A CASE OF PRISONER RE-ENTRY
April 24, 2015
I started corresponding with a
prisoner more than a decade ago. He was
in the Indiana Security Housing Unit—the super-max prison--in Carlisle, ten
miles south of the federal death house in Terre Haute, where he had stabbed a
guard. He has shared a great of his life
with me. From an angry victim of sexual
assault by his father who also beat his mother, he became a self-educated
adviser to other prisoners, a counselor for non-violence, respected by
staff. Shortly before his transfer last
year to a transitional unit at the privatized prison in New Castle, he asked to
see a guard he had stabbed in 2001, apologized, apology accepted. He is finishing his GED. He is due for release in less than two years,
having served twenty. He plans to return
to Elkhart, where he and his family lived when he was arrested, and is in touch
with the Mennonite Community Center’s coaching program for newly released
prisoners. He is estranged from his
siblings. Under the circumstances, he is
doing the best he can to prepare for successful release.
Now that he is in New Castle, I
use www.jpay.com, newly acquired by Securus
Technologies, the largest private, for-profit contractor with prisons and jails
across the country. Snail mail is still
easier for him. Recently I sent him an
abstract I submitted to a conference, proposing that in training and at work,
police ought to spend time with those they (will) patrol at community events
and in community projects, to get to know each other, as Nils Christie
advocated (Limits to Pain, 1981), “in
many respects,” rather than as stop-and-frisk suspects (a proposition laid out
also in this blog, Jan. 25, 2015, “Peacemaking Policing Made Real”). My black friend responded both with anger,
and with fear of what police may do to him when he is released. Here is a copy of my attempt to reassure him:
Thanks for your letter of April 19. You ask, "How do you get others on
board?" The answer is that no one
person--top, bottom or middle--creates a change like this...and yet, each of us
who relates with others, who in Buddhist terms is peace in his or her relations
is part of the force that builds that change, not only in ourselves but in the
lives others we meet live in their other relations. Why do so much to accomplish what takes
lifetimes beyond our own to make for instance a
national difference in how police relate with brown and black
folks? Because it makes a difference in
one's own relations in one's lifetime, like yours with prisoners and staff who
give you respect and appreciation for rising above the violence you have
endured, and the anger that has made you lash out yourself. You are strong. If you can learn to get respect from the
police in the SHU, you may get hassled by the police on the street, but you
won't get hurt or busted anywhere. And
in your own neighborhood, wherever that is, you'll soon gain the respect of the
police on the street.
The police violence against black and brown
people that the public sees today is as old and outrageous as law enforcement
itself in the US--not worse than before, just more visible. So, too, is the reality I saw on patrol 40
years ago that many police never draw guns throughout their careers, and that
many cops almost never resort to physical force. When I start writing about a change like
working neighborhood service and get-togethers into police training and patrol,
I often begin to find examples to cite.
In my writing and my relations, I, like you in your relations, can only
sow seeds of change in an institution like policing in black and brown
neighborhoods, but doesn't it pay off in the quality of your life today as in
mine? love and peace, hal
Back in 1980 when I wrote Crime Control Strategies, I proposed
framing the problem of reducing recidivism as “making the community safe for
the offender.” Whatever threat police
may pose to members of communities of color in general, the threats to those
known by police to have criminal records are greater still. It is ironic that the strength and support,
the commitment to non-violence and respect, that my friend has managed to gain
while in isolation in a super-max prison has reduced the threat he faces of
police violence. My friend Billy
reinforces my belief that building safety and security in our relations and a
commitment to non-violence can begin anywhere, despite the violence of the
institution in which it occurs. Love and
peace, hal
