WHEN THE VISITING TIME IS OVER

WHEN THE VISITING TIME IS OVER

By Danae Halkidou

You think they’ll be fine, the 60 minutes they gave you are over and you are about to leave that psycho fluoride room. And you think they are going to be fine, they will go back to the room along with the other prisoners and anyway what could go wrong? And you think they will be fine, when the visiting time is over and the torture for them reaches back to the starting point, like a vicious circle.

16 and behind the bars, how does that sound for you? Minor violator, that’s the title that is given to the people below the age of 18 that are imprisoned for a minor crime they committed. With the prevalence of this certain term, οn the one hand the youth’s stigmatization as criminal is prevented and on the other hand new roads are opened for them. Nevertheless, his afterwards confrontation by the society, one could say that it either way remains the same.

And what happens with their dreams? What happens with the dreams of a teenager that sees concrete instead of sky, reads uniform numbers instead of books and accepts visitings from his parents instead of they themselves visiting museums with his school? Let’s not forget that puberty is the most emotionally charged and sensitive age of a person but it doesn’t matter because you’ve been in prison. Because you were in prison and therefor you are a criminal. You are a liar and a hypocrite. A villain and a dangerous one. In vigilance to make a mistake at any moment. You are outraged and different. And in our society everything different is isolated until it breaks.