Visiting people at the county jail felt both familiar and odd. I am still processing. Even after hanging with Nicole S. afterwards to talk and process together, I am still sifting through the many layers of this experience.
Having visited jails/prison before, I have never been allowed outside the visitor's area. Family has described the inner workings and tv has filled in colorful gaps. But nothing felt the way it did today. I can see how some of the monotony and predictability of a typical day might become comforting to people. I can also see how our humanity is bared and stripped away. There is countless research on the impact of dulling our senses to the point of numbness. It's how I felt today. No color. No variation in textures. No real human interaction or contact. No grass or trees or nature. The survival mode and mentality you would have to exhibit is unfathomable, yet millions accomplish it every day.
How would I break through that mindset upon the release of an inmate their first few minutes reclaiming their freedom? What programs or services would I offer to them in the parking lot?
Nothing. I wouldn't.
My experience has been that reconnecting with the world, the sensory overload, physical exhaustion, new routine, and emotional baggage is too much to overcome in that moment. Like the possible college courses being proposed in NY, in theory the people being released should have been educated and rehabilitated while incarcerated. Upon exiting, they would have the choice to go in the direction of insanity or the direction of new hope. *The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, producing the same results and outcomes.
No, I personally would not focus on the inmate. I would focus on their family. A consistent theme I heard today was that we need to get to the kids as early possible. To me that means infancy. Numerous studies show that as infants we crave and need human contact, affection, and love to survive and thrive. If you aren't getting those things, you are already off to a rocky start, missing out on developmental milestones and the ability to feel compassion and empathy. The mother in me wants to help the kids.
When the ex-prisoner walks out the doors, personal affects in hand, they would be greeted by their children. They would have the opportunity to talk together with a counselor who would explain several options for the children. Together, the parents and children would decide on a "camp" for the child to attend. Then, the children would be shuttled to one of these camps for an intense experience where they were taught tools. Coping mechanisms, communication, self-discovery, personal well being and health, conflict mediation, anger management, compassion and more would be topics taught through classroom instruction, journaling, meditation, a ropes course, community service, and counseling. I don't want to treat the symptom (parents in prison), I want to break the cycle.
To be Nevada-specific, this "camp" would take place up in Tahoe and be a year long, fully functioning facility, with kids coming and going throughout the year. We'd have to time it right and make allowances for missing school, maybe incorporating school work so they wouldn't fall behind. And it would range in age, 5-24. I say 24 because that is the cut off for insurance under the affordable care act, and this treatment would be subsidized by insurance.
So, let's review:
1. Prisoner is released, walks out to the parking lot to be greeted by family and their children.
2. After some private time, a counselor from the camp would talk about the different options/tracks with the families. Together, the families would decide length of stay and which track the kids would take.
3. The kids would get on a bus and head to camp. The parent, now a free man or woman, would go do whatever it was they were going to do. Maybe they would seek out their next hit. Maybe they would go on to college. I can't say, but at least they would know there was hope for their children.
I choose this as a possible solution because I don't believe there is a one-size fits all program that would successfully address each prisoner's individual situations. And I think you have to start small and start somewhere. So I would start with those who have kids. Once we could show success, expansion of the program could be a possibility.
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