Ten Top Challenges for Re-Entry

At Corrections Corporation of America, Michelle Ryder, director of Treatment and Behavioral Programs, and Jill Gillian, manager of Reentry Services, have identified 10 of the most common challenges for individuals reentering society:  They recommend that an inmate begin addressing these issues prior to release.  They provide a foundation of support that makes re-entry more achievable.

1. I.D. and Official Papers (Social Security Card, Birth Certificate, Driver’s License)

Without having their official papers in order, an ex-offender will not be able to find housing or employment, operate vehicles, qualify for credit, get insurance, or do a number of other things they will have to do in order to make their re-entry successful.

2. Finding Benefits that Offenders May Receive

A felony conviction may interfere with an ex-offender’s ability to qualify for public assistance.  Disability, food stamps, and housing assistance may be affected.  Ex-offenders need knowledgeable guidance to identify public assistance and resources for which they qualify.

3. Finding Reliable Transportation for Work and Daily Living

Ex-offenders will probably not have access to a car.  They will need to know their city’s bus system and learn how to get around using the bus to get to work, to do shopping, and to go to medical appointments.  This challenge can throw barriers in the way of employment, proper childcare, and getting to required appointments set up by parole officers.  In addition to knowing bus routes and schedules, ex-offenders will need to learn resources for bus passes.

4. Affordable and Adequate Housing

Those without a safe place to live are more likely to recidivate, especially at-risk females.  Helping offenders assess their eligibility for safe public housing or identifying relatives who might be willing to provide shelter, even temporarily, will improve the ex-offender’s chances for success.

5. Health Care and Health Insurance

For personal and public health reasons, it’s important for recently-released individuals to attend to their health care needs after release. This means finding medical providers and perhaps insurance programs that can meet their medical needs on a sliding scale basis.

6. Support for Sobriety

Ex-offenders with substance abuse histories will need sobriety support.  Without, the statistics say that they will re-offend  and return to jail.  Self-help groups and counselors must be part of pre-release planning.  Follow through is essential.

7. Reconnecting to Family

Many ex-offenders have families, but incarceration makes reconnecting difficult.  Spouses may be estranged, but the children need both parents.  Ex-offenders need counseling to navigate these difficult waters.  Even reconnecting to parents and siblings can prove difficult and stressful.  .

8. Reading, Writing, and Re-Entry

An education not only improves an offender’s quality of life, but it also helps them qualify for work once they reenter society.  Upgrading work and literacy skills is a major tool to help ex-offenders avoid re-offending.

9. Finding and Keeping a Decent Job

Getting a job is critical to an ex-offender’s success, and once they find employment, it can be challenging to maintain that job. Teaching job readiness skills, such as resume building and interviewing skills, as well as handling potential issues such as peer relationships and job stress, will help the ex-offender achieve healthy goals.

10. Money Management (bank accounts, bills, child support, etc.)

Upon release and finding employment, ex-offenders soon encounter the responsibility that comes with paying for housing and utility bills, as well as fulfilling other financial obligations, such as victim restitution or child support. Helping ex-offenders prepare for these situations by teaching practical life skills, such as how to create a budget, open and maintain a bank account and apply for credit, will reduce the money management stresses of re-entry.

By David Richardson

SOURCE: 

http://www.cca.com/insidecca/addressing-the-top-10-inmate-reentry-challenges

Are “Vouchers” and “Parental Choice” the Real Issues in Education?

Senator Elizabeth Warren has apparently changed her mind on vouchers. In a book she co-authored in 2003, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke, she supported them. In her challenge to Betsy DeVoss’ nomination as Secretary of the Department of Education, she has changed her mind.

Her views on Trump’s nominees don’t concern me. I would expect her to be critical. She is, after all, a Democratic senator. That’s her job, so to speak. Moreover, I don’t mind a politician, or any thinking person, changing a position on an important issue. That should be the result, however, of a logical process that says, “I was mistaken in my assessment, and here are the reasons that have forced me to change my mind.” But we don’t see anything approaching an explanation here. Instead, we see pure partisan outrage. It’s comic and irrelevant.

Switching views for partisan reasons or to gain a supposed political advantage suggests a thought process motivated by short-term considerations, not long-term solutions. Though a professor who presumably cares about education, Senator Warren insists on missing the point totally. Her shrill irrelevancy should entertain her detractors and disappoint her constituency. The issue of education deserves better, for it affects the future workforce, crime statistics, the census in state and federal prison systems, international business competitiveness, and a host of other topics. Senator Warren may not like DeVoss, but I have another question for her–and for other senators on either side of the aisle.

The real issue with school vouchers is not public versus private education. Even parental choice doesn’t quite capture the problem. The real issue is education that prepares students for their futures or education that condemns young people to restricted opportunities in a world economy where they will be unable to compete with better educated young people–nationally or globally. Those on the Left and the Right had better decide where the future is going to take place–with their political base or with young people now entering school.

America’s educational system is not working–especially for minorities and the poor. That is not a matter for debate. It is the truth and constitutes a real and present danger to the republic. We entrust elected officials to address threats such as this. When they fail to do so, whether they come from the Left or the Right, they betray the nation’s trust. Citizens should not reward that betrayal in future elections with their votes.

Despite emergency legislation (e.g., “No Child Left Behind), America’s educational decline has been going on for decades. U.S. business now spends billions of dollars annually on the remedial training of its workers. As foreign nations make impressive gains, American children fall behind in both literacy and math. America is now failing to prepare a new generation of young Americans. Many of the unprepared from the last generation we now house in the nation’s prisons. Mass incarceration is a scandal. Now experts tell us that this next generation will be less educated and less skilled than their parents. That’s also a scandal–and a tragedy. Is the solution building more prisons? That’s no way to maintain a world-class economy.

So here is my question, Senator Warren. Please share it with other senators–Republicans and Democrats. Compared to the rest of the world, U.S. education is expensive and mediocre. What are you and your colleagues going to do about it?

SOURCES:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/#main-content

https://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/category/education/

The U.S. ranks 1st in prisoners

http://whotv.com/2013/12/03/lagging-behind-us-education-ranks-36th-worldwide/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html

http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/

http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/u-s-students-compare/

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/u-s-students-improving-slowly-in-math-and-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/

A Logical Fallacy Explains Why Change Is Not always Good

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GREAT WHITE WHALE OFFERS A FEW WORDS TO 21ST CENTURY AMERICA

For those who have prophetic souls, the study of literature can be quite satisfying, especially if it is done outside the Academy. For inside the lecture hall, post-modern vampires will drain all life from a great novel, poem, or play, and leave it in your hands crumbling to dust. But let great authors on their own terms speak to you, and their words will elucidate the past and even show you the future.  One such novelist is Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick. His voice has something to teach about America’s possible future, and the angry voices we hear around us today would do well to listen. Through his great white whale, Melville offers a prophetic warning.

MOBY-DICK: AN ANALOGICAL TALE

Though several movies now tell its story, Moby-Dick (first published in 1851) offers a challenge to moviemakers. Melville’s masterpiece, which 19th-century critics and the reading public failed to recognize, is a daunting and complicated book. The plot is hard to condense suitably in a few lines. I would not even try it. But as a child some years ago, I remember reading a TV Guide listing that provided a summary in just a brief phrase, “Madman chases whale.” Of course, that completely misses the author’s point. It is understandable, however, that moviemakers and listing writers might have difficulty with this novel. The problem for them is that Melville’s story is analogical, not literal. Like a parable, its images provide a vehicle for meaning that lies far beyond them—meaning that many may find uncomfortable.

Commentators note that the story of the Essex, a whaling ship rammed and sunk by a large whale in 1820, inspired Melville’s tale. The real story of the Essex, however, comes from the three-month nightmare at sea endured by those who escaped the sinking ship–the captain and 20 crew members. Of these, only eight survived, included the captain, George Pollard, Jr. That survival ordeal devolved ultimately into cannibalism, but none of that really appears in Melville’s book, so the story of Ahab and the Pequod is not a fictionalized account of Pollard and the Essex.

Instead, it is a prophecy that is even more terrible—one that speaks like an Amos or Joel to America’s soul.

THE STORY’S MEANING

So what does the story mean? It is social criticism, intensely symbolic and razor sharp. It has no more to do with whaling than Jesus’ “Parable of the Sower” has to do with scientific agriculture. Melville simply used whaling and the fate of the Essex as a vehicle to offer America a cautionary tale. During the author’s life, America could not hear his warning; both he and Moby-Dick fell into obscurity. But Melville was a prophet. The tragic outbreak of the Civil War, less than a decade after the novel’s publication, certainly establishes his reputation as a seer, though few at the time noticed. Tragically, he and most of his work remained virtually unknown. Only in the 20th century have critics recognized Moby-Dick as a literary classic and Melville as one of America’s most important authors. Nonetheless, in the 21st century, his prophetic warning remains unheeded, even by the majority of those who have read the adventure. Parables are like that.

What Melville fears in the American character is a perverse, Puritan-like turn of mind that must see all experience in terms of good and evil, pressing everything into that mold—whether or not it fits. Ahab symbolizes how that character responds to deep and personal wounds. He has lost his leg to the great whale. That is the wound. He now seeks a righteous retribution, extending his holy passion through his ship and its crew. Blood for blood, Moby-Dick will pay with its life to satisfy Ahab’s vengeance. But the creature he crusades to destroy is neither good nor evil; it is simply a force of nature and cares nothing for Ahab’s categories. When Ahab crushes all experience into his press of moral vengeance, he pits himself and all who are with him against the forces of reality itself. That challenge brings them all to destruction—save one, Ishmael, the witness. Had the North and the South heeded Melville’s warning, perhaps both sides could have worked to trade pride and righteous indignation to win justice, human dignity, and unity, rather than to beckon so many young men to their deaths, leaving so many widows and orphans and such deep and open racial wounds.

The Pequod symbolizes America; Ahab is a twisted covenant with death that fills the ship’s sails and arrogantly directs her course.  Ishmael is the one born outside that covenant, the one who survives to tell the tale. The mixed crew, assembled from different geographical locations, races, and classes, represents society and culture. The great white whale is the mystery of reality itself, from which all life emerges but ever extends—in sorrow or in joy–beyond human categories and understanding.

America’s nightmare destiny, in Melville’s view, is to use her power and technology in a moral assault upon reality itself in order to destroy what is evil and to establish what is good. That perverse crusade will seek to chisel from what actually exists an idol crafted in its own image—an idol arrogant and cruel, a pseudo-deity that bewitches the nation’s imagination to worship the very act of fabrication, that blinds it to what is real, and then seduces the culture to its own destruction—just as Ahab’s waving dead arm, his body tied fast to the whale by harpoon line, beckons his crew to their deaths. That is the meaning of Melville’s parable; at least, that is the best that I can do.

MOBY-DICK’S MESSAGE TODAY

What might Moby-Dick’s message be to an all too sophisticated 21st-century America? The great white whale might offer some advice. For example, it would not discount the struggle between good and evil. Anyone with a brain and a bit of history knows that this conflict is real. But the ocean beast would simply remind us that we infuse our own unmistakable stink on most of the evil we see yet choose to remain nose blind. A rational crusade to stamp out evil, consequently, would have to begin by stamping out ourselves. That might cause a bit of self-reflection before we elect to raise the banners and to blow the trumpets.

The great whale might also remind us that we keep getting it wrong—on purpose. We like to play games with good and evil. The motive? It is hard to trick people into doing corrupt and brutal things that serve our personal interests. If they think they do it in the name of a noble cause, however, the deceit becomes much easier to pull off. For that transforms “I oppose you” into “You are evil.” Attaching that epithet turns people into worthless things. History teaches that motivated warriors will crush what they perceive as evil far more enthusiastically than they will crush what they see as another human being.

The monster whale would also say that for political, economic, or ideological reasons, we keep twisting what the struggle is. The beast would tell us that we purposely create monsters in order to destroy them, as if it were a particularly satisfying human hobby. It would point out that we do this to avoid basing our moral judgments on any systematic and rational ethical theory, preferring to seek personal affronts and to stir up prejudices to fuel moral outrage. Pretexts are easier. It would also note that we turn opponents into villains with ad hominem attacks, hurling the same assaults against anyone who might venture a defense. Then we elevate those with whom we sympathize to sainthood, overlooking any flaws and imparting to them a purity of motive that we know is most certainly nonsense. This projection, the sea creature would observe, we use to avoid dealing with rational objections and to take the moral offensive against anyone who makes a legitimate criticism.

Finally, Moby-Dick would question why we so eagerly embrace any ideological view—political, religious, social, or economic—when it seduces us to take hysterical fanatical action, even in the face of facts, common sense, and human decency. The creature would wonder, “Why do you risk the lives of others, put our own lives in jeopardy, and destroy what has taken years to build just to stand for dogmatic ideas that cannot tolerate alternative views or negotiate the real world but, instead, demand the mangling and dismemberment of reality to fit imaginary categories and to fuel infantile rage? Even to an uneducated whale, that makes no sense.”

Such advice the great white whale might provide–in simple respect to its creator, Herman Melville. For Moby-Dick’s author warns us not to follow that lifeless, beckoning arm leading to disaster, no matter from what part of our culture it might be waving. So his creature dutifully passes on the counsel but then indifferently swims away and leaves us to our own devices. Forces of nature are like that; they do not care about humankind’s future. But if we learn to listen, with the help of an insightful author, they can help us to face reality with greater wisdom. That is desperately needed during these days in which grim-faced crowds, full of spleen, deliberately step without restraint into the streets and methodically begin knocking peoples’ hats off—or worse.

Sources:

https://archive.org/details/moby_dick_librivox?q=Moby+Dick

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/

http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=334

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A Conversation with Shirley Cooper: A Community Re-Entry Journey

Shirley Cooper, Board Member of Bridges Community Services in Muncie, Indiana, describes her journey of re-entry after 20 years serving in Indiana’s state prisons. She discusses her struggle to find employment and housing–a struggle that led her to become a community advocate and to join the executive board of Bridges Community Services, a social service organization that addresses homelessness, housing, and poverty in the Muncie community.