Code 66

Did you know that suicide rates among prisoners are consistently higher than the general population? In 2018, there were 346 suicides in state and federal prisons, with a rate of 22 per 100,000 prisoners. Shockingly, suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails, accounting for 31% of all jail deaths in the same year. In this episode Dawan Ingram speaks on some of the issues affecting incarcerated people and their familys.

Episode Transcript

(00:26):
This is crazy prison stories, life, what you're making. But a lot

(01:00):
of people don't make it much.They in the world does make believe,
and this is something that I'm makingup. I've been on the road and
I'm almost dead. It's crazy becauseyou're just waking up. Live a life
you don't have to live. Ipreferre to just change it up, life
form, not to be down ina thousand times. It's an understatement to
stays tough. That's the surgery takingover. But people are already thinking up,
care less about what to think.A lot of stories, y'all making

(01:22):
up details, y'all don't need toknow. Lots lifts. I ain't speaking
up fell back from I know mywork for a lot, and I've seen
another This is brick city face manfrom New Juried State Prison. I've been

(01:47):
down ten years and invest advice toanyone should say he too, is don't
go to prison, avoided at allcosts as you can. I was already
locked up three years in accounting beforeI got the New Jersy State Prison in
twenty sixteen. Life paper with afew curry balls in the reality checks.
My father died a few months afterI got here. And at the time
you didn't really speak for like aweek or two. But luckily I was

(02:08):
able to go to his feeling fromdown here with two police such cords.
But at the time, what Ididn't know was I had to pay for
it out of my own pocket.So the jail they took seven hundred dollars
on my JPay account all that onetime. The prison literally left me with
like a few dollars to my name. And basically, when you don't have

(02:28):
a job, they pay you thirtydollars a month. So the thirty dollars
thirty dollars a month that I startedmaking one wasn't even close enough to survive
off forget what I needed, soI had no twice, but it depend
on my family and my girl atthe time. But imagine how many people
down here don't have any support.Some dudes is walking around with holes in
the shoes, literally walking on theground, looking like bumbs on the street.

(02:52):
And I'm sure most people who havenever been in jail like so well,
he committed to Crown why should Ikid And a simple answer to that
question is you should here because theamount of people sitting in the New Jersey
State Prison who are innocent and risdiculous. Your taxpayer money is going to corrupt
cops locking people well from murders thatthey didn't commit, rivalries that they didn't
commit, all types of crimes,rap any problems. To think of its

(03:13):
people down here that's innocent of thatcrime with evidence to prove it. So
that could be your family, Thatcould be your brother, that could be
your father. So it matters.It matters that man is dying in prison
every day when they could be contributingto making society a better place. They
could be out there raising their kids, actually being a role model and making
and helping the communities deal with gunviolence and cope with all his mental health

(03:36):
at the wealthest dealerment right now.So more and more, at or more
often we turn on the news,we see another man or another woman released
from prison after twenty five years fora crime they didn't commit. Some people
respent over forty years in prison beforethey get exonerated and they get released.
Then when they let them go,what do they do? They give them
some money in some cases, butthen where it changes to prevent the cookie

(04:01):
judges, these cookie prosecutors and detectedfrom taking a man's life or whatever for
whatever reason might So you got wereally got to sit and ask the the
hard questions, and everybody, let'slisten to this. You need to ask
that the self, the hard question. What are you doing to help stop
and fix this problem in your state? What are you going to help sixty

(04:23):
problem in New Jersey? Why isnobody being held accountable for the corruption in
New Jersey. The effect that thesystem has on people family's mental health is
decta mental and it's very significant becauseas we see mass shootings is increasing,
all this craziness is increasing as adirect result of mental health, of bad
mental health. So like when Idecided to go to trial, my grandfriend

(04:47):
at the time just knew I wascoming home, My family knew I was
come home. Everybody was positive.Everything was looking good. They reviewed the
evidence. There was no evidence toprove I did anything. Witnesses actually took
the stand and said I was innocent. So they started making plans about Willy's
going to grow, and they startedbuying furniture, they started buying clothes.
They started making all these plans thinkingthat I was coming home because it was

(05:10):
no evidence. Everything was good untilthe day I lost trial, then she
had a mental breakdown. Everybody wasdealing with depression and it just kept getting
worse, and they still might bedealing with that to this day and not
even realize it. It's so muchuntreated founder that people don't know that they're
dealing with. They start off eventsthat happening in our life, such as

(05:30):
witnessing a loved one lose foul andget sound duty for something they didn't do,
like all of this stuff played apart in what's going on in society.
So eight months after my father died, another close friend of mine,
who I considered the brother, wasmurdered. It's a person I was with
every day on the street. Hedid everything together. He's like a brother
to me. So I just feltlike my life was on a one way

(05:51):
roller coaster going down and the moongI spent the prison, the more I
understood that if I didn't put mylife in perspective to be proactive about uplifting
myself and stending my own money toreinvesting myself and rehabilitate myself, that I
would become a page animal like somany other people that I see every day,
with nothing to live for, nohope, no family nothing, So

(06:16):
people may wonder how do they dealwith their circumstances and the as they do
drugs. A lot of people gethigh, they get how to get by.
There's no real rehabilitation put in placeby the prison. They too busy
focused on on how to make ourlives worn. A little bit of freedom
that we are entitled to by law, these hardiest people still want to take

(06:39):
that away. They put rules inplace to prevent it from getting books,
They prevented from getting law, liveberry to learn the law. They try
to take our recreation. They tryto prevent our family from coming to visits.
I remember at one point in time, for a sea months they had
prisoner's families outside and the freezing coldin the tent for visitation. These are

(07:00):
are not people that committed crimes.These are older people. These are people
mother's, people's people's. Aren't people'sbabies out there coming to visit just to
make life a little bit better fortheir loved ones who's locked up. So
where's the humanity? And that Thehopelessness I see every day is increasing and
more and more people trying to committo suicide. Every time I head cold
sitty six, all I can thinkis this is the jail fault. What

(07:25):
is they doing? How are theylooking at this? So these is the
deasity all need to think about whenwe think about somebody that's incarcerated or somebody
like losing foudow of me convictings,these things that they deal with on a
daily basis is unbelievable, Like theaverage person wouldn't even believing type of things
that going in the gilm. Sothat's my stuffy