Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Life After Prison: No Helping Hand

From The Crime Report

On June 10, 2014, Kevin Monteiro stepped onto a prison van at the Sterling Correctional Facility in northeast Colorado. He traveled south for a couple of hours to downtown Denver. He was let off at the Greyhound Bus station at 19th and Curtis.

It was the 56-year-old's first day of freedom since the 1980s—nearly three decades ago—and, to Monteiro, the world looked bizarre.

"Everything is out of place," Monteiro says. "I know where I’m at but everything is really, like, people had moved the furniture around."

Monteiro was convicted of 2nd degree murder in the 1980s for his part in a stabbing in Aurora, Colorado—what he says was a drug deal gone bad. He also says others were involved, but no one else was ever apprehended.

The downtown Greyhound station is one of several drop-off points for inmates after release. Along with the ride from prison, Monteiro had been given a prison-issued debit card; but, he says, that's about it.

“I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," he says about that first day. "No family,  nobody.”

Monteiro's lonely journey on his first day of freedom is typical for Colorado inmates who leave prison without family or friends to turn to: a bus trip, a bit of money, and no one to turn to for guidance or support....

...Read the rest here.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Children of the Prison Boom

Some argue that taking parents who have committed a crime out of the family might be good for children, but the data is in. It’s not.


The United States imprisons more people than any other country. This is true whether you measure by percentage of the population or by sheer, raw numbers. If the phrase mass incarceration applies anywhere, it applies in the good ol’ U. S. of A. 

It wasn’t always this way. Rates of incarceration began rising as a result of President Reagan’s “war on drugs” in the 1980s (marijuana, for example), whereby the number of people imprisoned for non-violent crimes began climbing at an alarming rate. Today, about one-in-31 adults are in prison. his is a human rights crisis for the people that are incarcerated, but its impact also echoes through the job sector, communities, families, and the hearts of children. One-in-28 school-age children—2.7 million—have a parent in prison.

In a new book, Children of the Prison Boom, sociologists Christopher Wildeman and Sara Wakefield describe the impact of parental imprisonment on children: an increase in poverty, homelessness, depression, anxiety, learning disorders, behavioral problems, and interpersonal aggression. Some argue that taking parents who have committed a crime out of the family might be good for children, but the data is in. It’s not....

...Read the rest here.