“When I was getting into my car, the federals, I just saw that they came from all directions, and they stopped me…”
In the blink of an eye, Minerva Pascual’s life changed completely 10 years ago.
“My case began with a drug conspiracy case… I grew up with my mom, my dad, my sister… I grew up in Washington Heights and in my mind, if you sell drugs, it’s a different thing, you’re touching it, you are selling it. I really didn’t know about a conspiracy, and my dad always said don’t hang out Minerva with those people that something is going to hit you, and I: what’s going to hit me, if I’m in a car, that’s theirs, that’s not it’s mine.”
Pascual says that they never found drugs on him, and he didn’t even know what was happening.
“They put the handcuffs on me, and in my mind I knew that I had no drugs in the car, what did I have? I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what is happening and they checked my car, when they checked the car, they found my cousin’s ID and that’s when they told the person she was with.”
After a trial and without having experience with the legal system and not knowing how to defend herself, she was found guilty of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and sentenced to ten years in prison.
“These systems are made for men, not for women, when they arrested me that night, I was the only woman on the line with men, the only woman, so then they take you to a cell, they take your clothes off cut and they give you your prison uniform.”
She explains that her process was long, hard and she did not understand it… She was even separated and isolated for more than 6 months.
“I remember that when I entered it was winter, when I came out, the grass was already outside…. When they tell you that you stay inside for 23 hours and say one hour outside, you don’t stay outside for an hour, you stay outside for an hour in another cell like they keep the dogs.”
There is an urgency to end solitary confinement in New York prisons, despite the passage of the HALT law, which prohibits this practice, hundreds of inmates continue to be subjected to extreme isolation.
“We believe that it is something that should be part of the past and for this reason we have advanced with Congresswoman Cory Bosch, a series of initiatives, including the bill that seeks to end solitary confinement,” says Congressman Adriano Espaillat.
The trauma of isolation in prisons persists years after release, increasing mental health problems and also the level of suicide among prisoners.
“In general, these sequelae of depression and anxiety tend to last five years longer than normal. This trauma experienced in prisons, in general, is really, as the word says, very traumatic, where everything really comes off. experienced and everything learned”, says psychologist Karina Rieke.
After serving her sentence, Minerva is part of an organization that helps women impacted by the prison system to continue their higher education, she was able to graduate and now she is waiting for her diary to be returned, so she can write a book and motivate others to fight for their dreams.
2023-08-05 12:34:00
#systems #men #women #exinmate
