Prisoners can return from the dead

Prisoners can return from the dead
by Rodolpho Carrasco
September 4, 1999 in Pasadena Star News
[Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)

A recent Stanford Law School study exploring our nation's falling crime rate raises one of life's thorny questions: how to approach our prison and ex-offender population.

The study is not directly about the reform question, but about some curious correlations between abortion and crime uncovered by John Donoghue III and Steven Levitt. In "Legalized Abortion and Crime" Donoghue and Levitt raise three intriguing points about the connection between abortion's legalization in the 1970s and 1990s falling crime rate.

The correlations are these. First, the timing of the crime drop corresponds to the period in which the first cohorts affected by abortion are reaching the peak ages of criminal activity. Second, states that legalized abortion before the rest of the nation were the first to experience decreasing crime. Third, states with high abortion rates have seen a greater fall in crime since 1985.

The authors have run in to some trouble this summer because of a postulation that declining crime rates could result from "selective abortion on the part of women at risk to have children who would engage in criminal activity." Some have read this statement as the authors' veiled suggested that if we abort the little dark-skinned ones things will be all right.

But the authors stress that the study's purpose is not to advocate for abortion as a crime-prevention tool, but rather to look honestly at all possible factors that could explain a crime drop that, for all our collective reflection and study, remains something of a mystery.

As intriguing as the study is, abortion-equals-less-crime is not as critical as the issue of how we respond to our existing prison population.

Our answer as a society has been to lock them up. Our tough-on-crime laws have literally opened up new markets for the prison industry, filling up existing prisons and facilities that have yet to be built. At the juvenile level there are numerous initiatives to "reform" young offenders and get them a second chance in life. But at the adult prison level, according to one former adult prisoner in my community, there is almost no effort at reforming the prisoner.

We need to address this issue, as difficult as it may seem. There are some prisoners who may, like Cyrus in Salman Rushdie's book The Ground Beneath Her Feet, need to stay in prison where they are unable to commit the serial crimes which they believe they cannot control. But most, I believe, would welcome a second (or third) chance at a new life.

Reform is seriously hard work. I've been privileged to look closely inside two organizations that work to reform prisoners, Victory Outreach of La Puente and Harvest Time Ministries of Pasadena, and have seen staff members dedicate their entire lives, because an ex-con is not a program or a statistic, but a person with a history, with dreams, with flaws, with pain.

The most discouraging times are when a person is trying to fly straight and just can't seem to make things work. The latter part of the movie "Mi Familia" is about a family member, Jimmy, who tries to put his life back together after a stint in the joint. His efforts with his son are a total failure, and as Jimmy leans against a wall in frustration, the voice-over narrator says, "Jimmy was trying to come back from the dead and it wasn't so easy."

Trying to come back from the dead - what better way can re-entry into society be described? We balk at the suggestion that premature death, aborting a "future criminal" in the womb, is an option for dealing with prisoners. But many ex-offenders are dead in our eyes and never given a chance at resurrection.

It's no accident that the foundation of Catholic and Christian social teaching, the 25th chapter of the gospel of Matthew, elevates the visiting of prisoners into the highest strata of good deeds. By "visiting" the text doesn't just refer to standing in a long line down at the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles, waiting for your fifteen minutes with the prisoner. It means going to someone and engaging their life.

Engaging the life of a prisoner, walking with the prisoner when, like the Greek mythological figure Orpheus, they return from the underworld of incarceration - who wants it and who needs it?

No one in their right mind, I would guess. But consider this: what if it was you trying to come back from the dead?

I'm no romantic about the situation. Many prisoners have emerged from prison only to commit more crimes, victimize more people, and revisit the hell of their chaotic existence upon their family and loved ones.

But many others genuinely want another shot at life. There is a cost to us walking alongside of them. But if we are concerned about justice and about reducing our prison population, it's one of the best things we can do.

The copyright for these materials are owned by Rudy Carrasco.  These materials were used with permission by TechMission