What Incarcerated Individuals Taught Me About Our Shared Humanity
In the claustrophobic visitation room of the Orleans Parish Prison, a giant glass pane separated me from the person on the other side dressed in glaring bright-orange jumpsuits. Even without looking at their faces, I knew who they were. They were thieves. Burglars. Drug dealers. Domestic abusers. Sex offenders… Worst of the worst — at least, I knew that from the police report. But when I looked across the glass, I still found it difficult to confront the fact that this flesh-and-blood human being in front of me and the heinous criminal I had just read about on the police report were one and the same person.
I had no idea that these were the “clients” I was supposed to serve when I became a client service intern at the Orleans Public Defenders Office. The reports on how they broke into houses or assaulted police officers always made me uneasy about going to jail to meet clients for the first time. But when I cracked open the door and peeked inside the visitation room, I was often thrown off by surprise to see a perfectly affable face on the other side of the glass pane.
The human face that was replaced by labels: “criminals”, “abusers”, “drug dealers”. The human face that have been dehumanized in the one-sided stories of the justice system. The human face that is coldly addressed as “the suspect”, “the perpetrator,” or “case No. 82902” — never “Mr. Smith” or “Ms. Hill”.
Even understanding that, a hundred other labels separated us. The great majority of my clients were poor African American males and I arguably did not fit into any of those categories. I had no idea how I was supposed to get a full picture of their stories when we seemed to have nothing in common. But then, the faces on the other side of the glass pane smiled. The encouragement and understanding from those I could expect the least was an incredible demonstration of their grace while suffering from immense pressure of arrest and jailing.
Perhaps because in jail, the clients never had anyone they could trust to share their feelings with, seeing any empathetic face opens the floodgate of conversation. Over the next forty minutes, the faceless criminal in the orange jumpsuit would become a vivid human being with their own hopes, joys, and fears. They told me about they landed in jail, their life before getting there, their parents, their kids… Over and over, I heard the same stories:
— The drugs that permeate their community like an invisible plague. When those innocent-looking pills and powders are so accessible and normalized by everyone else, once someone falls into the trap, it’s hard to shake its influence forever.
— The gross lack of medical attention and awareness that people are facing. Many people living in those communities are cognizant and even paranoid of the destructive power of drugs, avoiding even much-needed prescription drugs in fear that they will turn into “gateway drugs” that may fuel addiction.
— The trauma of child abuse that overshadow childhoods and into adulthoods. These children often grow up into adults who do not know what a “normal family” is like and fall into the same cycle of domestic violence on both sides: the abused and the abuser.
……
What is the most heart-wrenching, however, was when when the clients talk about their aspirations. It may seem as big as going to college one day to become an engineer or as small as finding a place to call home. It is amazing how people still dream about their future, even when that future seems so dim. It broke my heart to know that most of their dreams would never come true — the statistical odds are never in their favor — but the glimmers of hope that shine through the most despairing situations are the most inspiring.
They inspire me in every moment of my life.
None of these life circumstances, of course, justifies breaking the law. But they do explain why people do so. They explain the desperate forces that push people over the edge of law time and again. And more importantly, they lead us to the decisive question: how can we as, a society, bring out the best in ourselves, not the worst?It is a question that few police or prosecutors ask, but a question so vital in building a justice system based not on punishment or revenge, but on restoration.
And what for? So that those who need drug rehabilitation would get proper medical attention, not indiscriminately thrown into jail waiting for their addiction to get worse; so that prisons and jails become places for learning and reflection, not a machine for punishment that surrounds people with more violence and trauma; so that a white man hurting a black woman would get the same treatment as a black man hurting a white woman; so that formerly incarcerated individuals may re-integrate into society and get own their own feet instead of being marginalized by society and falling into recidivism…
These reforms may seem preposterous if we see people who have committed wrongdoings as “criminals” who are defined by the worst of their actions. But perhaps we would change our mind if we see them as the humans who have tremendous potential for both the better and the worse. Who, with an uplifting force, can bring out the best in themselves.
Just perhaps, they are not that different from me and you. All of us face decisions every day: what to eat, what to major in, what careers to pursue, what chances to take… Sometimes, we may make admittedly terrible decisions. I know I have, more than once or twice. But people like myself never got the full consequences of our bad decision-making because we’ve had great options to start with. But when the choices that many face daily is to rob a car or let your family go hungry for another week, it is surprisingly easy to cross the fine line between right and wrong, guilt and innocence, incarceration and freedom.
The founder of Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson often says that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”. That fact may seem trivial because most people around me never had to be defined by our worst mistakes. Indeed, we change our major, move to a different city, or pursue a different career and move on. But moving on is exactly the opportunity that many people are not given. They are never given to people struggling on the verge of right and wrong and who will be permanently stigmatized as “criminal” the second they dip their toes into the “wrong”. Perhaps we as humans have the tendency to judge too quickly. That is why Bryan Stevenson warns us against this tendency to jump into conclusions about people, that “if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that does not belong to you, you’re not just a thief.”
And the next line would take a leap of faith, so I hesitated to put it in the article. But I have fully come to accept it after a year of working for death row inmates under Center for Death Penalty Litigation: “even if you kill someone, you are more than just a killer”.
Enough idealism. The unfortunate reality is that once someone is convicted of a crime, violent or not, that is what society often sees them as. A criminal and nothing more — not just behind the bars, but when they go beyond them as well.
After serving time and being released into society, formerly incarcerated individuals are constantly stigmatized by their past. It means losing child custody because the state deems them “unfit” as parents. It means losing the right to vote in many states. It means having to check “yes” the question on most job applications that ask “have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Nobody gives them three pages to explain the situations surrounding that conviction, and that is how they know which pile their resume will end up in.
At the public defenders, I often accompanied released clients to social services such as hospitals and government agencies. Many times, the staff there would pull me aside and secretly ask, “why are the public defenders following this person around? What is wrong with them?” As if always prying to find out more about the past, but not about the person standing right in front of them now.
“How does it matter?” I wanted to ask. How much does it matter when holding past transgressions in mind would only prevent us from moving on into the future? That is why later on during the job, I rarely bothered to find out what clients have been charged with before meeting them for the first time. Even if I had to find that out later on to help with the case, at least I would have the chance to know them as humans first and labels last.
I am aware that the inequality is created by the great wheel of history that is deeply entrenched in society’s fundamental construction. And that there may be little that a person, an organization, or even a generation can do in face of the grander injustice. But we can go a long way in social change if we could first see each other with a shared sense of humanity that is much more powerful than any of our differences. Whether it is the beggar on the streets, the criminal behind the bars, or the senior manager at McKinsey, they are all just people. They all deserve the same respect.
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When I pushed open the door at the jail after a visitation is over, I was always confronted by the realization that I could go free while the person talking to me just a minute ago had to stay there. As for what I will do with that precious freedom, that seems more momentous now.
