Videos for week 8 - Prison: Compassion Trauma Circle

 My preconception of inmates depends and is relative to each inmate's situation. Due to each inmate being arrested for different matters and having other traits and purposes that got them arrested it indeed does matter if discussing the inmates on the topic of who they are truly as a person without society possibly being the reason they made had to break the law. I think people end up incarcerated when the act of doing something illegal has a better outcome than doing something legal in the eyes of the potential inmate. I think this due to no one really forgets that the law exists or that actions have consequences, but when the result of something is something you need fairly quickly people will make sacrifices to not only succeed but survive. 

In the video linked for week 8, "Step Inside The Circle" by Fritzi Horstman a compassion trauma leader asks a group of men at a high-security prison a series of questions that reflect on how they were treated pre-incarceration. A theme among these questions was how they were treated amongst family and in their household to see if they were shown love or mistreated and their socioeconomic status. The goal and purpose of the exercise were to take a step forward each time you relate to a question asked. Once done with the questions everyone was visibly closer to each other than the original circumference of the circle. I think that the result of that is a great metaphor mentioned by one of the inmates later in the video during reflections in which he states " Our traumas kept us separated. We were all in a circumference standing apart. But once we begin to acknowledge our traumas publicly, it brought us all closer together" which I find to be a great reflection of our society as well. People are starting to keep to themselves more than ever, especially after the recent pandemic but I think once people realize that what we all went through we went together positive changes can start happening just like how they can in prison. 

I think that if I were to take away anything from this video it would be that there are a lot of good men and women incarcerated as no one inherently comes into this world looking to cause harm, but rather something happened that made them that way. Taking that information I think people could be way more compassionate to inmates as they are trying to do the best they can to survive in this world just like we are they just unfortunately were not shown the correct and safe path to do so.