"the Voice Of A Prisoner"

Dear Sir:

As an inmate at the Southern Ohio Penitentiary at London, Ohio, 1 wish to comment on the present criminal situation. It seems that people on the outside tend to associate one type of people as being the people that inhabit our Prisons. One type of people, a notorious breed without any consideration or compassion for others in their heart. The fact is, convicts who are in prison because they are planned and deliberate "crooks", with the sole intention of living off of others to make life easier for themselves, these people are gravely in the minority. Most prisoners are really just people like me and people like you. People, who have acted irrationally at some point in time, only because they lacked the capacity to do otherwise, so often due to plain frustration and bitter discouragement. This is not to say that being frustrated discouraged, depressed, or financially deprived justifies crime. Whether or not one could understand these factors as a motive for crime, I suppose could - depend on whether one is rich or poor, needy or wealthy, content or uncontent with life, perhaps black or white. But at any rate, it is a bitter reality that most of us here are prisoners only because of our inability to cope with those factors at one point in time. But the one basic ingredient needed for most prisoners and myself to be able to deal with those factors so that we may function in society is the plain and simple need to be known, the need to be liked, need to be understood, need to be loved, and the need to be cared for. And these needs could be fulfilled for any one of us by any one of you.

Sincerely, Virgil Lumpkin No. 136099

Box 69, London, Ohio 43140