It’s Sunday, 19th October 2025

This morning, I made an unusual decision to return to bed after 8 am. I’d been up since 6, reasoning through life, and felt tired enough to try dozing with the television on. The first thing suggested to me was a 2025 documentary, The Alabama Solution. I pressed play, and what I saw shattered the quiet of my Sunday morning.

I can’t believe that in my lifetime, I would watch a documentary clearly showcasing human rights abuses, only to see them reasoned away and justified. It struck a deep and familiar chord. It reminded me of my own childhood abuse, which was justified with the notion that “that’s how black children are raised”—that physical and mental abuse is normal, and that I must have done something to warrant it. More than once, those closest to me suggested I deserved it or was partly to blame. A small minority saw it and called it out; others pretended it didn’t exist. At fifty, I now know they were complicit through their actions and inaction.

I used to think my abuse was a private story. But The Alabama Solution held up a mirror, showing me the same patterns on a global stage: the willingness to look away, to blame the victim, to believe that some people ‘deserve’ what they get. The complicity of those closest to me was the deepest wound. I see that same complicity in all of us when we accept a brutal status quo.

From My Living Room to Alabama’s Prisons: The Logic of Blame

The documentary exposed the engine of this system. In one scene, Steven’s mother, a poor white woman, explains to a poor white man that her son was killed by prison guards. Immediately, the man justifies it: “do the crime, do the time.” He effectively blamed her son for his own murder.

This is the core of the problem. It’s not just the guards in the tower; it’s the person next to you who believes the person in the tower is right. It’s the belief that a ‘path’ justifies a death. We are all complicit when we accept this logic. Steven was a petty criminal, guilty by association—a legal net that captures many, even here in the UK. The guards, meant to protect and serve, have been given a licence to beat, rape, and kill.

When “Justice” Mirrors the Crime

This logic doesn’t stop at the prison walls; it infects the very concept of justice. Years ago, I saw a Facebook post about a child abuser who turned himself in. Within a short time in prison, “jungle justice” was delivered. The article showed him with multiple wounds; it appeared he had been stabbed and raped.

I ask you: How is that justice? What is the difference between the crime and the punishment when both are rape and murder?

The terrifying outcome is that the men who enact this ‘rough justice’ will one day be our neighbours. The prison system is a factory that takes broken people and returns dangerous ones. We see this in rumours from my own past, like the story of a woman’s boyfriend who was released from jail, only to be accused of a brutal rape and sent back. This isn’t abstract; it’s about whether people re-entering our communities are being healed or hardened.

And the pipeline starts early. I recall a official proudly announcing she would use the education budget to build two more expensive prisons. At that point, the pretence is over. This is not about rehabilitation; it is a direct investment in the poverty-to-prison pipeline, a modern-day workhouse system designed to manage the poor and keep the wealthy wealthy.

A Cycle We Refuse to Break: From Biblical Times to Modern Britain

This is not a new problem. Even as a child, I wondered what made the executioner different from the criminal. History shows us that societies have always exported their problems, building new nations with the labour of slaves and criminals sent to places like Australia and America.

We aren’t learning. We are just finding new jails to hide our problems in.

We see this today in the UK’s offer to fund a state-of-the-art jail in Jamaica to repatriate criminals, a move that feels like a return to colonial control, making a nation economically reliant on its former oppressor.

This global hypocrisy is staggering. I remember reporters in Bosnia witnessing men ushered to a canteen for a show of humane treatment, while atrocities happened off-camera. All countries commit atrocities in the shadows while expecting others to behave humanely. As a child of migrants, I’ve seen how people label others as “barbaric,” all while their own history includes picnics at lynchings and postcards of humans being fed to crocodiles. The corrupt logic of beating deviance out of someone is itself the most deviant behaviour.

The Personal Toll and a Refusal

This all leads me back to myself at fifty, hearing my mother list my faults, using stories from my own life to justify my struggles. It made me question everything I was taught about judgement. I realised we are often imprisoned for decades by past mistakes, never free to explore life on our own terms.

We, the human race, condone abuse in our families and make excuses for inhumane treatment in our institutions. We claim to fight for freedom abroad while allowing torture in our own cities. It is a profound contradiction. I remember as a teenager watching Midnight Express, a chilling cautionary tale that shows how easy it is to externalise the problem—to believe that brutal justice is something that only happens “elsewhere,” in less enlightened places. This allows us to convince ourselves that our own system is just, educated, and refined. But if we treat the most vulnerable and condemned among us with such brutality, then that polished self-image is a lie. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As for my personal experience with Turkey, I travelled there with my sister for my 40th birthday and then took two further trips on my own, returning to the same hotel. They were the best holidays I’ve ever had outside of a predominantly Black country.

I went during the spring for my second visit and returned again for another birthday. They were lovely experiences, and even though I travelled alone, I never felt alone. The Turkish people have a dignity I deeply appreciated. The staff don’t beg and don’t work for tips; it was a refreshing experience. Of course, tips are given, but the staff at the hotel I stayed in weren’t encouraged to solicit them. I felt genuinely looked after and welcome.

I admit on that first visit I was anxious. It was just myself and my sister travelling, and not knowing anything about the country except for the film Midnight Express and general media portrayals, I was concerned about our safety. But after three trips, I can confidently say I would go on my own again. I miss it, and only finances have prevented a return.

The only racism I noticed came from a German couple when my sister and I boarded a local bus. The locals were incredibly friendly, motioning for us to sit down and making us feel comfortable. The German man, however, made a great show of not wanting to be near us. It was a telling contrast: the locals, most of whom couldn’t speak English, offered kindness, while the tourists displayed the prejudice and racism.

I don’t have solutions. I have questions. I understand that as it is within, it is without. What we accept in the family setting will be repeated in our schools, jobs, and prisons. Making life unsafe in prison makes life unsafe for us all.

You don’t need to have all the answers to know that something is rotten. I don’t condone the crimes, but I cannot condone a system that operates on the same brutal principles as the criminals it cages.

It is not for me to stand on a speaker’s box with a solution. It is for me to say, as clearly as I can: I see the complicity. I feel it in my own history. And I refuse to be a part of it any longer.

The first step is to stop calling revenge ‘justice.’

This reflection is a piece of a larger journey. To explore more about building a sovereign life and business, you can find my core work here: Lita Goddess of Growth Hub“

Lita, Goddess of Growth