Immature, Toxic Behavior - Prisoners Don't Have a Monopoly on It

 Today, I walked around our small yard with a friend, and we were both struck by how much anti-social and immature behavior we were seeing among the prisoners around us. We both just came from a prison facility where more prisoners were engaged in education and were, by self-selection, more mature than the typical prisoner. Now, I am in a level one prison where some prisoners are serving very short sentences. Many of them have been in prison for less than three years. And it shows. 

Gang bangers flash gang signs to each other and hold phones hostage, keeping anyone but their homies from using them. Others stand in the way of people walking, chests puffed out like they're tough. It's just posturing, but they think they're actually making a statement. Mostly young prisoners call each other names that only a decade ago would have gotten them beat up. Today, these names are terms of endearment. 

Even older prisoners, who ought to have grown out of their foolishness, stand around talking about the "glory days" when they were beating people up or getting high. Not recognizing that they are celebrating the very things that have stolen their lives and freedom, they long to return for just one more hoorah!

It's discouraging at times, and a little daunting to realize that I'm trying to help these same people improve their lives. It feels a bit hopeless, like I'm trying to plug a hole in the side of the Titanic. I have to imagine that the few prison administrators who believe in prisoners' capacity to change feel immensely discouraged at times too. It's hard to hold onto that belief when there's so much evidence to the contrary.

But as much immaturity and toxicity as I see in prison, if what I see on the news is any indication of reality, it's not much better outside of prison. It concerns me. I wonder how the few prisoners who want to change will make it when they leave prison. They already have so much working against them, but to return to a world as chaotic, immoral, and self-centered as it appears to be...it's no wonder our recidivism rates are high. 

When our nation is as fractured as it is, when politicians are more concerned with holding onto or gaining power than solving problems, who is modeling good citizenship? Why should these prisoners become moral citizens when our nation's leaders are crooks of a different ilk? I guess we prisoners are not the only ones who need a morality check, a thinking and behavior change.