Re-entry as a rite

Leaving prison is not as celebrated as when the convicted are punished. There is far more fanfare to the banishing process than there is to the returning of our prodigals. In the U.S. we attach much more meaning to our sending away and I believe this is because it is in punishments and not rehabilitation that we place our priority. The truth is, it is the coming home, the returning to society, that demands a more intentional response if we are to keep and ensure a civil society where second chances are a reality and not just a platitude.

I, personally, have returned home from prison four times in my adult life. On each occasion, I have gained invaluable insights that later served to position me for success. However, initially, I faced great obstacles that could not have been overcome alone and without the support of community.

For example, in the area of interpersonal relationships, especially intimate friendships, I wanted to be an asset to my friends, but failed miserably because prisons do not position us to learn how to get close to people. Rather, what we must learn or risk being harmed, is to stay aloof from others. Distance and isolation become our primary means for survival and to think that we could just practice the opposite simply because we have been issued a release date is foolhardy.

I convinced myself that all that was needed was for me to “get out” of prison and I would be and fare better. Society, in the form of the administration failed us in that we were given no support, to speak of, to address the hurts, traumas and wounds that led up to and in fact, May have caused our criminal episodes.

Community was complicit in all of this because, as an uninformed populace that bought into the government’s narrative that prisons keep us safe, and that those interned their “will learn” their “lessons.” When the truth actually is the contrary. There are no “lessons” sitting around that are learned by virtue of being in these places.

It is in that latter part, the part about community that we find the hidden clues to success for those prisoners returning from imprisonment, hopeful for a new way of living and being in a world that has hitherto banished them and told them they were unwanted.

Rehabilitating the misguided, angry and rejected requires of us, the society, to change. We want the person to be evolved but we are unwilling or perhaps incapable of taking a more honest look at how our systems and structures have beaten and deformed those it has sought to force into conformity.

This is the place where you either find your agreement or you experience discord. I believe that the seeds for crime, as stated by Henry Thomas Buckle, states that “Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it.” The United States of America has, within its foundations, a criminal nature that has been imposed upon the scapegoats it imprisons to absolve itself of the guilt it carries for all its faults and frauds. So, in order to unburden its soul, it presents the “criminals” it creates unto the altar of justice to be sacrificed, as an atonement, for its sins. This ceremony is a spectacle for the masses. Through it and by it, we are taught that the “criminal” is self-created and worthy of all the scorn and contempt we can level upon them. It is that sort of logic that fuels our obsession with the condemnation process.

On the contrary, it is the opposite of this that we are concerned with confirmation rather than condemnation. If it is true that we value human life we all share in common and the hope we say exists for us all to change, become better or to transform, then would it not make sense to celebrate the coming home of the so-called wayward?

My wife tells me there is just such an example, right before our eyes, if we but could see it, that gives us a window into how things could be. On reality TV we have a show called Love After Lock Up, according to her, “When these guys come home, their wives take them on trips, their families gather to greet them” in a large and expressive way and the love is palpable and genuine.

That is just the sort of outpouring, I believe needs to become the norm in order for recidivism to decrease. Imagine, instead of news cameras covering the trial of a “criminal” they were sent out to the homes of the loved ones as the welcomed their beloved back through the doors. Microphones vied for a quote on the latest class they had taken and what was the turning point that they had come to that got them to the place of inner transition from despair and anguish to hope and determination.

We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.