I was in prison and you did not look after me
whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."
(Matthew 25:40).
Clarence Scott, Larry Condrey
and Anthony Barnes are among "the least of these." Ranging in age from 24 to 53,
they are attempting to re-enter their Southeast community after years of
imprisonment. They are spending hours at the Learning Lab in St. Luke's Catholic
Church on East Capitol Street SE trying to resist a return to their former lives
of crime.
Not easy, they concede. They need
help — lots of it.
Scott has mastered his
computer-training courses, but with no experience, he can't get a job. Condrey
resides in a halfway house near Blue Plains and had to travel by public transit
to Reisterstown, Md., because of bureaucratic red tape, just to secure the
identification card issued to nondrivers. Barnes studied and thought he was
prepared for the high school equivalency exam, but the test was revamped
recently and made harder.
In an effort to
provide much-needed assistance in these men's self-help efforts, the Court
Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) established Jan. 13 as
"Re-entry Sunday."
Chosen to coincide with the
Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Re-entry Sunday "is a call to service" for
mentors who "seek a different kind of ministry, a redemptive ministry that helps
redirect the energy of offenders coming back home," said Jasper Ormond, interim
director of CSOSA.
January is also National
Mentoring Month. "Helping hands are healing hands and the men and women
returning home from prison need your help, your prayers and your compassion,"
reads the cards that will be passed out
Sunday.
Ministers in the 39 participating
churches will devote part of their services to educating their congregations and
to calling upon parishioners to volunteer in helping offenders reconnect with
their families, communities and places of
worship.
That these returning offenders "are
sons and daughters of the neighborhood," Mr. Ormond said is a point the
ministers will emphasize.
Next month, mentors
will be trained to work with their charges, as well as provide spiritual support
and guidance.
That's no easy task. The biggest
hurdles returning offenders face are securing a job and securing affordable
housing. Overcoming drug addiction, childhood abandonment and abuse and low
literacy rates are other obstacles.
St. Luke's,
in the 6th Police District, is an ideal location for such a faith-based program
because "it is surrounded by drug activity," said Condrey, who returned from a
Pennsylvania prison in November and is staying in Hope Village, a nearby halfway
house.
"If you've been out of the work force
for years and you come to the church, they can direct you," Condrey said. "When
employers know you've been dealing with church and programs in the church, they
are more likely to hire you."
CSOSA was formed
in 1997 from pretrial, parole and probation entities and now keeps track of
returning offenders. It operates halfway houses, but former inmates can stay
only six months. Then they're out on their own.
The District has about 16,000 inmates and
roughly 2,500 a year will be released and many will return to their old
neighborhoods. The average length of supervision is three years. The national
rate of recidivism in 62 percent.
Do the math.
It's not a pretty picture. A majority of D.C. parolees are re-arrested within
eight months of release, according to CSOSA
statistics.
In the District, a church,
synagogue or mosque sits on nearly every corner. But the Rev. Donald Isaac, a
leading minister in the Re-entry Sunday project, said, "Our churches have gotten
comfortable behind their walls but the church has critical role to play" to meet
the needs of ex-offenders "spiritually, emotionally and
physically."
"Everybody wants a better way of
living regardless of age and [the church-based program] keeps hope alive. You
can still believe in the system if you do the right thing," said Scott. "I'm
participating in the process."
The first floor
of St. Luke's houses CSOSA's Learning Lab. Here, coordinator Phil Whatley helps
Condrey with computer training while he sets up a program that prompts Barnes to
prepare a resume.
"If I wasn't [in the
program], there's no telling what I'd be doing," said Barnes. He submitted job
applications to no avail, so he is "going to try this way
now."
Drumming up support or compassion for
returning ex-offenders is a hard sell. So let's go where everybody can relate:
self-preservation.
If maintaining our personal
safety and peace of mind are of any concern, then we might want to get involved
in some way to help these folks with few skills and little hope make the tough
transition into mainstream society.
Fannie Mae
and the Urban Institute have formed a collaboration with CSOSA to develop
affordable housing for ex-offenders. Clark Construction has pledged jobs for
qualified ex-offenders. Many need vocational training that could lead to
establishing a small company since it's hard for them to get hired competing for
entry-level positions with college
graduates.
As we've witnessed in recent months,
it's not a great leap to tie the rise in crime rates across the country to the
recession and joblessness.
It's no great
secret, as Scott points out, that people who come to believe that they have no
option but criminal activity to survive will eventually do what they think they
have to do. That's the cold, hard truth.
Faith
and prayer go a long way, but "faith without works" misses the mark.