Return To Honor

My father was a career military officer, whose most common admonishment to me was “No excuses.” I hated that term, and resented it every time it came up. There are always reasons for things to happen, I would rationalize…how could such a blanket statement apply in every instance? Was he totally brainwashed by the military?

I eventually joined the Army and learned to fly helicopters, and gradually I began to see things a bit more his way…but there were still very good reasons for some things to happen the way they did…and my mind became most adept in coming up with excellent examples. Years later, as I paced jailhouse floors and sat on prison cots trying to figure out what went wrong and why I was there, I noticed everyone in there had an excuse for why “things” always happened to them.

I’ve worked in the field of prisoner aftercare and re-entry for quite a number of years since then, and I’m amazed at how such broad subjects as human redemption, overcoming adversity and changing criminal behavior can be reduced to one simple sentence: Either one is making powerful choices or endless excuses. No exceptions, no long lists of “reasons” why things didn’t work out or how things just keep “happening” to them. Everything, in the end, is matter of choices we make…no matter who we are or where our paths have led us. As I tell prisoners and correctional officials alike, if you step back far enough in your mind, and be honest about it, you can see how everything came about because of the choices you have made.

The key to personal freedom, as I have discovered over and over again without fail, is to recognize the patterns of one’s life, and to accept that no one and no-thing “did it” to you, or “put you” there. You chose to take every step you have taken, and once you accept the truth of that statement, you can begin to make better choices that will lead you out of the traps of wrong thinking and emotion-based behavior to a better, more positive future. Those choices, however small or large they might be, will be powerful choices because they will be consciously made, with clear awareness of cause and effect. Because you will be paying closer, more objective attention to how you are thinking and taking responsibility for the effects of those choices, you will make increasingly better and more clear choices, and you will never again have to wonder what happened to you, or why.

It’s a matter of choice, or chance. I’ll take the former.

No excuses.

Don Kirchner

July 29, 2010

The latest figures are out, and they indicate that the U.S. has just reached the one-in-every-100 mark for the ratio of the number of people locked up. That may not seem so significant, until you realize that there are close to 300 million Americans now. Do the math, and you’ll see why this figure is so discomforting. The fact that it continues to increase and we can’t build prisons fast enough to keep up with it should be alarming. Prison related industries make up the second or third highest item in the national budget. That wouldn’t be so bad, necessarily, except that we’re not “correcting” anyone, so all the money is going into something that is counterproductive…to an extreme.

You can read the report, which is easy to read and not at all confusing or complex to understand, at ABCNews.com. Once you’ve read this excellent piece of reporting, you’ll have a better sense of why we’re doing the work we do at the Return To Honor organization. We’re not about making things easier or more comfortable for prisoners, but rather we’re about working with those who have done their time honorably to help them get their feet on solid ground back in their communities. We’re about raising awareness and understanding on the part of corporate employers, civic and religious and community leaders to help in the process of giving those want to change a second chance.

If we don’t do something to build “bridges” back for the many who can and will do the right thing if they feel that people back home care enough to give them even a modicum of caring and respect for having paid their “dues,” we will only be paying that extremely high price for incarcerating them to have them go back and do it all over again…at our continued cost. That price, sadly, comes in terms not just of dollars, but in more crime, more violence, loss of lives and more hardened, increasingly embittered criminals. Many…if not most…felons want to change. They just don’t know how, or whom to trust or where to start. And they rarely have enough resources to last more than a few days back on their own. By diverting even a small fraction of that annual budget toward meaningful programs to help them prepare for release, and by extending a hand to those who want to change, we can make a huge difference in the bigger picture.

As we near the point of an “official” launch of something I set into motion over ten years ago, I feel it important to establish what this “Return To Honor” concept is all about. It’s about people, essentially, and how to begin respecting one another even though we might not agree with each other about politics, culture, religion or other important things. What is important is that we at least make an effort to understand cultural differences, and causes of ill behavior rather than reacting to the outward symptoms.

What makes me an expert on the subject? I’m not…but for 2 1/2 years I was an inmate in the federal prison system where I learned first-hand the best…and worst…lessons in human behavior, from people on BOTH sides of the fences and walls. I discovered that freedom is not a physical thing, but is emotional and psychological. I learned more about personal freedom from long-time inmates than I ever learned on the outside…and I’ve observed more people in prisons of their own minds on the outside than I did those who were actually locked up in prisons and jails. I laughed harder, cried more and felt more deeply about common human frailties, avarice and heroism on the inside of prison walls and jail cells than I have anywhere else, before or since.

The Return To Honor program was conceived at a time when my eyes, heart and mind first started to open to what really causes criminal behavior…and more importantly, what keeps it going…and its concept is simple but profound. With even a modicum of respect for one another, no matter what one’s personal history may be, we can make a measurable difference in criminal behavior that will have a ripple effect on every strata of American…and even global…society. Crime doesn’t happen because people are innately criminal. It happens because we don’t address the causes of crime. Instead, we react to it out of fear, ignorance and indifference…and we inflame it with racial and social prejudice and favoritism. No matter how “fair” we might think ourselves to be as a nation, we have created a correctional system that is anything but fair. It’s an incubator system where crime only begets more crime…and woe be it to anyone who enters it thinking otherwise. As individuals, some of us might make it through unscarred and untainted, but rarely “corrected.”

My comments and my views are not pointed at anyone in particular, nor as an outcry against “the system.” It’s what it is because we have allowed it to evolve the way it has. My respects to those who work in the justice, law enforcement and correctional systems. They have a horrendous job to do, which only gets harder and more complex as we continue to ignore the simplest approaches to human beings who have made mistakes. Some are incorrigible, granted. But the majority can and want to change. They just don’t know how, where to begin or whom to trust. My contention––and it’s been confirmed by many hundreds of people on both sides––is that we must be stern and resolute in correcting criminal behavior, but we must be willing to understand the causes and treat those. We do that with respect…and with common-sense approaches to creating bridges back “home” for those who have erred…many of whom never knew anything better.

In so doing, perhaps we can all “return to honor” as a nation of intelligent, compassionate people who take care of their own. With over two million men, women and children locked up somewhere in this country, every one of them someone’s father, brother, mother, sister, aunt, uncle or cousin, they ARE “our own.” Statistically, each one of them affects five to ten other people, so you can rest assured that any meaningful attempt to assist any of them in their successful return home WILL make a measurable difference for all of us.

More to come.

Don Kirchner