There was an incident where an ofdicer went into an inmates cell in the middle of the night and beat him with a baton and the was swept under the rug. The officers thief the inmates money when they are supposed to keep it safe for when he inmates come out.
Isn't that how u became involved in the system?
All these abuses and u never reported_blogged,complain?
Why now
Being allowed much freedom...internet,Facebook,cellphones,drugs but never a whisper about Shonovia,s allegations. Interesting...collaboration from trustworthy and reliable sources otherwise wind wind go away.
In this life we are victims of the choices we make..we crenate our reality.
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Girl go pray for k....g a human