I just read a commentary published in the Inquirer that responded to the anger people expressed over the killing of Philadelphia policeman Patrick McDonald. The author’s perspective is rare but much-needed. While we mourn the deaths of cops like McDonald as well as civilians, it’s important to look at the systematic conditions that keeps the recidivism rate as high as it is. We’ll never have safe streets otherwise.
One question we need to keep raising is, “Are our prisons properly rehabilitating offenders and, just as important, is their dignity being affirmed at the same time?” A new Circle Venture group, the Prison Connections Team, is tackling this and other prison-related issues. In an attempt to illustrate the connection between the prison system and peace, and to let the team “get the word out” about the mission, I asked them a few questions. Below are the answers from three founding members–Katie Jo Brotherton (KJB), Art Bucher (ArtB), and Aja Beech (AjaB):
1. How did the team’s founders decide upon this mission?
Katie Jo Brotherton:
Well, Art and I (Katie Jo) met for the first time last year while doing Angel Tree together. For those who do no know, Angel Tree makes it possible for men or women who are in prison to give gifts to their children or grandchildren. Art and I distributed those gifts to the children. Prior to meeting Art I had a pressing feeling that a “cell” [group] needed to begin in the prison system. For about two weeks, I had envisioned how beautiful and life-giving a cell could be inside a prison or jail. Once Art and I got past our initial small talk, we began to talk about our views on prisons. Art mentioned that he had read a book by Angela Davis called “Are Prisons Obsolete” and a spark was ignited. He had been praying about someone taking leadership on possible staring a cell in the prisons. I was stunned because I had been thinking about starting a cell. We began to talk. Over time we began to brainstorm about our possibilities and decided to get some support from Circle of Hope. Thus our Circle Venture team “Prison Connections” was born.
Art Bucher:
Back in 2007 when Circle of Hope was doing discernment for the upcoming year, my cell was brainstorming ideas, and I told Rod that starting a cell group in a Philadelphia area prison would be just great. Not a completely random idea, it was something that Luke White and I had discussed while I was getting my first tattoo from him. Later, when helping to lead the Angel Tree project at the end of 2007 (giving gifts to children of inmates), Katie Jo told me she had the same type of vision for getting to know prisoners more on a personal level. We agreed that there were a lot of programs and services for prisoners, and there’s a place for that, but there was a need to just relate and get to know people who are in prison more personally. This is when our vision for a prison connections mission team started to take shape. After that, some meetings with Rod and with Jeremiah really helped funnel the vision into doable team goals. Then people started coming alongside and “voting with their feet,” adding more to the team’s gravity and composition, and, well, there we have it.
2. What do you think are some of the more pressing needs of people in prison?
Aja Beech:
I believe the most pressing need for all inmates is a connection with the ‘outside’ world. The prison system isolates prisoners in many ways, for example: requiring all prisoners use a specific collect call phone service provider that is usually far to high in price. This often creates a situation where connections people have to family and friends often times become strained and the outside connections will ask prisoners to stop calling because its becoming too expensive. A conversation like that can send a prisoner into a tailspin of difficult emotions.
The second pressing issue would be false convictions and unjust pleading scenarios, where an impoverished or under-educated individual accused of a crime must rely on a public defender that will plead a case in exchange for serving a minimum amount of time instead of researching whether or not someone charged with a crime actually committed that crime. This has repercussions for prisoners that many public defenders do not worry themselves with, the two biggest problems being the assumed guilt of the prisoner by their defense team resulting in unfair representation and the permanent criminal record that prisoner will have and its affect on the rest of their life.
ArtB:
Overcrowding, and lack of available health care come to mind. Definitely, there’s just too many people in prison. I think the criminal justice system has “sold” American people the idea that there’s no better way to deal with criminals but to shut them away. People have lost creativity in dealing with the social sins that get classified as crimes. And “sold” is an understatement. Prisons are big business in any town, bringing lots of federal dollars and free or nearly free prison labor. People in prison know they’re being warehoused for profit. And once people are incarcerated, there’s a general sentiment that they should be in overcrowded, underserved, harsh conditions with poor health care, or else they won’t “learn their lesson.” I see all of these things as symptoms of the larger pressing need for love, forgiveness, and hope: this goes for people who are incarcerated as well as for people who are involved in the operation of systems of incarceration. That’s where Jesus comes in, and that’s where we’re coming in, too.
3. How can the Prison Connection Team be a resource for families and friends of people who are in prison?
AjaB:
According to the most recent estimates, there are between 1.5 and 2 million children in America with at least one incarcerated parent. (Broken Bonds, Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with Incarcerated Parents; La Vigne, Davies, Brazzell, 2008 and the National Association of Social Workers website http://www.socialworkers.org/
Primarily, the Prison Connection Team can assist families with incarcerated members by dissipating the shame associated with being incarcerated.The simple act of reaching out to families of incarcerated individuals without judgement, but with a kind understanding of the difficult complexities of life, accomplishes this. As the sibling of a former convict, this idea of families affected by incarceration must also be expanded from immediate family (i.e. fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, etc.) to extended families (nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, in-laws, etc). In this vein, I believe, it is easier to see that most people are ‘related’ to someone in prison, and furthermore, how our current social construct demands distancing what is commonly understood as the ‘inside,’ or incarcerated, world and ‘outside,’ or unincarcerated, world. The Prison Connections Team can bridge this gap between the inside and outside world, and that is an extremely valuable resource to all involved.
ArtB:
I’m glad you ask this. We really are a resource. The biggest resource we have to offer to people is relationship. Just caring enough about someone enough to want to know their name and where they came from and how they’re feeling makes a huge difference to someone. I would venture to say that anyone who comes in contact with Circle of Hope is coming in contact with an enormous wealth of resources (and just might realize that we see them in the same light, too!). By extension our team is helping make that connection for friends and families to our body. When relationships are allowed to happen, real needs get met, too. On top of that, people who are involved with the Prison Connections team have knowledge of a remarkable array of outside resources available to friends and families, too. Probably too many to list briefly. One thing we decided to do together is Angel Tree, helping organize our network to share Christmas gifts to children who have incarcerated parents.
4. What are some other resources that benefit families and friends of people who are in prison?
KJB:
There are numerous organizations such as the Pennsylvania Prison Society. They offer many services including rides to prison/jails, family programs, job training for people coming out of prison, and many other services. The city of Philadelphia is actually trying to help with the reintegration of men and women coming out of prison. People can go to the website at http://www.phila.gov/reentry/. It is helpful and lists many other organizations around the city that offer services.
ArtB:
Prison Fellowship is Chuck Colson’s organization that started Angel Tree. Family and friends that want to advocate for prisoners could hook into the Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) Criminal Justice program. Mentoring Matters does mentoring for kids with incarcerated parents who live in South Philadelphia.
5. The description of your mission includes a goal “to address punitive systems of incarceration.” How do you imagine fulfilling this goal?
ArtB:
One of the wonderful things about being in mission with each other at Circle of Hope is that even though we are doing something as serious as speaking truth to the powers that are bent on punishing, locking-up, and permanently criminalizing people, we can have fun doing it. I imagine fulfilling this goal by being imaginative, and showing those systems that have lost their imagination what it means to love your neighbor again. Here’s some of the ideas my mind has wandered to: passing out flowers to the prison guards, making them laugh by telling jokes, inviting wardens and politicians to participate in Angel Tree, having a meal where both prisoners and prison staff are invited. Some things that have already happened that weren’t the teams initiative but that we support: already a prisoner that we’re visiting has attempted an organized prisoner hunger strike to protest 24-hour cell lockups and visitation halts, and one of our friends is investigating European experiments in monastic communal alternatives to incarceration.
AjaB:
The Prison Connections Team addresses punitive systems of incarceration because fundamentally we see many policies within the prison system as more than unjust, we see them as crimes against humanity. Forcing prisoners to work for little or no pay, not providing clean drinking water to prisoners, the entirely arbitrary death penalty, the biased and arbitrary segregation of inmates, tactics of extreme intimidation, unlawfully detaining foreigners, parolees paying ‘custodial fees’ to their parole officers and the states which incarcerated them, etc. . . (see http://www.hrw.org/reports/
6 users commented in " Shalom House Interviews Prison Connections Team "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackbacki’m glad there was more than the first two sections! what a great team…it’s really meaningful service at a personal level with a prophetic voice to the powers that be, as well as hopefully raising awareness to the rest of us.
you guys are really bringing us as a community to an important level of action and awareness with this. im thinking of when someone explained to me that the meaning of the word “radical” came from “getting at the root of somthing”. Im inspired on how you guys are being radical in this.
the other day at work i was talking with a client who was a recently release inmate who was trying to find a job. this seems to be a pretty big issue too, and maybe one the team can look at?
Wow, what an awesome post! I think your right on when you mention that those running the criminal justice system have lost their imagination. Looking at those on trial and those in prison as real humans would force lawyers, judges, prison workers, and politicians to be imaginative. It would force them to consider the complexities of those who are labeled “criminals” and find real avenues towards rehabilitation. Instead, the system dehumanizes, stripping people of those most basic rights. It’s a lot easier to throw an animal into prison than it is a person. I think giving prisoners a voice through a cell group in prison will allow them to reclaim some of what they have been stripped of. I also like the idea inviting wardens and politicians to Angel Tree!
This is a great discussion, and some of the needs the team identified to assist in prison rehabilitation are very insightful. I hope you have great success with these endeavors; the city sure needs it. However, I must take issue with one of the responses relating to the most pressing needs of people in prison:
“The second pressing issue would be false convictions and unjust pleading scenarios, where an impoverished or under-educated individual accused of a crime must rely on a public defender that will plead a case in exchange for serving a minimum amount of time instead of researching whether or not someone charged with a crime actually committed that crime. This has repercussions for prisoners that many public defenders do not worry themselves with, the two biggest problems being the assumed guilt of the prisoner by their defense team resulting in unfair representation and the permanent criminal record that prisoner will have and its affect on the rest of their life.’
I am interested in your source for this information. Was it experience, or information gathered from local or national sources? I say this because I think the above sweeping statement is wholly inaccurate, and the belief expressed actually exacerbates a serious problem affecting people in prison.
I myself am a public defender, so I should make my bias apparent and note that I don’t choose to take any of these characterizations personally. Certainly, public defender offices vary greatly in quality. But the dedication of the Defender Association of Philadelphia to providing the epitome of zealous and aggressive representation is staggering, and the office has a national reputation as one of the best public defender offices in the entire nation (not to mention the fact that the office is aggressively engaged in accomplishing many of the changes you hope to see in the criminal justice system and prisons). The assertions that public defenders don’t spend sufficient time investigating cases, assume the guilt of their clients and don’t appreciate the impact of a criminal record are completely contrary to the reality of the how the public defenders approach cases. Public defenders in Philadelphia are rigorously screened to be sure they are properly dedicated to zealous advocacy of their clients, and are highly skilled attorneys who are sacrificing jobs that pay far more money for the chance to make a difference in the lives of Philadelphia’s indigent population and improving the criminal justice system.
More to the point, however, is that this misconception reinforces a disastrous cycle of mistrust which truly harms the interest of people in prison. Many clients believe public defense attorneys work ‘for the man,’ when the exact opposite is true. It is often hard to fathom that one can receive a skilled, dedicated attorney for free, and clients often believe that public defenders are exactly how they are portrayed in this post. This leads to clients not being candid with attorneys for fear that the information shared, even though the information is legally protected and 100% confidential, will actually be used against them. A client that is not honest with his/her attorney creates serious and disastrous obstacles to crafting an effective defense. Also, the mistrust comes to light often when clients need the advise of their attorney but will not believe that the attorney has their best interests at heart. It’s truly a shame to see clients who have a understandable mistrust of any one involved with the criminal justice system misdirect this feeling towards individuals dedicating their careers to provide them with assistance. I hope you will consider this input as you progress in your endeavors.
Thanks for the correction, Anon- for coming to the defense of the public defenders, and for letting it be known that the defenders are lawyers par excellance. I’m grateful for those who willingly and skillfully advocate for the accused before a judge.
this is pretty late- but to address the ’second pressing issue’ being discussed, it is widely known that public defenders are over worked and underpaid. These issue observations are from research and from personal experience.
This portion was not intended as an attack on public defenders, but instead is a comment on issues for defendants and inmates and the pressing need for defendants and inmates to have many varied and highly skilled advocates.
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