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July 14, 2024 - April 20, 2025
Most prisoners are not Ascenders. Most could be.
“Ships in harbor are safe, But that’s not what ships are built for.” - John Shedd
being “summoned by life.”2 I was AWOL the first decades of my life, and the idea of being summoned by life intrigued me. A summons is an order to do something, often to appear before a judge. My summons was to appear in my own life.
Some prisoners substituted improbable stories for reality, but I found a good deal of authenticity when it was evident I cared.
I saw despair and stagnation. Good minds were immersed in boredom, lost hope, and defeat. Yet, some dared to hope.
We live in a throw-away society where broken items are discarded. Too often, broken or flawed people are seen as disposable.
old Japanese repair process called kintsugi – a method of fixing broken things. The philosophy of kintsugi is intriguing. There is no attempt to hide breaks or damage. Instead, the repair highlights the breaks and the mending. Attractive cement, often gold, is used as glue, producing irregular vein-like lines prominently displayed. A mended cup is considered more beautiful and valuable than before it was broken.
former prisoners need not cover up the prison chapter of life but acknowledge it as a time of accelerated mending, growth, and achievement – a time of renewal, a time of becoming better than new? The mending is then prominently displayed in lives of authenticity, responsibility, and service.
“All I saw was everything being taken away from me all in a matter of a few hours. Wife, gone! Kids, gone! Dreams, gone! Trust, gone! Reputation, gone! Future destroyed! Ultimate vision and purpose no longer possible. I was devastated by being torn from my wife and kids because of my mistakes – the heartbreak it caused and broken dreams.
There is a lot more understanding and compassion among inmates and less judging than what you get on the ‘outs.’ We learn to look past the faults of others.
In my mind, I felt that I’ve grown more in the past 5 months of being here than the first 38 years of my life!
My greatest and most vital spiritual insights have been achieved since I came to prison.”
While I have heard prison described as an abyss, I find most prisoners have met the abyss long before prison. For them, the prison abyss is an extension of life’s abyss.
“I always believed it was the concrete walls and razor-topped fences that constituted prison. Later, I began to see the prison I was trapped in were the thoughts and beliefs I had accepted. I was in prison way before I came to the actual place.”
I screwed up by the friends I chose
many prisoners who acknowledge being lost – lacking meaning and direction. The famous woodsman Daniel Boone was once asked if he had ever been lost. He replied, “I have never been lost – but I was bewildered once for about three days.”
“Every man has forgotten who he is…
“More than 80% of my life has been based on other people’s opinions of me.
I tell the prisoners most people see them as having oversized egos and overblown confidence. The more reflective prisoners say it is the opposite; they only put on a facade of bravado.
“Most people say I was a narcissist, and I can see why it looked that way, but that was only a defense mechanism. I have had plenty of time to think about why I committed my crime, and the answer is a lack of self-esteem. I hated myself, felt inferior, and looked for people I could control to gratify myself.”
Sometimes we, especially me, do deviant things to mask the pain, or in some way desperately hope to feel loved.”
The old me died a long time ago out in The Desert of Dysfunction. You have to take the old highway of Broken Dreams to get there. It is a lonely desert of lost souls. It is a battleground for angels and bad spirits. Only a handful of lost souls find their way out of the Desert of Dysfunction.”
“My personal manacles were, and are, a self-image of inadequacy. I’ve always felt I was never, and will never, be good enough.”
the motive is to achieve an image of success.
“I felt inferior because we were so poor. I never had the things other kids had. I vowed I would change that, whatever I had to do. Now I have less than what I had before.”
More than half of prisoners have a mental health problem, and 15 to 20 percent are estimated to have a serious mental illness. Some refer to prisons and jails as “the new asylum.”4
On average, prisoners had a pre-prison median income of 41 percent less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages. Only 55 percent reported any income the first year after release. Those who were working had a median annual income of $10,000.5
Dangerous offenders are removed from society for the safety and protection of society. That is reasonable. Nonetheless, 95% of prisoners will be released someday, so, as a stand-alone, it is a temporary solution.
The Brennan Center for Justice determined that 39% of those incarcerated are not a threat to society.2 With this group of prisoners, incapacitation is not a logical consequence.
Little evidence supports the position that harsh penalties are effective crime deterrents.
I have found no evidence retribution, retaliation, or revenge positively affects the offender or society. More likely, the effect is negative.
The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime. However, no restriction exists on how often a person can be punished for the same crime. How about four times?
losing familiar things such as the expulsion from home, jobs, community, and familiar surroundings. It includes a severe disengagement with family and friends.
badly in need repair.
When a person acts mechanically without feeling or emotion, that individual is no longer a person. They are a zombie. It’s what I see here. An environment densely populated by zombies.”
“Here in prison, going along with the crowd is almost a matter of survival.
“The pack mentality is practiced by inmates who gang up on those who don’t go along with their ‘code.’
heckling and mockery are non-stop. I hate when people put down self-improvement in here, and it’s so common.”
how does being warehoused in a cell five or twenty-five years repay a debt? The question is more troublesome, knowing that society pays more than $30,000 per year to warehouse a prisoner. 10 Rather than a debt being paid, the amount owed to society seems to have increased.
Of course, reentry refers to when a prisoner returns to society. However, my first thought of the term reentry was of a spaceship that has traveled outside Earth’s atmosphere. The launch into space is a miracle, but the mission is not complete until there is a successful reentry. Upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, the spaceship’s exterior can reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The entry angle must be exact – if it is too steep, the spacecraft burns up. If the angle is too shallow, the spacecraft skims off the edge of the atmosphere like a stone skimming along the surface of a pond. An
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“Solitary confinement forced me to reconcile my philosophical and religious beliefs with my behaviors.
“I wasn’t arrested. I was rescued.”
“Prison is like a pitstop on the way to winning the race.”
People get stuck and lost when basic needs are not filled.
“All it takes is someone to open their hearts and see the good within us. Once a person is given a chance, usually, miraculous change starts to take place. We start to believe in ourselves and others.”
A place designed for misery, turned out to be a place of great learning. I learned to expand from the confinement of ‘self’ and live a much holier and richer life. At first, you will hate such tortuous things, but somewhere in a dark, cold corner, you will discover serenity and peace with yourself.
Mark Levenhagen of the Indiana Department of Corrections. “Many people think [in prison] we are like garage attendants – that we take cars damaged in competition and lock them into a garage. This is an inaccurate view. More accurately, we are like the pit crew. It is our job to get damaged cars back into the race.”6
Mr. Ramon. “My wife showed me kindness, forgiveness, and love, which I did not merit. It was a catalyst for my learning to trust, open up, and finally love. It became the start of my release from my self-inflicted mind-forged manacles.”
Mr. Raden. “Most people despise ‘inmate criminals,’ and you see us as human beings with potential for good. You see us as people who have value and deserve love and help. You see the worth in us despite society’s scorn. I love you for that.”
“Focusing on staying clean and sober alone is not enough to change one’s life permanently. When dealing with victims of drug addiction, I felt one of the most important steps to rehabilitation was for the individual to achieve an insight into what they could become. Most substance addiction programs focus only on staying free from substance addiction/relapse. They are without setting a goal and a clear image of becoming a new individual with aspirations of a new life. Hope is the foundation for change. To have hope, one has to authentically visualize themselves as a new person with new values
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