NOTE: The views expressed on Prison Lectionary are those of the individual author of each post and do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrators of Prison Lectionary.

by Kwame Toure Kagale

“There is an illusion of central position, justifying one’s own purposes as right and everybody else’s as wrong and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.” – Henri Amiel –

“Kill ’em With Kindness”

I am an inmate in a Virginia correctional facility and I have been in prison for the better part of a quarter of a century and I am shocked by the level of senseless violence that has been occurring in this country lately. Before I came to prison events like the one that took place at Pulse in Orlando, Florida the site of this nation’s worst mass shooting to date was almost unheard of. But now these incidents are so commonplace the main issue of them is often overlooked as we debate the reasons of how such crimes are committed in the first place. And it will not be until we do address what makes a person commit mass shootings will we ever hope to prevent tragedies such as this from ever happening again.

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