Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: Parole v. Reentry

By Robert Lilly- A Paroled Prisoner in Amerika 2049

Believers accept the idea of a ‘life’ after death. They see death as a door, a passageway to a ‘new’ life. Or at the very least, a departure from one condition to another.

Even for the skeptic, one can concede that there are times in life when what, at first looks like the end, is only the beginning of something new. Leaving prison to reenter society can be seen similarly.

The prisoner ‘finishes’ their sentence only to begin another chapter called parole. And prison is like death, a “social death”. Exiting the bowels of the “beast” is tantamount to rebirth. And that’s what it feels like for me today 4-19-2023. I am leaving the Larry Gist State Jail facility, where the state jail and state prisoners are housed, albeit, separately but nonetheless together.

Like every other released prisoner, some 600,000 in Texas alone, parole begins the journey that entails the remainder of one’s sentence. For me, that means 26 more calendar years as a parolee, a form of modified citizenship.

Parole and reentry are both a status and a process. One proceeds upon completion of the other. Parole is a fixed regime, while reentry is indefinite. Reentry is filled with collateral consequences, often unknown and undisclosed to the parolee.

Parole has its affixed requirements: supervision, home visits, urine analysis, fees, classes, mandatory employment, GPS monitoring, limits on associations and restrictions against alcohol and drugs. Infractions of the rules can land you back into custody of the state.

Reentry is an entirely different matter. Reentry is a process bordering on a journey. For a great many persons’ leaving prison for their return to society, this may be a world they know little to nothing about. And despite their naiveite they are obliged to navigate complex life circumstances with little room for error. In other words, these people to the human eye, may appear to be sound minded adults, however, the truth may be more complex than that.

For the most part, the once incarcerated person may never have had stable employment, established healthy relationships, maintained safe housing, nor raised their children. Significant numbers of “offenders”, as the state calls us, were “youthful.”

Offenders are those under the age of 17 at the time of their crime(s). They may have been wards of the state’s foster care systems or juvenile delinquents. I can relate. My youth was filled with law enforcement contacts that served to elevate the likelihood of my ultimate and future imprisonment. Like so many others, I did not get the care I needed for addiction nor trauma, and thus “I was a threat to myself and others.” Release from a prison cage does not equal “freedom.” And so, the same with its inverse, sending one to prison does not guarantee habilitation.

We of the world we must question our logic, our expectations: Are was asking too much of people returning from prison? What are our obligations to their overcoming the past? How can our society be better organized to ensure the contagion of mass incarceration does not proliferate.

In closing, the former prisoner, no doubt must develop a certain level of social sophistication, if they are going to thrive. Yet the community has a duty to empower those, from among their ranks to be in position to help their own peers. Anything short of a movement of formerly incarcerated people empowered to help others reenter, is not a solution but a detour.