A Quiet Inner City Tragedy: Ex Offenders

A Quiet Inner City Tragedy: The economic, social, and political blackballing of ex-offenders.

It is a self-evident truth that all human beings require food, clothes and shelter to survive. People will generally do whatever necessary to ensure their own survival, as well as that of their families. America has a very large number of its citizen population residing in jails and prisons. A very large majority of these prisoners, which include men, women and children, are incarcerated for drug related crimes. Alcohol and other substance abuse account for a portion of the social ills that plague our society, and yet incarceration opposed to treatment appears to be a top national priority used to address this issue.
Of course not all crimes can be attributed to drugs, but criminality is largely a product of poverty, despair, and hopelessness. Generally, the areas of the nation with the highest crime rates appear to be impoverished inner city neighborhoods with high unemployment rates, drugs, gangs, prostitution, dysfunctional family structures and the list goes on.
Let’s take a look at some of the ingredients found in poverty, despair and hopelessness. Physical poverty contains little to no food, homelessness, lack of appropriate clothing, no access to healthcare; Despair contains a thought that a person is at the end of their rope after trying everything in their power to acquire basic necessities required to sustain life, and they are now at the point where they will do anything, morally or immorally to make it to the next day; Hopelessness contains a thought and feeling that there is no hope for survival, nor any help on the way.
It is widely known that higher education provides greater options for families and entire communities, many of the people mentioned above have little to no education. Higher education leads to gainful employment or self-employment. Gainful employment leads to the means to acquire food, clothes and shelter. Unfortunately, the environmental circumstances that many people find themselves are what largely contribute to their lack of education. The vast majority of America’s prison population has sentences that will ultimately lead to their release and return to the same communities from which they emanated from.
However, many prisoners and ex-offenders find ways to overcome the odds and even after making very bad decisions which led them to prison and jails they pull themselves up from seemingly hopeless states of mind and totally transform their lives. Many of these individuals started out illiterate, some never even having worked a legitimate job, now striving to become a part of the human race embracing all of the ideals of freedom and justice that everyone else in society possesses.
The greatest tragedy is that once a person has been convicted of a crime in America several problems arise: they become ineligible for government subsidies and loans for small businesses, they are ineligible for public or subsidized housing, they are not only ineligible for city and government jobs but are literally black balled from the job market altogether. Many are even denied an education and some denied voting rights.
Let’s pose a question from a political and social perspective: What type of person would we want returning to our communities after serving a prison sentence? Ideally, most of us would like for our communities to be safe from violence and criminal activities and we take for granted that crime and violence will occur regardless of what we do. The fact of the matter is that crime and violence are preventable and there is an urgency to address the root causes of these social issues. Every one of us in America would like for our families to be safe and to live comfortably, but this invaluable right is becoming increasingly impossible to realize for the thousands of men and women returning home from prisons across the nation.
There is a question on most all job applications that ask if you have ever been convicted of a felony? Several years ago the question would read have you been convicted of a felony in the last seven years? Many of these former prisoners have successfully changed their lives around and have broken the cycle of recidivism, lasting far a beyond seven years free of criminal activities. In fact many of us have surpassed 15 and 20 years of proving that we are no longer criminals!
As a society we must understand that to blackball the ex offender from all opportunities for success is like supplying ingredients to the recipe of crime and violence. In such a stew of ingredients we not only make it difficult for the ex offender to remain crime free but we help to breed a nation of children who lack the support of parents who are able to lead them in the right direction. I’m sure that many people will say that there is no justification for crime, however, as mentioned before all human beings require food, clothes and shelter to survive. Food, clothes and shelter require money and there is only two ways to earn money, legitimately or illegitimately.
In many cases those who are criminal thinkers at some point begin to reform their negative outlook on life and transform their behaviors after realizing the error of their ways. Unfortunately, many ex offenders return to prison when they are unsuccessful in finding employers who are willing to give them an opportunity to make an honest living. According to an article written in Don Diva magazine, “America has one of the highest criminal recidivism rates of any industrialized nation in the world. National recidivism rates among adults are as high as 73%, while national re arrest rates for juveniles are around 55%”. (Don Diva Magazine, 2009)
What happens to the children of a man or woman who constantly goes in and out of jails and prisons? We can see some of these results in the escalating violence and crime amongst the nation’s teen and young adult population, particularly in the Chicago land areas.