Opinion | Elderly and Imprisoned: 'I Don't Count It as Living, Only Existing.' – The New York Times
The C Yard on the California Establishment for Males state jail in Chino.Credit score…
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Ms. Floyd writes about youngsters’s rights and restorative justice. Mr. Rodríguez is a photojournalist who has reported extensively on incarceration, gangs, the police and re-entry.
On a transparent day in March 2023, the snowy peaks surrounding the California Establishment for Males in Chino have been seen. Cleveland Lindley stood on a inexperienced patch within the jail yard, taking within the view.
He was carrying darkish wraparound glasses and utilizing crutches for assist as a result of he had overexerted himself throughout a current go to from household. At age 53, he’s thought of aged within the jail system. That’s as a result of incarceration accelerates ageing.
“My physique don’t work the best way it used to, my thoughts don’t work prefer it was, and it’s intimidating,” Mr. Lindley informed us. “Persons are at all times searching for that edge, that leg up.”
Mr. Lindley has spent a lot of the previous 28 years out and in of solitary confinement. 4 years in the past, he requested a switch to this yard, which homes former gang members and different susceptible residents. Joseph Rodríguez, a photojournalist, and I had gone to Chino to satisfy residents like him, dwelling out their twilight years behind bars.
In these different yards there was solely violence, manipulation, politics. I might by no means sit alone. Now I can benefit from the solar popping out, the mountains, the clouds. I’m studying about compassion — one thing I by no means realized in my 53 years on this earth. I by no means considered no person. It was at all times about me. Strolling over individuals to get what I would like, whether or not it’s a excessive or a greenback. — Cleveland Lindley
On the loop circling the yard, Frankie Morales, 71, was strolling laps at a gradual tempo. He has been incarcerated for many of his life, first in juvenile halls, then in state and federal prisons. He will get particular meals on a tray due to a abdomen situation, and when his again acts up, he makes use of a cane to stroll. He informed us that again within the day, he was generally cuffed to a four-metal-post mattress in a freezing-cold cell. “That was how we have been speculated to get higher and as a substitute we acquired loopy,” he mentioned.
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