I went to prison for the first time in 2004. I was early in my studies at a Catholic Priest and selected prison ministry as one of my ministries of choice. We lived in Texas at the time and the prison was not air-conditioned. I would go inside with several other men and we would mentor prisoners inside the chapel, which was air-conditioned. Many were skeptical about the prisoners’ intentions, but as I heard the stories of the people I encountered, I often wondered if I would have done any better? Prison made an impression on me.
Nearly 20 years later, I returned to prison again, this time as a volunteer with the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP). I was there as one of many judges in a final business pitch competition and graduation. By this point, I had been in many jails as I worked with low income men and women thorugh SERJobs trying to get them trained and eventually employed upon release. Being behind bars no longer felt strange – it was were I felt called to meet people who needed someone to give them a chance. It is one of my sadnesses actually: that people do everything they are told, put in the time, and do the work – only to find it often doesn’t count for as much as the stigma of incarceration does.
But this visit with PEP was different than when I would go to the jails. There was laughter. There was music. There was even dancing. In the competition, the pitches were as good as any sales pitch I had ever seen. At the graduation, families gathered in the prison gym to witness their relatives walk the stage in a cap and gown.
In the months that followed, I would come to understand that this was made possible because PEP had created a community where everyone earned and got a second chance – the prisoners as well as many of the volunteers. People on both sides of the bars seem to recognize just how easily they could be the other.
In my many years working with formerly incarcerated people, we aimed for 60% employment rates, but we usually got something closer to 30%. PEP professes 100% employment within 90 days of release year after year. How??? The answer is multi-pronged but also comes down to one fundamental element: belonging.
PEP began teaching about business, but then realized that you really had to start with character. It did this by sending business leaders inside prison, and then those leaders eventually met the same people when they got out of prison. As it turns out there are not too many programs where the same volunteers who go inside are also there on the outside. People formed relationships, and those relationships formed a community. Community holds people accountable which lead to people feeling confident about getting a job.
Most re-entry programs are focused on jobs – rightly so. But a job is not the target; it is means to the end. If you think about, our jobs are the vehicle by which many of us learn to belong. But if we just stop at the job, then something happens and there is community to hold them accountable, and the cycle repeats itself. Belonging is the target.
Throughout much of scripture, God has often spoken to people who are unwilling to receive the message. As history shows, the failure to hear the message creates difficulty. Rather than accept their own responsibility, one group of people points the finger at a smaller group of people, labels them the reason for the hardship and casts them out. That remnant population, broken down, is now about to hear the message they previous ignored. Then God sends them back to the whole to help them learn what they wouldn’t in the first place.
What I have found at PEP is a remnant population capable to helping us remember how to belong. A population who has learned without access to technology and free from distractions who can help the rest of us remember what is it is like to truly be present to one another.