E-mail   By Christy Marie Camp   Bio/Address

 The day you are released begins like any other; the sun comes up, the shifts change and the prison slips into its old dull routine. Given all your excitement and anticipation, there should be an announcement over the P.A. (public address system) that today is your day, your time's up and your leaving. But no, you just pack what you haven't already given away, wait to get processed out the same way you got processed in, sign some papers and get the hell out!

If you're lucky, you have a ride waiting for you and as you're driven away you try not to look back, but you can't help it, you see the fences that kept you in and think of the women doing what you did yesterday and the countless mornings before that. By tonight, another woman will already be in your bunk.

As you drive further away, the prison, which has been the center of your life for so long, becomes nothing more than a tiny speck. The only thing that ever gave it any importance was your presence.

If you take into consideration all the different influences of prison on the prisoner, you will be convinced that prison makes a person less and less fit for life in society.

Over the last half-century, one crime commission after another has criticized prisons for their failure to rehabilitate prisoners and has called for new approaches to achieve success.

Increasingly, experts are  coming to feel that the conditions under which many offenders are handled, particularly in prisons, are often an absolute detriment to rehabilitation.

The return to society is as shocking to your senses as the day you entered prison in chains. What you went through adjusting to prison, you now go through again, only backwards. And the deeper they had you buried and the longer you've been away, the harder it will be because so much has changed.

You may not feel much of anything because you are numb. Your body and mind are working overtime to absorb all the changes that come with suddenly being thrown into the speed of modern life. Your body is out there, but the rest of you are still in prison.

Getting a job, forget it, for parolees this presents a series of special problems passed on by the economy, criminal record, the need for transportation and a mailing address and phone, and finally SOMEONE willing to give you a chance.

You have been convicted of a crime and sent to prison and you will have a negative social image and because of this you will be rejected on many levels. The majority of "citizens" will refuse to have anything to do with you because you are a "criminal."

Research has consistently found that a prisoner's self-esteem just prior to release is an indicator of the prisoner's potential to recidivate. Those who believe that their lives were completely in their control before incarceration have higher levels of self-esteem. This finding indicates that institutional programs as well as the general treatment of prisoners should be geared toward empowering women rather than controlling them, such as programs that encourage autonomy and self-responsibility.

But what prisoners have not found today in prisons or society is a helping hand, simple and friendly, which would aid them to develop the higher faculties of their minds and souls - to give them a healthy direction and another means of survival besides committing more crimes.

Formerly, the insane were looked upon as possessed by demons and were treated accordingly. They were kept in chains in places like stables, riveted to the walls like wild beasts. But along came Pinel, a man of the great revolution, who dared to remove their chains and tried treating them as brothers. "You will be devoured by them!" cried the keepers. But Pinel dared. Those who were believed to be wild-beasts gathered around Pinel and proved by their attitude that he was right in believing in the better side of human nature even when the intelligence is clouded by disease. The cause was won - they stopped chaining the insane.