Don't Fear the Change

Prisoners face a lot of obstacles when it comes to changing their patterns of criminal thinking. External obstacles include lack of education; lack of access to proper guidance or therapy; lack of funds, employment, or opportunity; and cultural expectations and influences, among others. Internal obstacles include apathy and lack of desire, unresolved anger and childhood trauma, neurologically entrenched addiction issues, and fear of change.

These lists of obstacles are not exhaustive, but they begin to paint a picture of the complexity of changing a criminal's faulty thinking patterns.

For a prisoner to really change he must want it. He must see the banality of his current path, and he must actively seek to change. But with so many obstacles where does one begin?

Fear of change is profound for anyone: the business executive taking a new job in another state; a student heading to college for the first time; the newly single middle-ager; and the criminal changing everything he has known his whole life.

Most criminals have a pattern for facing what they fear: run, or hide behind a false sense of security (guns, gangs, or drugs for instance). Learned patterns of behavior are difficult to change.

Let's be honest: change is difficult for anyone, because change always comes with a chance for failure. Something may go wrong. And the familiar is easier to deal with than taking a chance at something new.

Perhaps that is why Michigan's prison administration and lawmakers are so reluctant to change what is obviously not working in Michigan's prison system. The old patterns of thinking that pushed for longer prison sentences, less education and opportunities in prison and on release, and the militant objections to restorative justice practices have got to change. But change takes courage and those who hold to old-school ideas of criminal justice are no different than the criminal who lets fear keep him from changing.

Albert Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is insanity. So, if the criminal wants something different from his chaotic life he must be willing to change his thinking and behavior; and if Michigan wants less crime, fewer repeat offenders, and healing for crime victims it must be willing to change the policies that have failed the public, the victims of crimes, and the prisoners for whom it is responsible.

Happy Mother's Day Moms of Prisoners

For many prisoners the one person whom they can count on to still care about them is Mom. Even though seeing her son go to prison must be extremely painful for any mom, and even though the crimes her son committed may cause others to hate him, Mom loves even through the ugliest parts of her son's life. 

To many men in prison Mom means home and a place to belong. She means a person to make proud again who still believes in her son when everyone else has given up on him or written him off. 

Mothers, if you have a son in prison you may just well be the lighthouse beacon, the true North that guides your son to get his life right. 

From one prisoner son to Mothers of all prisoners: Thank you for still caring.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

(I love you Mom!)

Freedom is Precious to Those Who Struggle For It

In 1776 American Revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote in his book The American Crisis, 'The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.' 

Of course, Paine was talking about the struggle for independence in early America from a tyrannical government. But the truth of his words rang true in my ears as it applies to freedom in general. Those who have never had to struggle for freedom lightly esteem it when they have it. Those who have lost their freedom, if they are taught by the difficult lesson, will esteem that freedom as precious when it is regained.

Prisoners who serve their time and are released are rarely restored by society or their communities into full citizenship again. Even after release from prison, convicted felons are branded with a scarlet letter of shame intended to remind them of their separateness from the rest of the community. Some felons identify with this branding and carry about the weight of their shame, never truly engaging with the community or triumphing over their shame. 

Others, recognizing the possibilities of redemption, face the struggle with confidence and triumph in the end.

I don't expect that life will be easy when I am released from prison, but I know that even when the struggle is hard, the triumph of redemption will be of that much greater value.