2010 Begin Again

At the beginning of 2009 there was much optimism in the juvenile justice reform arena.  There was much to anticipate with a brand new president and a new focus in our country which was to reform the nation and get us back to something reasonable. 

This past year gave us small victories and more frustration.  With the needs of the entire nation reaching crisis stage, we did not make the headway that we desired.  I want to tell you that many of the answers and changes we need lie in criminal and juvenile justice reform.  The reason for this statement is this:  If we can begin to look at the people of this nation as individuals, with needs that can be answered, to make our nation stronger as a whole, we will get back on course. 

Our leaders, for several decades, have worked to divide this nation.  The right against the left.  The good against the bad.  The wealthy against the poor.  We have become a nation divided and we have lost our focus.  The strength, value and contribution of each citizen creates a strong community.  The strength, value and contribution of a community creates a strong state and so on.  We have lost the value of each member of this nation. 

I met with a young lady just before the new year celebration.  I went to visit her in a large women’s prison facility.  She was nervous as this was our first meeting and she wanted to leave me with a good impression and the understanding that she truly wanted to change the course of her life.  I traded small talk with her to ease her countenance and slowly she began to tell her story.  It began with the loss of her mother to cancer at the age of 13.  Her mother literally died in her arms.  Her father found solace in a bottle and this young girl would have to track down her father in bars to get money for food for the children in the house.  No time and no person to help her process her own grief, anger or loss, there were her siblings to consider.  By the time she reached 18 she was off and running to find her own “medication” and comfort.  This course of therapy brought her to prison and left her own very young daughters without a mother. 

This young woman is now faced with the future and how she will find the resources she needs to become a strong and contributing member of our community as well as the mother her daughters need her to be.  She has the heart for it.  She has the desire to make things right in her life and she realizes the mistakes she made.  Yet her success is limited by many factors, the first being the grief, loss and anger she has walled away for so many years.  In prison, you don’t get to be real.  In prison you don’t have the opportunity or the safety that allows you to be vulnerable enough to deal with the issues that caused the infractions in the first place. 

Will she make it?  In addition to the personal issues, she must also face the fact that her record will follow her all the days of her life and that our current employment practices will count her undesirable in the workplace.  She will be faced with the rigors of probation, the barriers of finding suitable housing as many apartment complexes and landlords will deny her for her record.  She will have to find her way through the paperwork necessary to re-establish her identity and her ability to find transportation.  The challenges are huge and the help close to non-existent. 

You might think that this is not your problem.  You might wonder how this effects the well being of our community and the strength of this state and the nation.  The PEW charitable trust released a report last year entitled “1 in 31″.  The number of people currently accountable to our Department of Corrections system in this nation has reached critical mass.  We are at the point of no return unless we change the way we look at crime and punishment.  “Adding up all probationers and parolees, prisoners and jail inmates, you’ll find America now has more than 7.3 million adults under some form of correctional control. That whopping figure is more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas put together, and larger than the populations of 38 states and the District of Columbia. During Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, 1 in every 77 adults was under the control of the correctional system in the United States. Now, 25 years later, it is 1 in 31, or 3.2 percent of all adults.”  http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=49694&category=74

That number, 7.3 million, is staggering, but when you multiply that by the number of people impacted as the result of the incarceration of one person, it is even more staggering.  On average the incarceration of one person directly effects the lives of at least 6 other people.  That is 43,800,000 people affected.  It impacts their finances, their responsibilities, their futures and their well being.  Now do you see the problem? 

The state of Colorado, where I reside, has the dubious honor of reporting that 1 in 29 people are currently under the authority of the department of corrections.  Our recidivism rate hovers around 51 to 53 percent.  Why do they fail and return to prison?  Many reasons but mostly, because we set them up to fail. 

This cycle of brokenness, debilitation and weakness has to stop if we are going to strengthen our communities.  The question is, how do we get out of this squirrel cage?  How do you break this cycle?  How do we stop pouring so much money into a system that has proven itself to be inadequate, at best, and destructive, at worst? 

That will come in future articles.  First, in order for you to get a clear picture of the challenges we face, I suggest you read this article from the Colorado Springs Independent titled “From Freedom To Failure” http://www.csindy.com/colorado/from-freedom-to-failure/Content?oid=1574332  Thank you and Nice Work Guys.

This entry was posted on 7. January 2010 at 18:13 and is filed under Legal News, Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates, Juvenile Offenders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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