This week I had the opportunity to sit in circle with a group of church leaders and formerly incarcerated individuals to talk together about the incarceration system. “It’s like throwing lives in the trash,” someone said.
That line stirred a memory of a time I was first learning what happens when lives are treated like trash. When I got home, I dug out my journal from that time, and I’d like to share the story with you.
It was Christmas Eve, the year 2000. I was working as a substitute manager at a halfway house, a home for people with criminal records who enrolled in alcohol or drug abuse counseling for a few months while they searched for jobs. The odds were grim—most residents would end up back in prison within a year, and many of my staff peers would burn out just as soon. My job was to sit behind a counter checking people out so they could ride buses around town applying or working at minimum wage jobs, and then back in when they returned, most often rejected and exhausted. There wasn’t much happening for the holiday, though, and a group of guys ended up lingering around talking. I came out from behind the counter to stand alongside them.
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One guy was 22, the same age as me. His years in prison lined up with mine in college. He said he never learned to read because he’d “never been right” since he’d banged his head falling out of a car as a kid when his mom was high. He said the one thing he loved was mixing beats, and he pulled out a child-sized keyboard to show us. We danced and clapped along some, and he said nobody had ever believed in him like that.
Another guy showed up to ask if he was approved to go clothes shopping, snapping me back into my role of doling out permissions like breadcrumbs along an impossible journey. He was a lanky white guy with long hair feathered hair and a bushy mustache replacing his mouth with a perpetual frown. I remembered the day he’d arrived, another manager warned me, “He’s weird.” He wore stonewashed ripped black jeans and a T-shirt. The slip from my manager said his request was denied. No reason given.
“I’ve been wearing this pair of clothes since I got here three days ago,” he grumbled. “This is all I got. S’pose they’ll let me go to the free clothes place next week, but I never find anything that fits, I’m so tall.” He squeezed in one cheek in disgust, but hung around.
He said I could be John Lennon’s kid—“maybe it’s the round glasses.” I said nobody’s ever told me that, but thanks. He pulled out papers and tobacco and started rolling cigarettes. “My drinking was never bad until the army,” he mused. “Went into juvenile school at age twelve for drinking when my dad left, but I did well in school.” He said he’s a nice guy when sober but mean when drinking, and folks around the group said they know what that’s like. “It’s all in the life story we gotta turn in when we get come here,” he told me.
My managers encouraged us to read those files in spare time, so I pulled his out later. He’d printed in perfect handwriting with red ink squeezed into narrow lines, with nothing crossed out and no spelling errors. The file said he never really had friends. Loves painting. Dreams of having his own painting business. Dreams of being free of alcohol, sober for good. At the top in green block letters he’d printed “I’M NOT GOOD AT THIS!”
What causes a person to write such a thing across the top of his own life story? One man this week said from his own experience, incarceration isn’t just about locking up the body, it’s about locking up your spirit. You believe you’re worth nothing. And why shouldn’t you, if everybody is saying as much by never bothering to help change the system?
Who have you known whose life was treated like trash? What’s a brave step you could take this week to change something so they’re treated with dignity?
If you want to learn more about the criminal justice system, I recommend these videos by an organization in my city.
And in case you need a reminder, your life is valuable today too.
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