If you carry the bricks from your past, you will end up building the same house."
—Anonymous
For many of the people coming out of long term incarceration, there is no blueprint to follow with which to build a better life. A majority of reentrants carry with them scars of a difficult youth. They have witnessed violence many times as they grew up, and there was often no one in the family who worked and supported them at a level that would allow them to focus on school work or provide standards of behavior and a loving home. When none of that ever happens, the normalcy of life is all but impossible to embrace.The bricks of their lives are bricks of want and dissatisfaction, of anger and disappointment, of little faith in themselves and others. These bricks were fired in the heat of a prison sentence, and just because they have been released, doesn't mean they have a working plan with which to build a new life.
Unless we provide the solid material necessary to help, they will become just another reentrant who didn't make it. The intervention isn't easy. In the training aimed at reaching those who are soon to be released from long term incarceration UNITE INDY begins with the basics. First, it is necessary to convince a reentrant that he or she has intrinsic value, and is loved by God; that we were meant to work and there is dignity and independence when we support ourselves and those we call family. Then we teach about what it's like to be an employer and how to be a good employee—the kind that earns pay raises and gets promoted. There is support, friendship and good will in our groups.
Being released from long term incarceration is a little like jumping off the roof of a burning building. It's scary and full of what-ifs. But the training UNITE INDY provides is a parachute, helping them to make a soft landing. And when they make that jump, we'll be on the ground with mentors and support to walk with them into the future with a new image of who they are and who they can be, ready with job opportunities, assistance with transportation, housing, and every kind of social aid. We're out to win this.
And blessed to do this work,
Jim
