March 2014 Updates

March 27, 2014 - Uncategorized

At a March 24 breakfast gathering at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Justice Fellowship’s Crais DeRoche and other staff, along with Rep. Joe Haveman and Sen. John Proos, hosted a meeting with Judge Alm from Hawai’i speaking about HOPE:
In 2004, First Circuit Judge Steven Alm launched a pilot program to reduce probation violations by drug offenders and others at high risk of recidivism. This high-intensity supervision program, called HOPE Probation (Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement), is the first and only of its kind in the nation. Probationers in HOPE Probation receive swift, predictable, and immediate sanctions – typically resulting in several days in jail – for each detected violation, such as detected drug use or missed appointments with a probation officer.
Visit the HOPE website at: http://www.hopeprobation.org/  –

On March 25, Rich and I went to the CAPPS office to hear James Kilgore – the voiceofthemonitored.com guy – speak about the abuses of Electronic Monitoring!  And the goal of this conversation and the upcoming summer work of James Kilgore in Michigan is to raise awareness of the

My thoughts about the Lifer Linkages/Restorative Justice/ Returning Citizens program are that this is a big and ambitious undertaking.  It includes many of the actions recommended at the end of the book “Beyond Prisons: An Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System”

My questions and thoughts start at the beginning.  THE PURPOSE of the project.  If the Returning Citizen Project pairs up prisoners with a volunteer (from a )Faith-basedorganization or civic group (and I think it should not  be a fly-by-night, unconnected-to-any-outside-organization-or civic group   “concerned citizen”)  FOR THE PURPOSE of atoning for their crimes and preparing them to be productive citizens upon their EVENTUAL return.   THEN I would think it would be important to have some sense of when that person is returning to society and our communities.   Have Lifers /LIDs work with some of the guys with shorter sentences who are returning soon and have a mentor or sponsor on the outside connect with both – the lifer and the person(s) soon to be released.   That gives the lifer/LIDs a significant role to play that is focused and allows for short-term goals.Their success is tied to the restoration of “their” mentee(s).  If there are corresponding with someone on the outside but have no clear assignment/role/purpose on the inside, doesn’t that just contribute to the abstraction and vacuum?  just hoping for the day when “I” will get out?  And the mentor(s) – or mentor team – will be able to participate in something that has some concrete outcomes in the community.