I saw me in my friend. The Catholic, The Buddhist, Protestant, Muslin, Judaic, and the Independent. There is no US in THEM. You beyond the perimeter (construct of my conscious selfless charity]. The prisoner, me. You, daily taxpayer Beach comber: you jiggle your handcuffs (nervous like) bent on reminding the CO of Me, the me within him. Is there a me In you? I am critical in word.
Less than black, brown, red, yellow of pale white. Consider you? Above our coffee and honeybun? In my Perfection I distort you like a fun-house mirror. We should consider you rehabilitated? Preacher elect? Societal reject in personhood. My eyes, slaves for Christ, To feel suffering, to hurt in the heart, knowing your way.
(if this dialogue is worth pursuing….let me know and I will finish)
Hello love - looks like they didn’t get my last post mailed yet (from last week) so now you’ll get 2 :) I am in pain today - through stupidity, of course. Friday I decided to bathe the dogs - usually do so in the sink, so I can stand - but sometimes in the bathtub so the two larger ones fit easier. I’ve never had problems either way (in retrospect that’s because in the tub I sit on the side with my feet inside and lean over. Well, this time I decided I would kneel/sit on the floor outside the tub - I wear these stocking things to improve circulation and didn’t want to have to remove them because it’s a pain. All went well - they all 4 got washed and rinsed and out of the tub. I braced my hands on the side of the tub to get up - of course it’s all wet and the tub is slick - so my hand slipped and I crashed against the side of the tub - sigh I’m pretty sure I cracked my rib - not making a special doctor visit because there’s really nothing they can do. It’s not severe enough to worry about - unless it’s not improved - after (ugh) 3 to 6 weeks! I can breathe fine, so no lung punctures - just discomfort when I take deep breaths. Like I said - stupid! Lol Hope you’re having a good week - at least a better one than I am. I love you ❤️💕 for always Your Jeannie
Hi William my Friend: Recieved your beautiful piece of Art of the sunset. It is stellar. Brightens up my life and my home. Brings me back to living in the Florida Keys for 20 years. Seeing those sunsets and rises every single day. I love the purples you put in. For some reason it makes the whole art feel different. I just love it. And thanks for remember my birthday. It was such a real treat to receive this just before I turn 75. omg. So very glad you finally made a touchdown with TEE course from Sarah. I look forward to your sucess in that course. Plus your sending me two new inmates ext course to grade. We are making some history here. JR really loved the PR course you did. I sent two copies to LA for there use. You amaze me every moment. I intentionally sent that course because I knew you would do it very well. Thanks for all your efforts. It is a show piece for the other beings to see. I showed it to Carmen's husband at Criminon. You put much a smile on his face. Great to know SK is doing a course too. Much love and admiration for your ability to help others. You are in a tough neighborhood, and yet you always manage to seize a moment to wake someone up. carpe omnia with your art toooooo.
You are a new creation in Christ. Don't feel rejected. God never rejects us, we reject Him. I am a true believer in change. I have 654 days sober. After losing everyone and everything that I anything to me, I finally turned to Him. Stop listening to the voice in your head that tells you that you are not good enough, not loved, never gonna change. Your past is your past. Leave it there. I don't ever want to change my past, it made me who I am today. Keep your head up and keep talking to God!
12 March 2019 Hi: Artsy Ant is on its way to California, signed by Scott, the author. PO man sez arrival time will be no sooner then Saturday via media mail. I dropped note on fb msg to KS to let him know it is on the way to his home. Have you written to KS since I sent his address? Let me know how that cycle goes??? ML Erne
Ms. Sered acknowledges that we, as a society, are not yet prepared to apply restorative and transformative justice principles to all crimes of violence. Some people do need to be separated in order to keep others safe. But if we invest our resources in the healing, restoration and rebuilding of relationships and communities — and stop pretending that caging people on a massive scale makes our communities safer — we just might discover that we are capable of reckoning with one another.
End of article.
Well its 11 march, hope you move soon! Warm greetings, Julia
Common Justice’s success rate is high: Only 7 percent of responsible parties have been terminated from the program for a new crime. And it’s not alone in successfully applying restorative justice principles. Numerous organizations — such as Community Justice for Youth Institute and Project NIA in Chicago; the Insight Prison Project in San Quentin; the Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore; and Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth — are doing so in communities, schools, and criminal justice settings from coast-to-coast.
In 2016, the Alliance for Safety and Justice conducted the first national poll of crime survivors and the results are consistent with the emerging trend toward restorative justice. The majority said they “believe that time in prison makes people more likely to commit another crime rather than less likely.” Sixty-nine percent preferred holding people accountable through options beyond prison, such as mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation, community supervision and public service. Survivors’ support for alternatives to incarceration was even higher than among the general public.
Survivors are right to question incarceration as a strategy for violence reduction. Violence is driven by shame, exposure to violence, isolation and an inability to meet one’s economic needs — all of which are core features of imprisonment. Perhaps most importantly, according to Ms. Sered, “Nearly everyone who has committed violence first survived it,” and studies indicate that experiencing violence is the greater predictor of committing it. Caging and isolating a person who’s already been damaged by violence is hardly a recipe for positive transformation.
That said, Ms. Sered makes clear that she doesn’t believe that having been a victim of crime excuses acts of violence in any way: “When we hurt someone, we incur an obligation. Period.” In fact, it seems her greatest complaint about our system of mass incarceration is that it fails to take accountability seriously. Our criminal injustice system lets people off the hook, as they aren’t obligated to answer the victims’ questions, listen to them, honor their pain, express genuine remorse, or do what they can to repair the harm they’ve done. They’re not required to take steps to heal themselves or address their own trauma, so they’re less likely to harm others in the future. The only thing prison requires is that people stay in their cages and somehow endure the isolation and violence of captivity. Prison deprives everyone concerned — victims and those who have caused harm, as well as impacted families and communities — the opportunity to heal, honor their own humanity, and to break cycles of violence that have destroyed far too many lives.
As one woman whose 14-year-old son had been badly beaten and robbed explained to Ms. Sered, “When I first found out about this, I wanted the young man to drown to death. And then I wanted him to burn to death. And then I realized as a mother that I don’t want either of those things. I want him to drown in a river of fire.” But when she reflected on the fact that the young man who harmed her son would eventually return home from prison and cross paths with her children again, she said, “I have to ask myself: When that day comes, do I want that young man to have been upstate or do I want him to have been with y’all?” The restorative circle, a meeting during which responsible parties sit with those they have harmed (or surrogates who take their place), a trained facilitator, and people who support both parties, is central to the process. It offers those affected by a crime with the power and opportunity to ask questions, as well as describe their needs and the ways they’ve been harmed. Ultimately, the parties strive to reach agreement about what the responsible party can do to make things as right as possible. The circle can be transformative for both survivors and those who’ve caused harm. In Ms. Sered’s experience, survivors not only want answers to factual questions, they want acknowledgment of their suffering and the moral wrongs. They want to be able to say: “How dare you? My brother was killed the year before you stabbed me. Can you imagine how it felt to my mother to get the call from the hospital that I was unconscious in the E.R. and had been stabbed?” Sered explains.
Witnessing the pain and anguish of survivors, and taking full responsibility for what they’ve done by committing to specific actions to repair themselves and others, has a far greater impact on those who’ve committed harm than we might imagine. One young man, who had been a gang member since he was 8 years old, could not leave the building after participating in a restorative circle with Common Justice because he was shaking so badly after admitting the harm he had done. He asked staff members, “Can I stay in your office for a few minutes before I leave?” When asked to explain, he said, “You know, for all I’ve done and all that’s been done to me, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a real apology before. Do you think I did all right? Pardon my language, that is the scariest shit I ever did.”
A growing body of research strongly supports the anecdotal evidence that restorative justice programs increase the odds of safety, reduce recidivism and alleviate trauma. “Until We Reckon” cites studies showing that survivors report 80 to 90 percent rates of satisfaction with restorative processes, as compared to 30 percent for traditional court systems.
The people who choose to participate are victims of serious violent felonies — people who have been shot, stabbed or robbed — and who decide that they would prefer to get answers from the person who harmed them, be heard in a restorative justice circle, help to devise an accountability plan, and receive comprehensive victim services, rather than send the person who harmed them to prison.
Ninety percent is a stunning figure considering everything we’ve been led to believe that survivors actually want. For years, we’ve been told that victims of violence want nothing more than for the people who hurt them to be locked up and treated harshly. It is true that some survivors do want revenge or retribution, especially in the immediate aftermath of the crime. Ms. Sered is emphatic that rage is not pathological and a desire for revenge is not blameworthy; both are normal and can be important to the healing process, much as denial and anger are normal stages of grief.
But she also stresses that the number of people who are interested only in revenge or punishment is greatly exaggerated. After all, survivors are almost never offered real choices. Usually when we ask victims “Do you want incarceration?” what we’re really asking is “Do you want something or nothing?” And when any of us are hurt, and when our families and communities are hurting, we want something rather than nothing. In many oppressed communities, drug treatment, good schools, economic investment, job training, trauma and grief support are not available options. Restorative justice is not an option. The only thing on offer is prisons, prosecutors and police. But what happens, Ms. Sered wondered, if instead of asking, “Do you want something or nothing?” we started asking “Do you want this intervention or that prison?” It turns out, when given a real choice, very few survivors choose prison as their preferred response.
This is not because survivors, as a group, are especially merciful. To the contrary, they’re pragmatic. They know the criminal justice system will almost certainly fail to deliver what they want and need most to overcome their pain and trauma. More than 95 percent of cases end in plea bargains negotiated by lawyers behind the scenes. Given the system’s design, survivors know the system cannot be trusted to validate their suffering, give them answers or even a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Nor can it be trusted to keep them or others safe.
In fact, many victims find that incarceration actually makes them feel less safe. They worry that others will be angry with them for reporting the crime and retaliate, or fear what will happen when the person eventually returns home. Many believe, for good reason, that incarceration will likely make the person worse, not better — a frightening prospect when they’re likely to encounter the person again when they’re back in the neighborhood.
RSS
Protestant, Muslin, Judaic, and the Independent. There is
no US in THEM. You beyond the perimeter
(construct of my conscious selfless charity].
The prisoner, me. You, daily taxpayer
Beach comber: you jiggle your handcuffs
(nervous like) bent on reminding the CO of
Me, the me within him. Is there a me
In you? I am critical in word.
Less than black, brown, red, yellow of pale white.
Consider you? Above our coffee and honeybun? In my
Perfection I distort you like a fun-house mirror.
We should consider you rehabilitated? Preacher elect?
Societal reject in personhood. My eyes, slaves for Christ,
To feel suffering, to hurt in the heart, knowing your way.
(if this dialogue is worth pursuing….let me know and I will finish)
I am in pain today - through stupidity, of course. Friday I decided to bathe the dogs - usually do so in the sink, so I can stand - but sometimes in the bathtub so the two larger ones fit easier. I’ve never had problems either way (in retrospect that’s because in the tub I sit on the side with my feet inside and lean over. Well, this time I decided I would kneel/sit on the floor outside the tub - I wear these stocking things to improve circulation and didn’t want to have to remove them because it’s a pain. All went well - they all 4 got washed and rinsed and out of the tub. I braced my hands on the side of the tub to get up - of course it’s all wet and the tub is slick - so my hand slipped and I crashed against the side of the tub - sigh
I’m pretty sure I cracked my rib - not making a special doctor visit because there’s really nothing they can do. It’s not severe enough to worry about - unless it’s not improved - after (ugh) 3 to 6 weeks! I can breathe fine, so no lung punctures - just discomfort when I take deep breaths. Like I said - stupid! Lol
Hope you’re having a good week - at least a better one than I am. I love you ❤️💕 for always
Your
Jeannie
Recieved your beautiful piece of Art of the sunset. It is stellar. Brightens up my life and my home. Brings me back to living in the Florida Keys for 20 years. Seeing those sunsets and rises every single day. I love the purples you put in. For some reason it makes the whole art feel different. I just love it. And thanks for remember my birthday. It was such a real treat to receive this just before I turn 75. omg. So very glad you finally made a touchdown with TEE course from Sarah. I look forward to your sucess in that course. Plus your sending me two new inmates ext course to grade. We are making some history here. JR really loved the PR course you did. I sent two copies to LA for there use. You amaze me every moment. I intentionally sent that course because I knew you would do it very well. Thanks for all your efforts. It is a show piece for the other beings to see. I showed it to Carmen's husband at Criminon. You put much a smile on his face. Great to know SK is doing a course too. Much love and admiration for your ability to help others. You are in a tough neighborhood, and yet you always manage to seize a moment to wake someone up. carpe omnia with your art toooooo.
Hi: Artsy Ant is on its way to California, signed by Scott, the author. PO man sez arrival time will be no sooner then Saturday via media mail. I dropped note on fb msg to KS to let him know it is on the way to his home. Have you written to KS since I sent his address? Let me know how that cycle goes??? ML Erne
End of article.
Well its 11 march, hope you move soon!
Warm greetings, Julia
In 2016, the Alliance for Safety and Justice conducted the first national poll of crime survivors and the results are consistent with the emerging trend toward restorative justice. The majority said they “believe that time in prison makes people more likely to commit another crime rather than less likely.” Sixty-nine percent preferred holding people accountable through options beyond prison, such as mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation, community supervision and public service. Survivors’ support for alternatives to incarceration was even higher than among the general public.
Survivors are right to question incarceration as a strategy for violence reduction. Violence is driven by shame, exposure to violence, isolation and an inability to meet one’s economic needs — all of which are core features of imprisonment. Perhaps most importantly, according to Ms. Sered, “Nearly everyone who has committed violence first survived it,” and studies indicate that experiencing violence is the greater predictor of committing it. Caging and isolating a person who’s already been damaged by violence is hardly a recipe for positive transformation.
That said, Ms. Sered makes clear that she doesn’t believe that having been a victim of crime excuses acts of violence in any way: “When we hurt someone, we incur an obligation. Period.” In fact, it seems her greatest complaint about our system of mass incarceration is that it fails to take accountability seriously. Our criminal injustice system lets people off the hook, as they aren’t obligated to answer the victims’ questions, listen to them, honor their pain, express genuine remorse, or do what they can to repair the harm they’ve done. They’re not required to take steps to heal themselves or address their own trauma, so they’re less likely to harm others in the future. The only thing prison requires is that people stay in their cages and somehow endure the isolation and violence of captivity. Prison deprives everyone concerned — victims and those who have caused harm, as well as impacted families and communities — the opportunity to heal, honor their own humanity, and to break cycles of violence that have destroyed far too many lives.
The restorative circle, a meeting during which responsible parties sit with those they have harmed (or surrogates who take their place), a trained facilitator, and people who support both parties, is central to the process. It offers those affected by a crime with the power and opportunity to ask questions, as well as describe their needs and the ways they’ve been harmed. Ultimately, the parties strive to reach agreement about what the responsible party can do to make things as right as possible. The circle can be transformative for both survivors and those who’ve caused harm. In Ms. Sered’s experience, survivors not only want answers to factual questions, they want acknowledgment of their suffering and the moral wrongs. They want to be able to say: “How dare you? My brother was killed the year before you stabbed me. Can you imagine how it felt to my mother to get the call from the hospital that I was unconscious in the E.R. and had been stabbed?” Sered explains.
Witnessing the pain and anguish of survivors, and taking full responsibility for what they’ve done by committing to specific actions to repair themselves and others, has a far greater impact on those who’ve committed harm than we might imagine. One young man, who had been a gang member since he was 8 years old, could not leave the building after participating in a restorative circle with Common Justice because he was shaking so badly after admitting the harm he had done. He asked staff members, “Can I stay in your office for a few minutes before I leave?” When asked to explain, he said, “You know, for all I’ve done and all that’s been done to me, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a real apology before. Do you think I did all right? Pardon my language, that is the scariest shit I ever did.”
A growing body of research strongly supports the anecdotal evidence that restorative justice programs increase the odds of safety, reduce recidivism and alleviate trauma. “Until We Reckon” cites studies showing that survivors report 80 to 90 percent rates of satisfaction with restorative processes, as compared to 30 percent for traditional court systems.
Ninety percent is a stunning figure considering everything we’ve been led to believe that survivors actually want. For years, we’ve been told that victims of violence want nothing more than for the people who hurt them to be locked up and treated harshly. It is true that some survivors do want revenge or retribution, especially in the immediate aftermath of the crime. Ms. Sered is emphatic that rage is not pathological and a desire for revenge is not blameworthy; both are normal and can be important to the healing process, much as denial and anger are normal stages of grief.
But she also stresses that the number of people who are interested only in revenge or punishment is greatly exaggerated. After all, survivors are almost never offered real choices. Usually when we ask victims “Do you want incarceration?” what we’re really asking is “Do you want something or nothing?” And when any of us are hurt, and when our families and communities are hurting, we want something rather than nothing. In many oppressed communities, drug treatment, good schools, economic investment, job training, trauma and grief support are not available options. Restorative justice is not an option. The only thing on offer is prisons, prosecutors and police.
But what happens, Ms. Sered wondered, if instead of asking, “Do you want something or nothing?” we started asking “Do you want this intervention or that prison?” It turns out, when given a real choice, very few survivors choose prison as their preferred response.
This is not because survivors, as a group, are especially merciful. To the contrary, they’re pragmatic. They know the criminal justice system will almost certainly fail to deliver what they want and need most to overcome their pain and trauma. More than 95 percent of cases end in plea bargains negotiated by lawyers behind the scenes. Given the system’s design, survivors know the system cannot be trusted to validate their suffering, give them answers or even a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Nor can it be trusted to keep them or others safe.
In fact, many victims find that incarceration actually makes them feel less safe. They worry that others will be angry with them for reporting the crime and retaliate, or fear what will happen when the person eventually returns home. Many believe, for good reason, that incarceration will likely make the person worse, not better — a frightening prospect when they’re likely to encounter the person again when they’re back in the neighborhood.