Experiences in the Correctional Facility: Part 2
Five years ago I interned at a correctional facility as a young mental health therapist in New York. I wrote a blog post about my experience during that internship. If you want to check that out before reading this, check it out in the link below.
"Experiences in the Correctional facility"
Since then, I have worked with individuals involved in the criminal justice system from children to adults. Recently, I have been working in a county jail for the last 2 years. Jail is not prison. It is a purgatory. People in jail are innocent until proven guilty. It's hard to keep track of that day by day.
I have seen more about the process of mass incarceration. I have heard and sat with thousands of people at this point. The lives of these individuals are complex. Why they end up in these situations are often more complex. But the way we as society view them --- down to the coloring scheme of their jump suits are simple. Good or Bad. Orange and Black. Before I got involved in all of this I thought the same.
It has been deeply disheartening and profoundly inspirational all at the same time. On the systematic side, how we incarcerate people is more of a reflection of our priorities than of our intents. The mentally ill and those of low-socioeconomic status are disproportionally incarcerated not because they deserve it; but because we don't provide viable alternatives to the reality of their situations. We tell ourselves we do, and when they fail it's their fault. It's a convenient story and a more insidious lie. For most of us, failure is a learning opportunity. I've encountered many hard working people who did not have the room to fail; but did.
The mentally ill in correctional facilities is a humanitarian crisis of its own. I've individuals who are ill, day in and day out, for months or years at a time receiving the minimal of treatment. There are no words to describe my discontent. We place them in segregation a lot of the time because it is the safest place for them. Even that is a form of torture for someone who is not mentally ill. Those who are not placed there we provide nominal treatment to keep them stable while they are in the facility. While it is medically appropriate given our restraints, it is far from the care that they need. I briefly touched on it in my blog post about Mental health in Mecklenburg County. For context, the largest mental health hospital in the US is now a jail.
On the individual level, meeting people face to face, you learn that as a whole, people are highly resilient. People endure some horrific tragedies --- things you could never imagine --- and survive them. The process of incarceration for some is almost like a refuge from the chaos in their lives. In this stone, seemingly stable environment, they can find some solace. They endure this because it is nowhere near as difficult as the outside world they have to live in. This is easy.
One of the saving graces of my current experience are the officers I work with. I have worked with other law enforcement agencies and professionals in the past, but not all of them were humane. Most of the officers that I currently work with largely understand the human condition and how it is skewed in this setting. They understand that the mentally ill are not getting proper treatment in this setting. They largely do not abuse their power and treat people as people first. This is something a lot of correctional facilities don't have the the privilege of and cannot be dismissed. If not for them, I would not be able to even approach doing my job.
Personally, I still find it uneasy being an African American male among (mostly) other African American males who are incarcerated. The day I find that comforting is a day I never wish to see. I have in a very real way embodied this in my current position. I often find that I am the only non-uniformed male (guards or inmates) walking around in the facility. I am sometimes the only person of a certain age, gender, and ethnicity who has the freedom to wear what I want within jail. That is a paradoxical freedom. It took me a while to reflect on this simple embodiment of what I sometimes emotionally experience as a therapist in this role.
I am not going to go again into the socio-economic /historical reasons to why African American men are disproportionately incarcerated. I will refer you to a book called " The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" which profoundly shaped my understanding of race and social caste in America. But I will add that it extends farther than that.
Even if you removed every African American male from the criminal justice system, the United States of America would still incarcerate more people per capita than anywhere else . Poor white men and Hispanic men are also overly incarcerated. While racial differences are very important, poor and disadvantaged people are the most predictable victims of this system.
I will reiterate --- if you commit a crime, you should do the time. However, just because you commit a crime, it does not mean you are not a criminal. Crime and punishment are two separate things. I have learned to stop judging people by this standard. It has not been a easy process. Some people commit horrific acts. Things you wish you would have never heard or seen. I had to learn that my place is not judgement or forgiveness --- but understanding of the human condition. Being with someone as they experience this process. Seeing things from this view has changed me. Seeing that the law and people--- are not just black, white, and orange --- has changed me. It is humbling to be confronted with that in each face, with each story, with each person.
But this is by no means easy. It is hard to remember that this is abnormal. Days blur into weeks, which blur into months, which change into years. When you see so many incarcerated people, it is sometimes hard to remind yourself that this is not normal. When we as a nation incarcerate this many people, the process of incarceration itself starts to lose meaning. I often wonder if this is what inmates experience, after multiple incarcerations. If the abnormal also becomes normal --- where does that leave us?
My fear is, 5 years later, that this will become the norm. That this is the story that we tell about how justice in America happens. That if you are arrested by the state, it is assumed you committed "some wrong" --- that you are default guilty. It is easy to assume this once you limit a person of a way to contact their families, put them in an orange suit, and then place them in a 8x10 room. Once you strip someone of what makes them who they are; re-imagining them as someone else becomes an after thought.
The cost of incarceration lies not just in the sum of money spent --- which is billions, but in the number of years in human lives. Of the potential and productivity of American lives. On this 4th of July, while you celebrate our independence --- just remember that for a significant portion of our society this is not the case. And it has warped our sense of reality in America, even at the economic level.
" So perhaps the next time the jobs report comes out, there could be an extra chart to recognize the 1.6 million prisoners in America. They don’t show up anywhere in the government’s measurements of economic activity, but their absence is dearly felt." - Jeff Guo, Washington Post
What are we celebrating? Don't we still have work to do to achieve liberty and justice for all?
Even if an individual is eventually found out to be guilty; they should still be provided the circumstances to thrive and not wither away. I believe ultimately we are only as good as those of us who are worse off.
....there is a better way. Check out Germany's prison system.
References:
1. Experiences in the correctional facility
2. Prison segregation units are a breeding ground for mental health problems
3. Mental health Madness in Mecklenburg county
4. America's Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail
5. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness"
6. U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration Rate
7. Ten Economic Facts about Crime and Incarceration in the United States
8. America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality
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