From Ice Cream to Inmates: Opening Doors!

Exciting times in the Silver Lake area of Providence!!

A morning gander at the Projo has left my insides craving ice cream...and reintegration alike.

Aside:

This surprising craving arrives, coincidentally, after a late night cruise down Broad Street just last evening...in search of cheap McDonald's cones with my dear friends Lizzie and Mark. Disturbingly the convenient Broad Street location claimed to be sans ice cream. Yet our persistent desire for the delicious-yet-faux creme glacee confection carried us to North Main Street...where cones apparently cost 60 more cents a unit (interesting tidbit for all you penny pinchers).

Back to my first thought:

Shortly following the opening of an exciting new volunteer-powered community center in S.L. (Scalabrini Dukcevich Center), OpenDoors (formerly Family Life Center) announced plans to turn an an old ice cream factory into supportive housing for the formerly incarcerated! Wooohooo! Inmates are overlooked and often uncared for by most of society. Scorned for past indiscretions...sometimes undeserving of the full punishment dispersed...these members of the human race deserve a chance to succeed once again.

Look at offenders serving mandatory minimums for drug crimes and how aggrandizing dollars have found a home behind bars since the institution of such practice in 1988.

The 2003 RIDOC Annual Report demonstrates that since that date RI has opened three new facilities, expanded current prisons, and doubled expenditures - from $52 mil in '88 to a whopping $130 mil in 2003. Inflation? Hmmmm...perhaps not.

In a policy brief by the Family Life center (H7075/S2172), I found info from a 1997 study by the RAND corporation that reports "discretionary sentencing, conventional enforcement and drug treatment are all more effective, per dollar spent, at reducing both drug consumption and drug related crime."

How about re-routing funding to other services outside the slammer?

A wise Mr. Lewis once wrote,

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

Our systems and our laws will fade and morph with time, but the indelible mark we leave on each other's existence is irreversible.

I admittedly say I worry about the dangers of working with a client who has spent 40 years in prison on murder charges. However, it is hope in the human race and an open disgust for the misanthropic that propels me to believe redemption is possible.

Dear Blogosphere: Ahhhh (breathing fresh summer humidity), it's nice to be back.