Posted on 05/25/2006 6:51:03 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
When Joe’s dad went to prison, Joe went to prison too—a prison of shame and anger. Responding to his father’s incarceration, Joe fought, drank, and smoked dope. And while Joe’s prison was figurative, he was on a path leading to a real prison with bars and barbed wire.
Joe is not a unique case. As a recent article in the National Journal claimed, “The next generation of prisoners is going to come from the current generation of prisoners.”
Sadly, society stands idly by as the children of prisoners become the unintentional casualties of the “war on crime.” With more than 2.3 million individuals currently behind bars in America, our incarceration rate quadruples that of previous decades. And the children of these prisoners are five to seven times more likely than the average child to end up in prison one day. Even more shocking, the American Correctional Association concluded that 52 percent of female juvenile offenders had an incarcerated parent.
Tragically, intergenerational punishment extends even beyond the United States.
On a recent trip to Bolivia, I had the opportunity to visit San Pedro prison in La Paz. As I watched throngs of prisoners shove each other out of the way for their daily bowl of gruel, I noticed a little girl with matted hair and grubby face lift up her own bowl among the ranks of hardened criminals. Although innocent of any crime, she had no other choice but to join her parents behind bars.
She doesn’t deserve prison. And neither do the 2 million American children with an incarcerated parent. But that’s exactly where we will send them one day if we do not begin to reform the criminal justice system.
We must reevaluate who we lock up, why we lock them up, and how we lock them up. Prisons are for people we are afraid of, not mad at. In other words, prisons are for dangerous offenders who pose a threat to society. We need to challenge “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws and mandatory minimum sentencing, responsible for filling 60 percent of our federal prisons with drug offenders, many of whom have no prior criminal record for a violent offense and many of whom are not drug dealers. On top of that, we need to consider the ramifications of separating families by incarcerating prisoners far from their homes.
But we can do more than influence public policy. Jesus said in Matthew 18:5 that “whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me.” The Church has always heeded the call to care for at-risk children—forgotten children. And these children are the most at-risk and forgotten children in America. God has a bias toward those who do not have advocates. As His followers, we should too.
Thanks to a caring Prison Fellowship mentor and a local church, Joe has embraced Christ and now spends his free time participating in mission trips and playing football with friends from the church youth group. Through Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program, we have watched thousands of children of prisoners like Joe escape the vicious cycle of crime and come to Christ.
Would you consider helping us reach the unintended casualties of the war on crime? Help us by mentoring a prisoner’s child or buying a child a Christmas gift on behalf of their incarcerated parent. Help us to send a child to a week of Christian summer camping. Call us at BreakPoint (1-877-322-5527), and we’ll tell you how you can help and make a difference.
This is part seven in the “War on the Weak” series.
Its exactly the same to say the least. They did nothing but sell a product, which is what you are advocating here. Are we to believe that your "Crack-R-Us" outlets won't want customers? Again, making your argument look bad isn't the qualifier for dishonesty.
Smugglers/dealers primarily kill other smugglers/dealers, users primarily kill or steal from the innocent. You propose solving the first and ignoring the latter. So I do see a connection, but your solution solves the problem for the bad guys, while greatly increasing for the innocent.
No, it's a bad analogy because excessive speeding, in and of itself, places others in direct jeopardy, while drug use, in and of itself, does not place others in direct jeopardy. Therefore, it is a bad analogy.
A speeding car is potential energy,
No, that's kinetic energy. Potential energy is when it's at a high altitude, and could fall (and therefore gain kinetic energy) but it hasn't yet - which is why it's "potential" energy. But, enough of elementary school science for today.
The analogy is perfect because to you there is nothing wrong in the chain of events until the final step.
What is the corresponding "final step" when someone is smoking a joint, since you're so enamored of your analogy?
Thus, how can you say that someone that is speeding is reckless? They haven't caused an accident yet have they? You just refuse to apply the same logic to drug use. Its exactly the same thing.
Because a drug user is an armed-robber-in-waiting? Bigot. The same argument as "all black people are rapists-in-waiting" and "all gun owners are school shooters in waiting".
Apparently you don't read my posts. "The same things said about drugs today have been said about alcohol" is what I wrote. It's not me who has said these things, I'm citing others. If I cite alcohol prohibitionists and drug warriors, I'm not "comparing alcohol to drugs," I'm comparing the things others say about alcohol to the things others have said about drugs. The only comparison I have made about alcohol and drugs is that alcohol is far more destructive, killing far more people each year than drugs do.
FYI, the reason I'm against legal prostitution isn't based on the morality of prostitution. In my younger days I thought legal prostitution was a great idea, because I bought into the victimless crime nonsense.
As I got older, I realized that the vast majority of "voluntary prostitution" is made up of women with very serious psychological damage from sexual abuse as minors.
I'm also against legal Russian roulette tournaments based on similar assumptions of the participants mental health.
excessive speeding, in and of itself, places others in direct jeopardy
How? Who are you to say what the speed limit should be? You could only base this on the fact that a higher percentage of speeders commit crimes than nonspeeders. You are a tyrant by your own definition. It remains the perfect analogy.
Only using statistics, which is what is used to determine speed limits in relation to accidents. How this can be above anyone's comprehension is startling. Can you find the United States on a map of North America?
Only using statistics,
Back when I lived in Vienna VA we had two types of burglars, one type that would break into a vacant house, take valuables and leave. The other type would crawl through a window, bleed everywhere, mess up stuff, defecate on the rug and leave through the same window, often taking nothing. As the laws stood, the ones that came through the door would get a lot more prison time because of the amount of the theft.
What?????? FATHERHOOD MATTERS???? Don't let the feminists hear that.
potential energy n. The energy that exists in a body as a result of its position or condition rather than of its motion. sourcekinetic energy n. The energy possessed by a body because of its motion, equal to one half the mass of the body times the square of its speed. source
It's one thing for you to be wrong, it's another for you to cop an attitude about it, "You should have paid more attention in school."
Then again, pompous, ignorant people are just the sorts to force their ideas upon others at government gunpoint - and say they're doing it for their own good.
damning
(note to self: check!)
Yep.
Did you ever pause to think that this just might have something to do with them having a mom who married someone of the ilk that would commit three crimes to get caught up in the three strikes laws?
It implies that neither mom nor dad are especially bright (if you can count to two, that is a good time to quit).
It further implies that legal compliance is not high on the priority list at home.
I suppose that might make mom a real winner when it comes to raising kids, too.
Small wonder the kids are in trouble.
They should be studying the kids who grow up without dad at home (prison or not) and don't end up either in trouble with the law or in prison. Find out what people are doing right.
One more thing...in a small town, just being "a chip off the old block" will get a kid more scrutiny (amid 'I told you so' at the cop shop) than some "good kid from a good family". That might be a source of bias as well.
Yes, he should, but how does that justify sentencing that screws the child without changing the crime situation? If some kid never sees his dad because Dad's a murderer, or committed three armed robberies in a three strikes state, then that kid is collateral damage from the exact thing society should be doing. But that's not what we're talking about here.
I mean, you wouldn't say "The insurance company shouldn't have to pay for that kid's care in the burn ward. Her Mom should have thought about this before taking up smoking." So why would you say the state shouldn't care about the result of a nonviolent offender's kid getting screwed over? And why would we continue on any course of crime policy that does nothing to reduce crime?
Anyway, one of your examples is wrong, Jim Crow laws weren't enacted because blacks were thought of as more criminal but because they were stereotyped as inferior and shouldn't be mixed in blood, marriage or society.
Are you saying that we should allow the crook to get off "for the children"?
What is it the Bible says, something about sins of the father being visited on his children?
POST #16 - GREAT COMEBACK!!!
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