Why they keep coming back
I’m currently a participant in the Re-entry program here at our local jail. I find your article[“Freedom’s just another word,” September 1] very interesting and deja-vu-ish, because I’ve been waiting for the longest time to voice my opinion to someone who has an ear and also are willing to address the real issues at hand regarding the recidivism rates. I’m due to be released September 4, 2009, and I too am a repeat offender who hasn’t spent a total of 11 months in society from 1997 up to this point. I’m from the Charlottesville area.
In order for me to want change I must first submit to everything that has had ahold of me prior to me wanting to turn my life around. I can’t hold on to this character defect and let these two go, then work on these three and push this one aside. It’s an ongoing process, that requires daily maintenance. I’m not knocking the Re-entry program or the officials who designed it, however this is merely scratching the surface or shall I say shying away from the real issues of recidivism, which are our behavioral patterns, character defects, criminal tactics and countless other errors of thinking that we’ve acquired over the number of years.
For government and D.O.C. personnel to put us in a 45-day program and hope that we become productive citizens is absurd. For one to force someone to be in a place where they don’t want to be is not helping unless the length of the program is much longer, thus giving the participant time enough to put down his/her barrier of acceptance and start to open up and grasp ahold of what’s being offered.…It’s not that complicated to find a solution to everybody’s question “What keeps people from returning to jail?” It’s simple. “The way we think.”
If you’re going to force inmates to complete a program don’t wait until we’re almost released. Do it at the beginning of our sentence and implement programs along the way starting with a therapeutic setting and ending with Re-entry. Remember, we didn’t just all of a sudden wake up one day and decide we were going to be criminals. Most of us learned this behavior and started off small which snowballed into something we couldn’t control.
I’m a graduate of the 31st class and everything that was described of individuals’ actions in class 29 is still relevant. It shows that we respond more to the messenger than the message. To have a person stand in front of me with a college degree and tell me the same thing as a person who’s actually lived it and overcome the obstacle is more catchy and interesting. It’s just not interesting to me if someone who has no street credibility that gets their facts from textbooks and base their opinions on statistics….I would much rather be trapped in a mine with a miner than a geologist. A miner has been there and done that.
John B. Carter III
Charlottesville