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.
Oh please. SampleMan is taking you bleeding-hearts to the woodshed on this thread.
Did anyone anywhere suggest banning all drugs? Your Jim Crow example is stunningly misdirected, while your firearms example doesn't address that weapons serve such a beneficial role in society and democracy that they have been specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Drugs that are beneficial are legal, check your local drugstore. You may notice that not all weapons are legal. Try purchasing a fully operational SA-7 missile.
The part where smoking crack and becoming a menace to society is a noble human right.
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."
That's really rich given it was in reply to your "elementary school "comment.
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.
Besides being stupid, that's a completely non sequitur statement.
You have to be kidding me. Read my comments in this thread, and you'll see I mean nothing of the sort.
But before you do that, consider this: You know that Inman guy they just got for raping that Clemson student and strangling her with her bikini top? He was supposed to serve 30 years for a rape in Florida, but he was turned loose early because they were short on jail cells. I wonder if some low-level offender was occupying the cell this animal should have been in for three decades, because somebody wanted to be "tough on crime."
I wasn't kidding; and I hadn't read every post.
You have to do a LOT of drugs to "fry your brain". Unless you can come up with an objective measure for "danger to society" or "fried brain" then I think you're on thin ice, at least as far as a free society based on individual rights and limited government is concerned.
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.
I wasn't representing the my examples as historically accurate, but rather a reflection of mindset of the modern-day bigot. For that matter, gun control laws weren't enacted to prevent school shootings, either, but rather to disarm black people. Irrespective of the historical origins, today's KKK bigots do indeed make claims about the statistical inclination of blacks to criminality as part of their argument to deny rights to all blacks, including non-criminal ones (who are in the majority). Similarly, today's Brady bunch bigots very much make the case that the only reason people would want guns is to commit murder, especially including school shootings, which is why the rights of non-criminal gun owners ought to be restricted or eliminated. Similarly, SM was/is unable to distinguish between a peaceful drug user and an armed robber, which is why he supports violent rights deprivations even against the former - at your and my expense.
Well then, get to readin'.
I'm waiting for the Cliff Notes.
;-)
The Cliff Notes people sent me a rejection slip. ;-)
I think Cliff went out of business: The Internet has arrived!
Actually prisons are a place of punishment for people who break the law...and it's real simple to stay out of prison.
Actually, I was in my local bookstore just last week and they have a huge rack of Cliff Notes.
I've collected many of them; so I never look. I do know that they are invaluable.
:-) English majors all around the world praise them!
You're throwing pearls before swine. Its too bad those that dispute you hide behind the "the drug war has failed" mantra and refuse to see the Big Picture. Even sadder that they are here on FR, spewing their pro-drug venom at everyone with a family to protect.
Why do you ignore that the first two strikes are usually violent felonies? I am all for a two strikes law. Give people ONE chance to go straight, then lock them away forever. How do you think the second and third victims feel knowing that some
"compassionate" moron thought more of the criminal's well being than their innocent victims?
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave anyone out, of course, we could cane all of them. All better now?
Do you support speed limits? If so, why? No law has been broken other than the speed limit, so why not wait for the crash? Doubling or tripling the death rate is a small price to pay for an esoteric victory, right? Because why have laws based on predictable likely outcome? Indeed, why bother regulating nuclear power plants? Just wait and see if a problem develops.
Before you get started on the cheap and easy drug mantra, tell me this, how did freely available, priced-right opium work out for the Chinese?
The inability to venture into a gray area and draw a line is a sign of intellectual immaturity. You want to preclude all decisions, because its a slippery slope to bad decisions. Well, no decision at all is often bad. The Democracies that have failed have done so because they have failed to provide the rule of law. Think about that the next time you're giving lectures on the tyranny of banning pot.
Coloradan - Try getting your facts right. I differentiate very well. I just don't consider one of them to be innocent because the other is worse.
Palmer - If you haven't read all of these posts, I highly recommend it. Its most enlightening, humorous, and will save you some time.
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