Rehabilitation or Dehumanization?

Hello! I hope this blog post finds you well wherever you might be.

I wanted to share an experience that happened recently to a family in my community, as it illustrates the way in which prisoners´ lives here in El Salvador (and world over I would argue) are marked by dehumanization and neglect rather than rehabilitation and transformation.   

Five of my dearest friends in my community have been waiting for 6 long years for their father (I´ll call him Hector) to be released from prison. Hector worked at a mechanic shop and was locked up for working on stolen cars. The details remain quite blurry as to whether or not he was aware that he was working on stolen cars, but since he could not afford a lawyer, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Hector began his sentence in a prison designed for 2,000 inmates which is “home” to more than 8,000 men. Prisoners sleep on the floor and constantly suffer from fungal skin diseases as well as malnourishment and abuse from fellow inmates.

Legally, prisoners have to be assigned a social worker, a psychologist, and a legal advisor. However, as the number of detained persons here has skyrocketed, the number of staff working in each prison has remained the same, leaving startling ratios of staff to inmates. In Hector´s prison, there is one social worker and one psychologist assigned to 2,000 inmates. Since it is impossible to provide professional attention to so many individuals on a regular basis, the majority of inmates have never met once with any professional staff member.

Hector was given a psychological exam shortly after being imprisoned 6 years ago. The results characterize him as a violent person who neither works nor studies in order to make the most of his time in prison. This is not surprising given that imprisonment in itself produces depression and violent behavior in individuals who have been uprooted from their communities and (justly or unjustly) forced to face any number of years in places that must look just like hell, should hell exist.  

In the last 5 years of his imprisonment, Hector has dedicated his time in prison to woodshop. He constantly makes tables, mirrors, benches, and picture frames for his wife and 9 children to sell. Since his wife makes 3 dollars a day on a good day selling his wares at the market, his children have been forced to drop out of school because they can hardly afford food, much less schooling. Hector began to study for a time in prison, but he dropped out because he would frequently faint from hunger in class.

Though he has a 7 year sentence, the judge gave he and his family hope that he would be able to get out on parole after 6 years. Since last Monday was his long awaited follow up court case, his family spent all weekend cleaning their small home preparing for his arrival.

When the day finally arrived to go to court, his children and grandchildren waited anxiously to see him. He was brought into the courtroom, handcuffed and chained at his feet. The judge proceeded to tell him that his psychological report (which was taken 5 years ago) declared that he was a violent individual who neither worked nor studied and was thus not apt to reenter society. The same psychological report has been used repeatedly as grounds for his continued imprisonment, though he has never had a follow up exam. His wife yelled out through her tears that he works, and that she sells his woodwork, but the judge wouldn´t believe her since she didn´t have “proof”. No one in the prison system had thought to write on his record that he has been working in woodshop for the past 5 years. He is another number. Another offender. Another criminal unworthy of living his life. He will be released, at best, 1 year after his sentence is completed, since the justice system is so backlogged here that inmates often wait at least a year after their sentence to finally be released. This is the cherry on top of the psychological torture that is long term imprisonment.

Hector´s children, wife, and grandchildren walked up to meet him, crying after the trial and were told by the guards that they were not allowed to touch him. They couldn´t believe how skinny, grey haired, and worn he looked. Hector managed to hold back his tears and ask the names of the five grandchildren he was meeting for the first time. They asked him innocently why he was tied up by his hands and his feet and he responded that he played in the street too much (their most frequent offense as small children).

He was quickly led back to his holding cell where his wife got in line to leave food for him. The guards revise the food and eat anything they wish to eat (generally all of the meat left for inmates) before passing it along to them. When Hector´s food reached him, the guards refused to take off his handcuffs, and he was forced to eat with his mouth, kneeling on the ground as if he were a dog.

Prison, in theory, is a place for rehabilitation. It is supposed to serve to prevent recidivism. Hector receives no psychological attention and no character evaluations. He was not allowed to touch his children or grandchildren. He ate handcuffed on the ground like a dog. Rehabilitation? Transformation? Prison here (and most everywhere) serves to break the human spirit by inflicting people to a life of constant humiliation. Inmates are deemed criminals. Period. Black and white. We are the good guys, they are the bad guys. Yet these individuals were almost certainly victims far before they were perpetrators. They almost certainly were plucked out of marginalized communities that we prefer to drive through with our doors locked and our music blaring, so as not to enter their world even in our imagination, much less with open, compassionate hearts willing to invest our lives in the struggle to end this segregation and incessant incarceration.

As Hector´s family trudged back to the bus stop to head back to the home they had again cleaned with high hopes only to have them dashed, his youngest grandchild Paty tugged at his wife´s sleeve. She set her big brown inquisitive eyes on her grandma and with the heartbreaking innocence that only a 3 year old can muster she asked in a timid voice, “Grandma, did they kill grandpa yet?” Hector´s wife broke down sobbing. In the logical mind of this 3 year old, if a man with an assault weapon escorts your grandfather away from you, chained by the hands and feet, he is going to kill him.

Though Hector´s wife tearfully responded that no, they were not going to kill her grandfather, she likely wondered if Paty had discovered the secret of mass incarceration here in El Salvador. In many ways, these years of dehumanization have already killed him. They have killed his hopeful spirit, as well as those of many who love him and continue to wait for his return.

If you have a moment, volunteer in a prison near you! You will find similar stories that will surely break your heart and call into question the practice of imprisonment that many take for granted as just and necessary.  If you are interested in learning more about prison reform/abolition I recommend you read Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Y. Davis. 

Tuesdays

Hello!

Below I´ve posted a poem I wrote recently that attempts to describe my Tuesdays at the male youth detention center in a way that prose just can´t. Enjoy!

Tuesdays

Only their plastic kites

manage to escape

the confines of infinity

where their youthful spirits

live trapped in a mud-coated hell

Where I write their words

but not my own

listen to their hearts

but rarely my own

and bathe them in a love

that is not my own.

It comes some days

overflowing

from God

knows where

and others it is all dried up

but mostly

it is always there

at least subtly

soothing sages

who long to be heard

though it can offer

little hope,

just a gaze

that has never seen them

slice or shoot

and thus embraces

their tired eyes in a tenderness

that on a good day

transcends the surrounding filth

in moments that will stay

at least with me

until my mind

quits remembering. 

Orchestra Behind Bars

 

 I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time about a beautiful experiment that took place several weeks ago in the young women’s detention center where I do poetry workshops.

On July 30^th there was a revolt within the Center, which nearly resulted in the violent deaths of an entire sector of girls affiliated with a certain gang. Luckily the police were able to intervene in time, but the result has been an unprecedented division between inmates. Whereas for the past 5 years the girls have studied together, gone to workshops together, and eaten together in the Center regardless of gang affiliation, they have now been divided such that they have no contact at all.

Now, slightly less than half of the population is stuck in a corner of the Center where they have no outdoor space and thus never feel the sun’s rays. The girls have expressed that they feel more incarcerated than ever before and that they cannot stand the thought of being cooped up in this tiny space for so many years.

 While the incident was certainly not one to be taken lightly, I still can’t help but see the decision to separate the girls as a huge step backwards. It seems like a cop-out of sorts, resorting to the all too familiar habit in El Salvador of creating yet another division and deeming impossible attempts at dialogue, peace-keeping circles, negotiations, and creative attempts to construct peaceful coexistence. However, since there never seem to be adequate funds, personnel, or peacebuilding training to think outside of the box, the decision has been made and seems to be irreversible.

 It is into this quite hostile context that 3 passionate, energetic orchestra instructors from Chile and Argentina (who had no idea of the pre-existing conflict and recent division) came onto the scene. They had received a donation to purchase 30 cellos, violas, and violins to teach an intensive 2-week music coarse in the Center. I was extremely skeptical of such a short-term initiative, but sure enough, 25 girls were reunited for the first time since the division as they took up an instrument for the first time in their lives and practiced rigorously without a single outbreak of conflict between them.

When the day came to bring the girls to an auditorium to perform together with the youth symphonic orchestra of El Salvador, the excitement in the Center was electric (literally). All of the girls were straightening their hair and dressing to impress for the big event, when the Center’s director came in to announce that not all of the girls would be allowed to participate in the concert. For “poor behavior” several of their judges had sent a last minute fax informing that 7 of the girls would not be allowed to perform.

As I watched tears roll down the faces of the girls who were forced to stay behind, I couldn’t help but think that this is the exact opposite of what a “rehabilitation center” should do. This would likely be the only chance these girls will get to perform on a stage in their lives, so to take this away from them at the last minute after their dedicated commitment for two weeks seemed ridiculous at best.

One of the girls who was most devastated by the news burst into sobs because she had worked so hard for two weeks in vain, and her friends had promised to go see her perform. Her prison sentence ends in November of this year, and I can’t help but think that it was simply the judge’s last chance to screw her over while she is still under his control. The punitive system is so focused on punishment while personal/emotional development, trauma therapy, and affirmations are rarely part of the picture. Given that

Disappointments aside, the concert was absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t help but cry as I watched the girls stand up on stage and play the few songs they had learned with such pride. I have loved these girls so deeply for the past two years, and their stories and secrets have moved and shaped me in a thousand ways.

 It was overwhelmingly beautiful to see them standing gracefully on stage, outside of the detention center walls, even if just for a fleeting moment. I feel so blessed to be able to share in some small way in their lives.

To know and love them for who they are becoming and who they have been.

To know them as human beings with deep scars, dark secrets, and softly spoken dreams.

To have the chance to know with certainty that despite popular consent, each one of them is so much more than just another delinquent youth who deserves what she gets.

As I scanned their faces I thought of all of the tremendous situations they have been forced to live in their short lives and was startled by their resilience and beauty, though they (we) have certainly caused their fair share of harm.

As they were handcuffed and lead off of stage, I run up to hug them and gift them each a rose. It wasn’t until later that I realized that one of the only parents that had made it to the event (it was late at night in an inaccessible part of the city by public transportation) was told he was not allowed to hug his daughter for security reasons. Good thing I didn’t ask questions.

The government’s cultural department did of course fail to contract music teachers to carry on the course beyond the 2-week initiative, so my friend is working her contacts to try to ensure some sort of follow up. However, in spite of its shortcomings, this program thoroughly impressed me. It goes to show what can happen when passionate teachers who pay more attention to the magic of music than to stereotypes and fear are united with girls whose desire to learn and to succeed far overrides their conflictive tendencies.

Back to reality...

I’ve been back for two weeks now and in just two weeks have managed to be floored again and again by the lives of the youth I work with in prisons. It has been a sobering and heartwarming homecoming to return to the prisons here. I have re-encountered the same youth that I left two months ago, exactly where I left them, with yet more of their young lives swallowed away by the same 4 walls, the same faces, the same mindless routine.

They’ve welcomed me back into their cells and their hearts and have given me an even closer look at the fury, fear, resentment, and longing for love that reside there and struggle for power each long day locked up. The more I work with these young people, especially with incarcerated males (who have much grimmer prospects of “making it” based on the politics of repression and elimination that are practiced by “anti-gang” squads here), the more I am enraged and saddened by the fact that most of them will simply not make it.

The youth who manage to get out of jail whom I’ve kept up with and who have genuine interest in turning their lives around end up simply running for their lives each day. Ironically enough, this is not primarily because rival gang members will kill them (thought that is a very real threat), but because the police force will do so first. If the police do not manage to “disappear” these youth coming out of detention centers, they will detain them upon spotting them in the street (or drag them from their homes in the middle of the night) and pin them with any crime that has happened within a credible radius. These youth will then be sent off (likely without fair trial) to spend 30+ years in the hellholes that are the overflowing adult prisons here.

 I wish I were exaggerating, yet this has been the story of even the most studious and driven young gang members that I have met in this ministry thus far.

 Loving and working with these youth means answering their startled phone calls telling me that the police opened fired on them for no reason at all, and that they barely escaped the bullet-spray. It means listening to their whispered fears that as soon as they get out of jail to finally live with their young wives and infants they are terrified that the police will pull them out of their beds at night and take them far away from the children they’ve so longed to love in a way they were never, ever loved. It means watching them grimace, lost for words, while describing the way they’ve witnessed slow deaths, wishing I could erase it all and rewrite the whole script. It means giving them constant affirmation, because it just might be the first time they’ve ever heard anything of the sort.

Blog entries are probably supposed to end on some upbeat quote like Disney movies, but many of these young lives end on no such note. I just ask that you find them and love them in cities near you and listen to their lessons and longings.

An entry I wrote a month ago and am just now publishing here... :)

Hello friends, family, and Crispaz supporters. (disclaimer: for some reason this won't let me put spaces between paragraphs sorry for this one long paragraph...) I hope this finds you well, wherever you are! I just wanted to write a quick update about the work I continue to do with Crispaz’s generous support. These past few months have been a whirlwind, hence the lack of blog entries, but they have been quite full of activity. As Maria explained, we have been working with male youth in a detention center doing art therapy workshops, and we have also been working with amazing young women a minor’s detention center in Ilopango. The young women we work with are so full of life and dreams yet most of them serve 5 to 15 year sentences for crimes they may or may not have committed. Since the maximum sentence for minors was raised from 7 to 15 years, youth coming into the centers are even more overwhelmed and have less motivation to “change” knowing that they will be living so many years within the same walls. Our work consists mostly in one-on-one sessions with about 30 of the women in the center, where we listen to their fears, secrets, aspirations, and often unspeakable pasts and simply write as they speak. Through this simple exercise the girls realize that they are already poets and that they speak of a wisdom that comes from lessons learned in the streets, one that has everything to do with a gritty reality far different than that which scholars paint with their prose. Having done this exercise repeatedly for a year and a half with the majority of the women in the center, we can see that the culture of the center in itself is beginning to change slightly. Girls come to us with 10 poems that they’ve written on their own, wanting us to type them and give them back to them for their portfolios. They tell me things like “I was so sad one night I did not even want to exist, but there was a tiny ray of light shining onto my bunk bed so I got out my pen and began to write. Here’s what I came up with, I don’t know if it’s any good…” And inevitably the ensuing words speak of doubts, insecurities, hardship, and a longing for a God that they perhaps have yet to feel fill the spaces of neglect and abuse these women have suffered for years. Others will tell me, “I was bored to death in computer class because all we do is play solitaire, so instead I wrote these poems, I don’t know if they’re any good…” And again their words shock me as they reveal themselves as the poets they have always been, yet perhaps are finally expressing for the first time. At times this work can be exhausting, overwhelming, and can seem like such a tiny drop in the bucket of ignorance, abuse, and discrimination that plague these women’s lives, yet there are always rays of hope that illuminate our work in the Center. Recently as I was leaving, one of the young women who I have come to love as if she were a long-lost sister of mine told me “You know, I barely know you, but I feel that you are one of those people who has really marked my life, because you’ve helped me to discover who I really am.” Her words floored and humbled me, and I left with such a feeling of gratitude. Despite the multitude of setbacks and despair we encounter in our work, if I can facilitate others’ discovery of their true selves, their loving, well-intentioned, God-like selves, this work is well worth the effort.

happy Holy Week!

Hello family and friends,

Again it has been some time and I will not make this update long, but I just wanted to thank you for your support and prayers and let you know that I am still alive and well here in El Salvador.

This spring has been packed with work and visitors and I was blessed last week with the visit of a Brebeuf delegation from my high school. We were lucky enough to be allowed to enter the male youth detention center where I have invested much of my spirit, energy, and love in the past few months through art therapy workshops, and it was amazing to get to see these two worlds collide.

Fear and barriers washed away as we did icebreakers and had small discussions all morning and by the end, kids with their whole faces tattooed were now friends and no longer the dehumanized “other.” I hope to continue to be able to create these spaces of exchange, as to foment the destruction of unfounded prejudices and plant the seeds for questioning the punitive justice system that serves to destroy the spirit and most relationships rather than rehabilitate it in any way.

The students from the Brebeuf group left motivated to work in prisons back at home to find out what is really happening in these places near you that are intentionally (and profitably now that they are privatized) kept out of sight and out of mind of “law abiding citizens”.

There are many forces here that do not want this rehabilitative work to continue, and this has become quite clear in the past two weeks. However, I remember somewhere hearing that we are probably not doing Christ’s work until we are persecuted and falsely accused, so I just take the efforts to stop our work as motivational signs that we are indeed living out the uncomfortable, nonconformist gospel that we are each called to live.

Until I am kicked out of detention centers I will continue visiting them and discovering the wealth of wisdom and grace that is trapped behind bars, a myriad of tattoos and a flimsy wall of toughness and self-protection.

I am eternally grateful to the incarcerated youth who continue to illuminate my days here with wisdom and a great respect for their resilience against all odds.

A month ago we published a book of a year’s worth of the young women’s poetry whom we have been working with and it has been such a gift to share these pieces of their soul with others here. It is an amazing tool towards breaking down prejudice and at the book’s presentation in the girl’s center the most strict judge of all cried as one of the girls tearfully presented the poem “Your terrible daughter.” We are chiseling into the soul of things here which goes far beyond political banter and lies the media likes to spit out about youth these days.

We hope to translate the book soon and I will post it here as soon as we do.

I hope this finds you all well in this Holy Week, being light in whatever corner of the world where this may find you and chiseling into the soul of whatever issues and communities may surround you so as to connect with those around you in all of their humanness and brokenness. May we continue to go to the margins this Easter season and sit there until we learn to be light.

Following up on the story of “Jose,” I was able to go visit he and another young man who was also released in their hometown. Maria and I rode out to visit them on a particularly hot and prolonged busride, that was certainly worth it to see these young men and let them know that we care for them and want to be supports for them in this transition.

We got off the bus and saw both of them walking towards us, dressed in their Sunday’s best and grinning from ear to ear. It is also so amazing to finally see inmates outside of jail, to see them walking freely and looking like they’ve put on a tiny bit of the weight they always loose because of the conditions in the centers.

We embraced them both and they told us that they couldn’t believe we’d actually come to visit them, that even as we’d been in touch on the way there they hadn’t believed us. We walked to the center of the town where there is an old colonial church and they gave us a tour (it was the first time they had ever been inside of it) and we then sat and caught up with them on the park benches in front of the church eating snow cones.

I had wanted to read Jose a poem that one of the incarcerated woman I work with had written, because it resonates with much of what Jose had expressed to me, so as we caught up on this sunny day I began to read her poem to him so that he would know he was not alone in his feelings of exclusion and his hopes for a changed life

I read:

Advice
By a 17 year old incarcerated youth

For society:

That they will stop seeing us for our errors and for the crimes we have committed, and that they will stop discriminating us because we deserve the chance to show them that we have changed.

Instead of only criticizing us, that they will offer us solutions and support to be able to change our way of living.

That people will not see us merely for the bad we have done but for the good that we have achieved and for the better people we want to become in the future.

For the police:

That they stop being such assholes.

That they will not focus only on what we do to justify beating us savagely.

That they will realize that their own children could turn out to be even worse then us and that they might reflect on this before beating us so brutishly.

For the president:

That he change the law that can lock up minors for 15 years because rather than helping us this brings us many more problems.

For all adolescents:

That you will think things through before acting and think about the consequences that your actions can bring, because every error we commit in this life we will pay at face value.

That you will know how to listen to your family’s advice because they are the only ones who are with you when you are in the hospital or in jail.

For God:

That you will have just a bit more mercy on us…



As the cruel irony of life would have it, just as I spoke these words an undercover cop dressed as a soccer dad grabbed both of these youth and told them to lift up their shirts, he took them out of earshot and told them that they weren’t allowed in the park, that he had orders from his superior not to let any gang members in the park. He recognized them both and asked when they had gotten out of jail, and told them that had they not been with us they would have been kicked out of the park “a vergazos” (by beating the shit out of them) and likely sent to a holding center to be possibly sent to Santa Ana, the adult male prison. He told them he never wanted to see them there again and that they should leave immediately.

I never did finish her poem (which goes on to address abusive men, nature, her deceased father brother and father, and me), and if God does indeed show a bit more mercy, it certainly is not reflected in us, God’s hands on this earth, because the law enforcement bodies and this whole society in general has created a hell on earth where one is never included, not even allowed to eat snowcones on a park bench in front of God’s supposed house.

I was infuriated and the boys just dropped their heads and said that we’d leave. They were so embarrassed and just kept repeating to us, now do you understand? We’ll never belong. They have been ordered by the court to go back to school, but the school is right by this park so they will likely be picked up on the way to school and charged with any crime the police desire (resistance to authority, etc.) in order to be sent back to jail. As Jose put it, it’s their word against ours and ours values nothing.

If this is the welcome we give to youth who have spent 3 years in a living hell and genuinely want to “calmarse” and give up gang activity, we are pushing them right back into the only group that has ever accepted them, that of violent crime and street brotherhood. What else can we expect from them? To what extent are we all accountable for these crimes that they spend their whole lives serving time for? The punitive system has no space for community culpability, but most of these youth have never been integrated, much less reintegrated into this dysfunctional society.