Even Brick Walls Can Change
As a former intern with my local Probation & Parole office, I've come to appreciate the bravery it takes on the PO's part to walk into a potentially dangerous situation when conducting home visits.
These particular visits can occur at any time of the day, with the objective of ensuring that the parolee is in compliance with the terms of their early release. Home visits could range from the innocuous to the deadly.
There was even one time where we walked into a situation where the parolee had three other felons in his house and had just finished using methamphetamine. Witnessing the codependent and enabling behavior of his wife, who earlier had gave him the money and car keys to complete the deal, little did I know that I was developing some very negative stereotypes surrounding the lives of addicts.
After my internship ended (I wasn't accepted for full employment, thank goodness), those negative stereotypes continued into future jobs, some of which actively hired felons. I had to remind myself that I wasn't an intern anymore and that I had to adapt in order to work effectively with these people who were just as human as me.
As time wore on, the negative stereotypes began to disappear when I began hearing the real life struggles of these embattled individuals, some of which remain close friends of mine to this day. Imagine not being able to control your thoughts and emotions to the point where it interrupts every other aspect of life, and that's pretty much addiction in a nutshell.
However, beneath the addiction lies a very real, breathing human being who in their own way is asking for help. Some of the most staunch addicts I've ever come across have been able to turn their situation around, most of them not through sheer self attrition, but rather a significant, positive life change.
One case in particular involved a former classmate who struggled with drug addiction all throughout high school and into her adult life. As she was a friend of mine for many years, I learned that most of this was exacerbated by her knowledge that she was adopted and her deep desire to meet her biological parents. She confessed to me multiple times that she felt lost, and that the drugs gave her a "sense of self" and a perceived level of control over her life.
After multiple stints in and out of prison, she made a concerted effort to get clean, landing her first full-time job as an at-home Internet marketer 3 months before completing her parole. Shortly after that, she got married, started a family and is now an annual speaker at our former high school who uses her real-life situations to explain the dangers of drugs and addiction.
What I Learned
I learned that addicts are, in fact, suffering from a disease that they have little control over. Even worse, some of them live out their full lives at the absolute mercy of addiction, sometimes losing everything they love and care about in the process.
Even the office I interned in had a high number of clients who were hauled off to prison for charges ranging from drug possession to solicitation. My case load was primarily made up of those who committed felonious acts of domestic violence, but many of their sentences were heightened due to drug possession.
My former classmate hadn't committed any other crimes other than possession before her last arrest, yet still spent two years of her life in a women's prison. Her "treatment" program was a general track that did nothing to address her addiction head on.
My new stance is this: considering the fact that more than 97% of prisoners are incarcerated for drug possession or trafficking, I don't believe our priorities are in the right place. Instead of locking these people up and wasting money on prisons, why not change our perspective, handle it like the disease that it is, and invest that money into more treatment facilities?
I've seen multiple times with my own eyes that addicts can thrive with the right support system, in their own communities! Putting them in prison with child molesters, embezzlers and murderers is not the answer. Blanket statements that call for tougher "crackdowns" on addicts (i.e. minimum 5 years in prison) is not the way to correctly support and cure these people.
Prison can have multiple negative effects on a person's psyche. One is perpetuated by a prison's own staunch daily routines, which leaves some former prisoners struggling to set their own schedule in the outside world. Without a warden or CO telling them what to do, some of them literally go out after an extended sentence and find out two things: 1) it's extremely difficult to find meaningful work when you're a felon, and 2) setting your own routine can be extremely overwhelming and even impossible.
This article hits it right on the head that so-called "crackdown calls" by pundits is a tired old wagon that needs to be retired. Below is an except of this article, written by Edgar Wilson, and I think it hits it right on the head!
During my time as an intern, some of the POs were whispering to themselves that a full reform is needed in order to move our system and citizenship forward. What do you think? Let me know below!
Excerpt:
What better way to address a nation's longstanding, deep-seeded challenges than by pouncing on a tragedy with promises to clone a dramatic, highly visible piece of failed policy?
At the same time that the nation is contemplating a change to destructive criminal-justice laws and the failed war on drugs, right-wing elements are doubling down on bullheaded zero-tolerance approaches to complex social and legal issues...
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