I suppose most issues and problems in the world pass us by unnoticed until they somehow affect us directly. It’s human nature. I’ll be the first to admit that inmates and ex-offenders was one of those problems for me. I was oblivous to them and their struggles, like your average American, believing my local politicians when they said they were getting ‘tough on crime’ and reducing my need for worry. And then I went to prison and realized things are not what they seem.
Most people I know and grew up with keep their families in areas they feel are safe and relatively safe from crime. None of my friends even know a single person besides myself, and one friend for a DUI, who has been arrested, much less charged with a major offense. Perception is truth, so if we don’t see people around us being arrested or going to prison, we must not be around criminals, and therefore why should we care what happens in the prison system?
The truth of the matter is we are all surround by crime and criminals these days. Look at the statistics. Congress signed into law this April the Recidivism Reduction and Second Chance Act of 2007. The Bill text states that each year the 3,200 jails throughout the United States will release more than 10 million people back into the community. Recent studies indicate that over 2/3 of released State prisoners are expected to be rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years after release.
Politicians and other community influencers lead us to believe that prison is a fix all. We clean up the streets, arrest the criminals, lock them up, and all is well. But is all really well? How many people really know what prison is? How many people know what a criminal really learns while locked away in an 8 x 10 cell? How many people really know prison is just an industry convention for those who are best at what they do?
It doesn’t occur to most of us that prison doesn’t cure anything. It doesn’t make someone say, “Gosh. I really should get a job and do right.” It doesn’t occur to us that even if someone really did make a decision to walk straight while they are in prison, their chances of being hired by a good and stable employer are slim to none. It doesn’t occur to us that once they are released, they usually have one option and that is to return to the very place they have come from. A good protion of criminals are bred from their families, yet in Georgia most people paroling out of prison are only approved to return to family members.
I truly believe the biggest problem criminals face is living a life different than they know. Career criminals have spent their lives getting by. Most haven’t held stable and legitimate jobs. They know how to score money quickly and easily, despite the risk of getting caught. This is what they know. They haven’t been taught to earn it, to put effort into building a career and reap the rewards later. If they aren’t learning it prison, where do we expect them to learn how to change their ways? Why do we feel safe with them returning to our communities?
Learning of these issues is what has driven me to commit to another 7 to 10 years of education. It’s a topic I’ve been passionate about for sometime, but I am finding a new passion, and sometimes disappointment, rising within me lately. I’ve begun working with a startup non-profit organization geared toward re-entry for prisoners. I am disappointed to learn how most organizations are overlooked and tossed aside with little to no support from the very politicians and government that preach to us about ‘getting tough on crime’.
We’ve always known that government talks a big game but lacks in the follow-through. Especially when so many people are profiting off the prison system, which has become widely privatized and is lucrative for many people.
So I guess my new question is, what will make them listen? What will make them understand that the 8 x 10 prison cell isn’t working alone or as part of this ‘program’?
Maybe we need to be educated just as the criminals behind bars need to be educated.
The reason this is so hard to understand is just like anything else in life that makes real sense: you have to think it through and that’s hard for most people to do.
Consider raising taxes. On the surface, doesn’t it make sense that if you raise taxes, you rake in more cash? Sure. But what happens when you think the problem though? You find that raising taxes causes people to change their behavior and not do the thing that is being taxed, ergo no tax revenue.
Similarly, if you lock someone up in prison when the commit crimes, that means that the rest of society doesn’t have to deal with them, ergo the problem is solved. But when the issue is thought through like you have done so clearly here, we see that is not the case.