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When Your Neighbor Comes Home from Prison
Feburary 1, 2004
In his State of the Union address, President Bush surprised the Congress, calling for a major re-entry program to help offenders return to society.
As two conservative Republicans who formerly held high positions in government and later did time in prison, we cheered the President's words. We know both sides of the issue firsthand; we've worked with thousands of inmates over the years and we've seen what works and what doesn't.
The President is dead-on. Over 600,000 inmates will be released from America's prisons this year. To get a sense of that, realize it is three times the size of the U.S. Marine Corps-and maybe just as lethal, for in prison most inmates get a post-graduate course in crime. We saw why, sitting in prison dormitories listening to inmates plan their next crime or how they would get even with society. We've seen the bitterness, anger, and hopelessness in their faces.
And when they get to the front gate to be release, they're given $100, an old suit of clothes, a bus ticket home, and the guard says, "See ya in a month." For two out of three inmates, that's prophetic.
Remember that these men and women are coming back to our neighborhoods. The only question is the one the President asked-what's being done to prepare them to live healthy, productive, law-abiding lives? Today the answer is virtually nothing. That means more crime, more victims, more costly prison. As the President said, "We know from long experience that if they can't find work or a home or help, they are much more likely to commit more crimes and return to prison."
This country faces a huge problem. But the good news is there is an answer, one that has already been validated by an extensive peer-reviewed study conducted by Dr. Byron Johnson at the University of Pennsylvania. The test model was the faith-based, 24-hour-a-day, Christian prison project launched by then Governor George W. Bush in 1997.
Under contract from the state, Prison Fellowship established IFI (InnerChange Freedom Initiative). Prisoners go through teaching, counseling, work, Bible studies, from the beginning of the day until lights out at night-no TV, no wasted time. This is 18 months of serious business, followed by matching with a mentor who works with the inmates on release.
What are the results? In the study released last June, Dr. Byron Johnson and researchers found that the recidivism rate among graduates was 8 percent compared with 20 percent for a control group of similar inmates. That compares with 50% for the state of Texas and 67% for the nation.
Dr. Johnson found mentors were "critical" to the impressive reduction in recidivism. In fact, when the mentors stayed with the inmate, the recidivism rate fell to 4 percent. When prisoners move from prison, where they have no control over any aspect of their lives, they are ill prepared to return to a community which gives them a myriad of choices and temptations. Basic decisions about where to live, where to seek employment, who to associate with, confront them the minute they hit the street. The mentors are key to helping them think through their decisions and then holding them accountable for the right moral choices.
Of course, for a mentor or anything to make a difference, the offender's attitude must be changed. Crime is, at its root, as professors James Wilson and Herrnstein discovered in a landmark study, a moral problem. Inmates make wrong choices. That's why IFI and mentoring concentrates on moral truths formation. Like an alcoholic delivered from the addiction of alcohol, inmates must choose to live a decent life outside of that prison. Just imagine the impact on crime in our communities if more inmates could complete the kind of program we've been running in Texas, and now in Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota as well. "All but 1,000 of Texas' 143,000 prisoners have an eventual release date," noted Fred Becker, the first warden at IFI Texas. "It's up to us to determine what kind of shape they come back to the world in."
That's why we as ex-offenders working with prisoners every day cheered the President and the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who stood and applauded his bold initiative. There are very few things this country could do today that would do more to restore the peace of our communities.
Not only does mentoring work, but an effort like this would be good for our national character. When the President spoke at Whitehall in England, he talked about the legacy Americans enjoy from our British evangelical forebears-Tyndale, Wesley, Booth, and particularly William Wilberforce, who fought the great campaign against the slave trade. They did so not only to eliminate the villainies of the day, but to restore the moral ardor of the British people. And indeed they did. In their campaign against the social evils of the day a great moral revival swept England.
Bush knows this in his heart. This is why he backed a Prison Rape Reduction bill, which no president had done before him. This is why he's the first president to speak about prisoners in a State of the Union message. This is an extraordinary opportunity for all Americans, liberals and conservatives, to help the most disadvantaged in our midst. In the process, we'll be doing something very important for ourselves. Not only in practical terms for the social order, but in renewing our sense of justice.
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