Recidivism

I love the show "Lockup"...it doesn't matter what version (LockUp Raw, LockUp Extended Stay, etc.) It's a show about prison life and as much as I watch it for entertainment, I also study it carefully. Many times they will follow up on featured prisoners in a separate episode or summarize a prisoners life after being featured at the end of the show. Sadly, many did not find success upon release and went back to prison after a short time. I have found this myself all to well with young people coming home.

A national government study showed that within 3 years almost 7 out of 10 males released from prison find their way back. Those are terrible odds, right!? You'd think that after missing the many freedoms we often take for granted, they would do everything in their power NOT to go back.

Yesterday I was writing to an old kid I've known since 1999. I've known him longer in prison that out and once released in 2005, I don't even think he lasted 2 years before he was back in again (but managed to create 2 kids in the meanwhile). He'll be released this May and as I was writing, I got that desperate feeling I usually get when my kids are nearing the release date. How long this time? Will this be the one who makes it? I know he CAN do it but will he?

I wrote, "Please know NOW that it will be hard when you come home...Things will not go as planned, there will be setbacks, disappointments, and loads of frustrations. Determine NOW that no matter what, you will NOT take shortcuts, you will not associate yourself with people/places/things that will get you into trouble. You've come way too far and have lost enough of your freedom to risk losing it again."

I pondered this today, as I have many times...Why would they risk freedom? Is there something in them that makes them want to go back somehow?

I've come to know that even in the gloomiest of places, you can find bright spots. Many of the kids I know who have gone to jail (and just like to see in LockUp) find their own ways of surviving that time that make it bearable...maybe even, "ok". They look forward to mail, they can bargain with commissary items, they barter their talents (tattooing, drawing, cooking), they might even have some newfound status they've never had. It becomes comfortable, predictable, "the way it is". Like Red said to Andy in Shawshank Redemption, they become "institutionalized". And when they come home, it's a whole new thing...pressure to get a job, sometimes they are released to shelters, the girl who wrote you for 3 years suddenly isn't interested in you anymore because you don't have money to take her out because you can't get a job because you have a felony record, your kids don't know you, Moms is on your back to do something with your life, you need money to pay your fines, money to take the bus to report to parole, money to get clothes because you've put on 25 pounds since you got locked up and nothing you left behind fits you anymore...Your old friends show up (the ones who never wrote you while you were away)...they have a way for you to make a quick couple of hundred dollars...you swear you'll do it once just for start up money...You make your couple of hundred, you remember how easy it was, so you do it again...and again...and again...Then BAM--wrong place, wrong time, caught up in something, rearrested, and back behind the wall, kicking yourself for being stupid...

But don't WE ALL do this? Recidivism="a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior". I'm speaking to Christians here...Think of the prisons we create...prisons of addiction, alcoholism, anorexia, grief, overeating, overspending, workaholism,...we're bound there until we are sick of ourselves and then we cry out to the Lord to deliver us from the prison we created. And He does and we're free! A new beginning! A fresh start! Thank YOU, Lord!

But then things get hard...something reminds us or upsets us or we get tired of having to change people/places/things to accommodate our new found freedom...we think,"I can handle just one" (drink, skipped meal, cookie, extra hour at work, etc)...and it's easy, didn't hurt anyone...but one turns into 10 then 50 and we're running back to that prison cell we'd walked out of only days/weeks/months/ or years before...and it's familiar and we know it and as much as we hate ourselves for being there, it's not so scary as trying to live outside of it's walls. And one person's prison is not worse than the other--it's all sin, anyway and anyone who is guilty of one is guilty of all.

Why do we do this? (and if you're reading this and you have loosened your ball and chain and walk in complete freedom, praise God for you!) We can try and rationalize, right? ("This is my thorn in the flesh that God will not remove")...We can try and justify...("It's not really that bad...I'm just hurting me...?") but in the end, we're comfortable in our little cells for whatever reason.

So I am no different that my kids who come home and go back except that I'm not breaking laws to get there (well, God's laws, I suppose). This all came upon we while I was walking the dog earlier...and it has truly humbled me.

Below are lyrics from an old song by Susan Ashton who I listened to in college:

In the middle of the night, wakened by the wind

Or was it something from my past, come to call again?

It was the presence of the pain that I could not escape

And it wrapped around my soul like a ball and chain.

Chorus: All of us have a heartache, all of us have been stained

All of us long for freedom, but there's only one who can break This ball and chain.

Facing all my fears knowing that He's near I stand tall,

Healing as His tears wash my lonely years He calls to me in the middle of the night.