In the Belly of the Beast

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Jack Henry Abbott was born on January 21, 1944, on a military base in Oscoda, Michigan. Growing up in foster care and living in the under the state laws his whole life Jack Abbot didn't have much of a chance for a normal life. From the time that he was born he was living in the state foster care system. After a short while he was in trouble with the law. As an adolescent he was living in the state juvenile detention center. Jack would be punished because he was just that sort of kid. Due to the fact that everyone knew his past he was punished his whole life. Abbott first was sent to the boys' school because of failure to conform to the foster care home and systems. When he was first sent to prison it was because he had insufficient funds in his account and bounced a check. After he was first placed in a state prison he was then in and out for the rest of his life.

Abbott never finished school at the age of nine he stopped going to school and then never finished the sixth grade. He was then in and out of state penitentiaries for the rest of his life. Except for nine and a half months since he was twelve, which means that he was in jail for about forty-seven years of his life. When he was twenty-six--in 1970--he escaped and was out of jail for about six weeks. He talks about how he would wake up in the middle of the night having bad dreams of prison, while he had escaped. During the first couple pages he talks about how the only real crime he committed was bank robbery during one of the times that he was a fugitive. Jack talks about how he was strip-searched more then once a week. He talks about how he had been poked, touched and inspected in his private parts and his anus. He prays that every time he is strip-searched he...

... middle of paper ...

...e said that he just wanted her to hold him all night.

The treatment that Jack Abbott was given throughout his life is unacceptable for a person that lives in the times of today. He should have been given a fair chance to live his life without the bars put around him. Jack, during the course of his life, was living with a false consciousness about the world that he did not know. Although Jack did have a critical consciousness about his surroundings while he was in jail. Our culture today should not be treating a human being as an animal and not treat him the way that he was treated. Any person in the state systems should not be treated as if they are nothing or nobody even if they crime they committed was murder in the worst kind. There should be a norm or a normal way of treating a person even if they are in a place where they are supervised 24 hours a day.

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