Rehabilitating Criminal Justice: Restoring Forgotten Generations

My first day on my much-anticipated non-profit job was a retreat with forty-five recently released prison inmates. Arriving at the organization, my insecurity was visibly apparent, my hands shaking, my voice quivering, my eyes darting. From the color of my skin, to the car I drove, right down to the shoes on my feet, my up-bringing and my economic background were obvious. Though I had been intellectually prepared to face the barriers of re-entry, the rates of recidivism, and the dehumanizing effects of being incarcerated, I was not prepared to be surrounded by offenders in a completely normative, social interaction. However, by mid-afternoon my nerves had waned and I soon enough found myself losing on the beach volleyball courts, participating in a three-legged race, and following a blind trust walk, all alongside hardened criminals.

A few months later I was sitting with my friend Makayla on an antiquated couch in the middle of the thrift store showroom our non-profit ran, surrounded by various lampshades and vases filled with plastic flowers collecting dust. It was a weekly ritual for us and some other ladies from the program; we would talk about anything and everything, from the weather to the progress of their custody battles. To be honest though, it was the other women who talked, and I listened with open ears and wide, sometimes tearful eyes. Makayla, a woman with whom I had grown particularly close due to many job hunting excursions and these weekly chats, was passionately relaying the depth of her distress over her daughter. Over the last couple of years, her 14-year-old daughter had caused countless problems with authority, initiated fights with others, and become heavily involved in sex, drugs, and alcohol. Between her tears, her anger, and her hurt, I distinctly remember my friend telling me, “She will take one of two paths now: she will get pregnant, or she will die. I do not know which one it will be, but there is no other way out for her.” Tears over the struggle of this mother and her daughter clouded my vision. My small, safe life could not comprehend such extreme distress. Immediately, I felt the contradiction between the dark shame of a privileged upbringing, and yet the humble gratitude for my protected life, lavished with love. Overall, the pervading sensations of helplessness crippled my speech, and I stammered something eloquent like, “Oh my goodness, I am so sorry.”

For Makayla’s statement was not an exaggeration; no, she was not speaking with hyperbolic humor. It is this reality behind her statement that exposes the tragedy that awaits this girl, and the countless others just like her. The children of the impoverished incarcerated population, the children who are born illegitimate and live illegitimate, the children who’s parents are too high, or too abusive, or too absent to retain the definition of ‘parent.’

My friend is now wrestling with her role in her daughter’s downfall, how she was in prison when she should have been with her, how she was too addicted to crack to understand that she was neglecting her child’s very livelihood. I talked with individual after individual who told similar stories, speaking of turning to crime after neglect from their parents, and how now they realize they have done the same to their children. The cycle is vicious, and the learning curve is high.

Over the years, starting in her teens, Makayla’s time has been split between the city jail, the streets, back to jail, then back to the streets. In the criminal justice world, the words ‘revolving door’ are commonly used in reference to the continual entering and reentering of criminals in and out of our prisons. Living in a nation where over two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years of release, there is a severe failing in our concepts of punishment and rehabilitation. The Department of Justice found an estimated 1,706,600 children live with one or both parents in these recidivist-ridden prisons, which accounts for 2.3% of our nation’s children. The revolving door is problematic enough for the criminal, but perhaps the forgotten casualties of such a system are the children, impressionable and innocent. Physically, their parents are vacillating between presence and absence, which is only compounded by their criminal, and thus typically violent and iniquitous, behavior. Despite making remarkable progress over the recent years, Makayla has had children taken away by social services, she has engaged with violent suitors who raise their fists to her children, and she had regularly abandoned her young kids in order to take a hit of crack.

For a nation that advocates human rights and liberties, we perpetuate a starkly cold and morally disengaged penal system which progresses criminality by repeatedly using temporary detainment as a means to punish, but not to rehabilitate. We wrap thin bandages around gaping wounds, paying no mind to prevention, no mind to holistic healing. Offenders leave the prisons with nowhere to go, nothing to recommend them, and no traces of rehabilitation; and yet they typically return to screaming babies with diapers to change and mouths to feed. And for a faith that advocates reconciliation and healing, we, as a body of believers, are detrimentally overdue for addressing the grievances perpetuated by our criminal justice system. The status quo breeds isolation and fosters recidivism, without so much as a fleeting concern for rehabilitation or accountability. The system’s core is founded on punitive punishments, in the hope that they will serve as a deterrent for future crimes. Unfortunately, without true accountability, exclusively punitive punishments hold no weight for the deterrence of the criminal. The fault lies not solely in the sustained status of criminal behavior, but in the effects of the un-treated criminal’s relationships, particularly as a father or a mother. Without reform, without pursuing respect, stressing relational fortitude and empowering towards rehabilitation in our burgeoning criminal justice system, we risk generation after generation being crushed under the wheel of parental depravity.

The silence surrounding these egregious flaws must be upended and exposed, especially to a population of people who see potential for grace in any circumstance, and hope for the disenchanted. It is the people who take seriously the demand to visit the inmate in prison (Matthew 25), and the call to refrain from casting the first stone (John 8), who can be the initial catalysts for reform. It is time the nation understands the expansive and unavoidable damages our punitive punishments create, and the hopeful alternatives that are available. It is time we raise our voices against the dehumanization of the prison system, and for the imperative towards restoration, accountability, and rehabilitation. Ignorance and naïveté are no longer acceptable when thousands of stagnant and un-phased criminals are released from our prisons everyday to return to their homes and their disregarded positions as parents.

Let us look to alternatives, let us advocate for restoration, let us seek compassion. Christ called us not called to hate or revenge. No, we were called to show the very worst in society the grace they have been missing, and the healing they deserve. Where else should we start but in the prisons?

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For further reading regarding alternatives, visit:

Prison Fellowship Ministry

A Branch of PFM that works directly with Criminal Justice Reform

The up-and-coming alternative to our current system is actually called “Restorative Justice”; It is highly promoted by Prison Fellowship domestically and internationally

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Rebecca Parker is a soon to be college graduate with a liberal arts degree that renders her completely unemployable. Other than looking for a job, she can be found in Virginia either writing, rock climbing, skiing, or escaping from the world through camping. She may not have any viable job skills, but she does have deep passion against injustice and an unnatural love for The Avett Brothers.