Hitting Bottom
YOU NEVER FORGET THE DAY YOU HIT BOTTOM
I was 17, recently dropped out of high school, and high on pot, alcohol and Black Beauties—just another Friday night house party for me. But this one would change my life.
As I made my way through the sea of dancing bodies, looking for the familiar faces of “my crowd”—and the cocaine they would be snorting—someone answered my questions about where I would find them by saying they were in the back bedroom shooting up.
“What?” I froze for a moment and then rushed out of that house. As I stood on the front lawn, practically hyperventilating, I reflexively began to repeat, “I am not a junkie. I am not a junkie. I am not a junkie!”
For whatever reason, something in me snapped at the thought of my friends trying heroin. That was crossing a line that the other drugs I had been using, had not. Shooting heroin just wasn’t who I was—but facing the fact that it was the company I was keeping—shook me to the core. So, I walked away from that house and that lifestyle forever.
CYCLE BREAKING
If you have ever spent time with recovering addicts, you have heard the sentiment that everyone, eventually hits their bottom—a moment in time when we realized we couldn’t keep living like we were. For many addicts, hitting bottom is getting arrested or losing an important relationship. We have all heard the story of the middle-aged, obese, smoker who changes his habits after THAT heart attack. Or, the gambler who finally gets help when he loses the family home.
For too many of us, it takes something dramatic to break through the wall of denial that there was ever a problem at all. It takes something big to force us to face the facts—the drugs, binge eating, gambling, spending, alcohol or [insert harmful behavior] has become too destructive. It’s time to change.
D.E.N.I.A.L = Don’t Even Know I Am Lying (usually to ourselves)
But, I wonder, are we as a nation stuck in denial about how destructive Mass Incarceration has become? Over the past ten years, I have noticed more news, more books, more TEDtalks, more documentaries, more movies, and a lot more media coverage about how bankrupt Mass Incarceration has been for addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. How our default—that is, locking people up for crimes usually driven by addiction or mental illness—does nothing to help crime victims to heal or to make our neighborhoods any safer.
For years, studies have shown that putting people behind bars actually makes us less safe, because our neighbors return to us more traumatized, more economically unstable and less prepared to succeed in mainstream society.
Most of us agree that drug addicts need treatment, not prison. We all agree that prison is not a place for effectively treating mental illness or addressing childhood trauma. Many of us have heard the sentiment that the rich get justice while the poor get prison and that the criminal justice system is inherently racist. But we don’t seem concerned enough to tackle the major reforms that we need to change. Most of us are happy to look the other way and go on with our lives.
GETTING OUR ATTENTION
But, COVID-19 seems to be the crisis that is shining a bright spotlight on a system that is just too destructive that we just can’t ignore it anymore.
Presently, 8 of the top 10 clusters of the Novel Coronavirus in the US are in prisons and jails because sanitation is lacking, and overcrowding makes it impossible to follow CDC guidelines for social distancing.
Elderly people incarcerated in our prisons—many for drugs crimes committed in the 90’s before everyone got “woke” and started legalizing marijuana—are at great risk for dying from the virus.
Prison infirmaries are not prepared to deal with infectious disease, and thus, human beings are being “medically isolated” in solitary confinement—a setting designed to punish not to heal.
But even as the virus is forcing us to take a hard look at a practice, that many scholars are calling cruel and unusual punishment, too many voices still simplistically quip, “Do the crime. Do the time.”
Like the addict stuck in denial, these voices would rather lie to themselves about what helps people change, than change the system. And, in the midst of a global pandemic, this short-sighted punitive thinking puts all of us at greater risk because corrections officers are leaving these hotbeds of disease every day, to bring it home to the rest of us.
In response to this crisis, many state governors have implemented early release programs for people who are in the last months of their sentences, are medically fragile, and/or for those who do not pose a threat to public safety. County Sheriffs, all over the country, have decreased jail populations—keeping only those who are dangerous to the community. While judges around the US are waiving bail, so that arrested people can safely shelter at home. And, so I find myself asking,
“If we can keep people out of jail, who do not pose a threat to safety, because of the virus, then why did we put those people in jail in the first place? Were they dangerous before, but now they are not?”
“And, if people can be safely released from prison—months before their stated release date—in order to create more space to practice social distancing in prisons, then why can’t we shorten sentences in general, to ease overcrowding all of the time?”
“How much return on investment are taxpayers really getting in the way of public safety by keeping people behind bars who are old and medically fragile? Why wouldn’t we always allow the elderly and infirm to return to their families to be cared for them in their last days?”
Most developed nations have systems that don’t rely on locking people up like we do, and yet, their violent crime rates are lower than ours. Are we simply addicted to Mass Incarceration—continuing in this destructive habit—even though we know it is hurting us?
FACING THE WRECKAGE OF OUR PAST
One of the hardest parts of working a recovery program—free of denial—is facing the consequences brought upon us by our destructive past. Cleaning up the mess is never easy. And, though reform advocates are rejoicing that COVID-19 is forcing the release of people who shouldn’t be in prison anyway, those of us who provide reentry support are struggling.
Helping returning neighbors to achieve law-abiding citizenry takes incredible persistence on a good day. For too long, those in positions of power, have been denying that pretty much nothing about our criminal legal system—from arrest, to arraignment, to plea bargaining, to sentencing, to the way people spend their time behind bars—operates with the ultimate outcome in mind…the condition of the people who return to our neighborhoods. Reentry is the most blaring example of how locking people up fails to make them better citizens. The real work starts on release day.
But, COVID-19 has made this work even more difficult. Finding housing for our releasing neighbors was always hard, now we have to coordinate virus testing and isolation before a transitional house will even let them move in. We used to provide a Tracphone and one month of talk/text—the most basic of telecommunications—but now our folks need a data plan to be able to function in a world that runs on video meetings and telemedicine. The DMV has been closed, so everyone who has released in the past two months, has no ID and finding a job with a felony record, is nearly impossible in this season of businesses closures, lay-offs, and furloughs.
But, while many reentry programs around the country buckle under the weight of this challenge, the volunteers at RI are pushing forward. We can’t just turn away from the responsibility the whole community holds for dealing with the wreckage this system has brought onto our neighbors. COVID-19 has shown the world that we are all connected, and people returning from prison are no exception. Cleaning up this mess belongs to all of us.
A FEARLESS MORAL INVENTORY
As I reflect back on the night I turned away from the destructive life I was living as a teenager, I realize that I was really having an identity crisis. Proclaiming that I was not a junkie opened the door to discovering who I really was—a troubled teen who needed help—a young woman with lots of potential for doing good things in this world. I became a nurse, a wife, a mother, a pastor and a community leader—but thankfully, not an inmate.
And, I wonder if this moment in history—this global crisis—is an opportunity for all of us to take a hard look at ourselves and to open the door for new possibilities for who we can be—a nation that addresses problems like addiction, poverty, healthcare and childhood trauma with treatment instead of prison. A nation that is honest about facing the wreckage of our Tough on Crime past with as much courage as we are facing the pandemic. Hitting bottom is hard and change is even harder but caring about the success of our returning neighbors is too important to ignore any longer if we want to realize the dream of safe and healthy neighborhoods. #InThisTogether
We at RI would like to invite you to join in this important work by financially supporting us we courageously face the challenges of realizing safer neighborhoods in the era of COVID-19. Our work has become more complex, more expensive and more difficult. We need to raise $6,000 in the next few weeks to keep pace with the need and we appreciate every tax-deductible donation in this tough time.