What do you want?

If I were to ask an inmate what he wants, the first answer would be obvious. When Joe was talking to Commissioner Alexander, he said, "It's wonderful that you are focused on reducing the time some folks spend on parole. But I don't want to get off parole. I want to get ON it!"

But many of the men in State prison have the time and the inclination to think deeper than that. Joe holds an MA in Theology. He has said in other conversations that he wants to have a breather when he gets out. He wants to spend time in the woods, or on a farm with no one around him and no schedules or tasks. After that, he wants to contribute to Cephas' ministry however his talents can fit. These are simple, reasonable and do-able wants. The only disconnect between them and the real world is that he isn't gong to get out on parole any time soon.

Even though recidivism by prisoners released after 20+ years is lowest of all the groups studied (I don't have the statistical reference) Joe is not going to get out. Talking with the men, I can feel the awful contradiction under which they live. They see men who are violent and will injure society when released sentenced to only a few years, and even if they don't adjust well to prison, even if they remain violent in prison, after their term is ended, they leave. Meanwhile, there are men who are imprisoned for crimes they committed as youths, and would never commit again, men for whom the penitentiary system has actually worked. But the parole system will not release them. These are men who have served more than their minimum term, who are penitent, and who have been reformed. But the system can't be sure, and there is a barrier they live behind: once a judge uses the phrase "..to life" the convict may indeed never "earn" release.

In this Lenten season, I shudder that there are people who live under that same fear, that same oppression. What does it do to your soul to think that you may live your whole life clean, sober and pure and then lose it all with one sin? There are those in all three of the major patriarchal religions who believe this, who live in this fear. They talk about Heaven, but they live on the edge of Hell. How can I testify to the reverse? I don't preach in the prisons. That is not my purpose. But my presence there, like Christ's presence on Earth, is testimony to God's love for all his creatures.The Psalmist cried , "I have become a reproach to all my enemies and even to my neighbors, a dismay to those of my acquaintance; when they see me in the street they avoid me. I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am as useless as a broken pot.” God's response was the Incarnation, a concrete assurance of uninterrupted love and forgiveness.