Return To Honor

A front page feature article in today’s Sunday paper described the rising interest on the part of aging Americans to join the Peace Corps and “make a difference” in the world. God knows that the staving kids in Bosnia, Bulgaria and people living less fortunately in all parts of the world need and well deserve all the help they can get. At the same time, however, so do millions of our own people right here in America.

Believe it or not, we have many “third-world” living conditions within our own borders. Some of them are Native American reservations, which to me is an ironic twist of fate for those whose ancestors were here first, and many more who are in the streets of many of our biggest cities. Of those, a huge percentage are people who have either done time in prisons and jails of America, or are destined to if their attitudes and lifestyles don’t change soon.

Then there are the families and the children of those who are or have been incarcerated. When one considers that 2.6 million people are locked up across America, and they impact at least 5 to 10 people on the outside, that number alone is staggering to consider. It exceeds the entire populations of some of those third-world countries who “need our help”.

So, what about us? What about our people? What about the children growing up in neighborhoods where the wallpaper on whatever rooms they have to sleep in are constantly illuminated with the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars outside, and whose playgrounds are streets filled with drug addicts and dealers, prostitutes and police SWAT teams and helicopters circling overhead? How do they fend for themselves, and what hope do they have for a better way to live? Who’s making a difference in their lives?

In the early 1980’s, Jerome Miller became the Director of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Miller closed all but the most essential juvenile detention centers in his state, and put the money saved into pro-active programs to mentor and provide simple caring to juveniles in the form of college students paid to “hang out” with juveniles as “big brothers” and “big sisters.” The rate of juvenile crime in Massachusetts during those years dropped by over 50%.

As someone who has dedicated much of the past decade or so to “making a difference” right here at home, I commend anyone wishing to do anything that makes a difference in the lives of others, and I urge anyone wishing to do so to look into juvenile diversion programs and anything having to do with “re-entry” or “aftercare” of former felons. It’s not a bad or scary thing, because every former offender (and they are “former” until they re-offend), is really just a terrified little kid in a scarred, tattooed grown-up body who made the wrong, but often only choices, that they believed were available to them early in life.

You want to make a difference in the world? Start right here at home…and right now. All it takes is a modicum of compassion, a willingness to understand, and a little courage to overcome preconceived notions and judgments, and making an effort to learn more about it. Just that much will reduce crime in this country by as much as 10%, I can promise you.

As a noted correctional specialist once wrote to me, “For altruists who want to save lives, that’s a lot of lives. To economists who want to save money, that’s a lot of money.”

Google “Prisoner Re-entry” or “Prisoner Aftercare Programs” in your state for more information than you can likely absorb in the two years required to serve in the Peace Corps, or check out the large number of affiliates and resources appearing on this blog site, and you may just find your “next calling” in life.

Don Kirchner

www.ReturnToHonor.org

Incarceration is a term with which most Americans are well familiar by now. Enough movies, books and television and news programs have us all well informed by now about all the dark, evil and brutal aspects of being locked up. True, it’s scary and sinister stuff. It’s the darker side of the human experience, and for most people it is evil and even brutal. But it’s our stuff, meaning that collectively it belongs to us. We, as a society, created it and we sustain it by what we believe about it and how we allow others to run it, just like everything else in the political and economic worlds.

In order to do anything about it that makes any difference, we need to recognize it for what it is, and how it functions with our collective acquiescence and indifference…and our ignoring what goes on inside the walls and fences. That includes what goes on in the minds of the people who manage and administer jails and prisons, many (if not most) of whom do so with a sense of vengeance and coldness that only inflames the problems and reinforces behavior patterns on the part of “criminals” that typically make them worse.

I am not a cynic, nor do I have anything against “the system,” such as it is. In fact, I work with that system, in that I counsel and teach both inmates and correctional officers how to recognize behavior patterns that are destructive and counterproductive, and to change those behavior patterns for the better. It’s amazing how small a change in thinking toward others will positively affect their behavior no matter how “brutal” or vengeful they might be.

How do I know this? I was one of them. I was a federal prisoner for 2 1/2 years, which very nearly became 25 years, with no chance of parole. I survived the experience in the face of brutish resistance and hostility toward me because I looked like everything most inmates and criminals have learned to dislike and distrust. But as I made consistent efforts to help them with simple things like reading and writing, their behavior changed for the better, not only toward me but toward everyone else––including correctional officers. What seemed destined to be a 25-year sentence became far less, primarily because of the good that was evidenced as a result of my work inside. Nearly everyone’s attitudes toward one another began to change, and with that came near-miraculous developments that enabled me to not only still be alive, but thriving outside the walls as a useful, contributing member of society.

In order to change anything that has such a huge collective emotional charge such as the criminal justice system, we have to get outside of our own personal issues and pre-conceived notions about crime and criminals, and be willing to change our thinking…if only a little bit at a time. Just being willing to understand is a major step forward. One needn’t agree with or condone criminal or negative behavior, but only be willing to see behind the masks and the negative images we see in the movies and on television. If enough of us do that (and thank God that there is a groundswell of people on both sides now doing exactly that), we can change the way “incarceration” works, and make it work far more effectively.

Don Kirchner
June 9, 2009
www.ReturnToHonor.org

As I watch the political debates and the news about the candidates on both sides, I’m surprised not to see or hear mention of crime prevention as a part of anyone’s campaign platform…even though our good senator from Arizona, John McCain, is an endorser of our Re-Entry efforts. Why not? They all know that proper “re-entry” programs for released offenders is an essential component of crime reduction because the U.S. Congress just recently passed the Second Chance Act and sent it to the President…who introduced it to Congress last year.