The chipped paint on the wall seemed to mock me, each flake a tiny tombstone marking another year stolen. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five years of cold steel, stale bread, and the echoing silence of lost time. My eight-year tariff felt like a cruel joke, a cosmic punchline to a life sentence. They called it 'justice,' but justice felt like a blindfolded woman spinning a wheel of fate, landing on 'life' for some and 'parole' for others, seemingly at random.
I remember the trial, the gavel's thud a death knell to my youth. A young man, caught in the crosshairs of circumstance, convicted on flimsy evidence, a whisper of doubt ignored. They painted me as a monster, a threat to society. The media frenzy, the public outcry – it was a feeding frenzy, a spectacle designed to satisfy the bloodlust of the masses.
Now, I see the faces of younger men, their eyes mirroring my own youthful naiveté, their futures as uncertain as mine once was. They arrive with the same hollow hope, the same desperate belief in redemption. But the system grinds them down, slowly, relentlessly. The promises of rehabilitation, the whispers of reform – they're hollow echoes in this concrete tomb.
My eight-year tariff? A cruel jest. It's a mathematical equation devoid of human empathy, a calculation that ignores the soul-crushing weight of decades lost, the irreversible damage done. It's a number that mocks the concept of justice, a testament to a system that values retribution over rehabilitation, punishment over understanding. I've spent more than half my life here, and the only justice I've witnessed is the slow, agonizing erosion of hope.
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