Among Murderers. Sabine Heinlein
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family members discussed the challenges of life after prison. I talked to the clients and staff of reentry organizations with Pollyanna-ish names like STRIVE (Support and Training Results in Valuable Employees), CEO (Center for Employment Opportunities), and the Fortune Society. Most clients of the Fortune Society, STRIVE, and CEO were people with extensive rap sheets—and most were out of luck. Few had ever learned to strive for anything, and it is safe to assume that they will never become CEOS. What they needed most was individual attention and love.
One man I spoke to had forgotten how to turn on a faucet after living in a prison cell for twenty years. When I accompanied another recently released man on his walk through the city, he almost got run over when crossing the street, not once but five times in half an hour. His sense of public space had atrophied so completely that whenever he managed to avoid the traffic, he bumped into other pedestrians. I once tried to show yet another ex-offender how to turn on a PC, go online, and check his emails. It would have been easier to teach a child how to drive a car. Freedom was a relief, surely, but it was also a challenge. It wasn't something that could simply be embraced. The men had to painstakingly learn how to master this freedom. I noticed that no one had ever addressed those seemingly minor obstacles of prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration; this is how the idea for this book came into being.
A growing number of reentry organizations backed by public and private funds have tried to smooth the individual's return to society. In the last decade reentry has become a hot-button topic. Reentry resource centers, reentry round tables, reentry institutes, and reentry initiatives have popped up across the country. The work of advocates and legislators has yielded impressive results: The Second Chance Act was signed into law in 2008. Aimed at improving the lives of ex-offenders, it authorizes federal grants to government agencies and nonprofit organizations for employment assistance, substance-abuse treatment, housing, family programs, mentoring, victims’ support, and other services that may help reduce recidivism. In 2009 New York's tough drug laws, which had been signed into law by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973, were revised to remove mandatory minimum sentences.
But despite the reentry movement's recent successes, the term reentry sounds like wishful thinking. At the reentry meetings I listened to advocates endlessly introduce services, strategies, and legislative goals. At the end of these lectures a man or woman of color would usually stand up, trying to share his or her sad life story. “I just came home after serving fifteen [or twenty or thirty] years,” the person would begin before spiraling into a rambling tale of alienation. Eventually someone from the panel would cut off the speaker, leaving the rest of the story unheard.
Naturally, the phenomenon of ex-prisoners attempting to become part of our society begged for a name, but “reentry” seemed hopelessly removed from what it really meant to be released from prison. There was nothing guided or measured about becoming part of mainstream society. Besides, did these men and women really succeed in “reentering” our world?
In 2009 almost 730,000 people were released from U.S. prisons.1 Many ex-prisoners return to the same crime-ridden and impoverished neighborhoods that raised them, and a very select few find permanent employment. Two-thirds of them land back in prison.2
Incarceration affects a disproportionate number of men of color. More than half of all incarcerated men are African Americans, and greater than 20 percent are Hispanics.3
These harrowing statistics and my own personal experiences with ex-prisoners and reentry organizations made me wonder: How can we rehabilitate these disenfranchised masses? How do contemporary institutions approach rehabilitation, and what role does the general public play in this process? Few of us consider the individual who bears the brunt of this burden. What attempts at rehabilitation does the ex-prisoner himself (or herself) make? How do ex-prisoners learn to navigate their freedom? What resources can they count on, and what obstacles do they encounter? While society may be comfortable talking about racial and social disparities in the abstract (or in public policy terms), in this book I talk about these issues by looking at real human beings who have faced the challenges of reentry.
Besides the commonly cited objective of reducing recidivism, no one discusses what constitutes successful rehabilitation. Is it simply a matter of keeping an individual out of prison and of finding him or her a job? We will see that this issue encompasses a number of mundane aspects, as well as several significant moral ones. The life stories of the three men of color, men who spent several decades in prison for murder and were released into the hands of the Fortune Society in 2007, illuminate these complex questions.4
CONNECTING
I must have interviewed at least fifty former prisoners before I finally found a subject: Angel Ramos. Angel's horrific crimes and his extraordinary journey to freedom, his willingness to let me accompany him to his programs and to share with me even the most mundane details of his life, made him a perfect subject for this book.
Angel was released in March 2007 after having served twenty-nine years in prison. At eighteen years old he had taken one life and nearly two others. After he was caught, he tried to escape from New York's Rikers Island. Considering his journey, he was remarkably upbeat and optimistic. Most important, maybe, wherever he went, people seemed to like him. A short, sturdy man, Angel was of Puerto Rican descent and had grown up in East Harlem, the neighborhood where he committed his most heinous crime. He had smooth brown skin; a mustache; and short, curly hair. He often wore a dark suit, a bright shirt, and a wildly patterned tie. Angel was witty and charming, and he looked at the world with wide eyes. He thought of himself as someone special, someone whose story needed to be told.
Shortly after his release, Angel met Adam and Bruce at a halfway house, and the three became friends. They had few things in common beyond the fact that they were intelligent men of color who had served several decades behind bars for murder.
In his early seventies, Adam had spent thirty-one years in prison for murder, robbery, conspiracy, and an attempted escape. He was released in April 2007, one month after Angel. I first saw Adam at one of the many reentry events he attended. Although I don't remember the particulars of the event, I do remember his presence. His forehead was deeply furrowed. His graceful posture, gray beard, and thinly framed glasses lent him an aura of wisdom and respect. To me he looked more like a retired sociology professor or a famous jazz musician than an ex-con. Despite his solemn disposition, he often broke out in spontaneous laughter. While genuine, his laughter was also deceiving. Right at the start Adam told me that he had difficulties taking off his “prison armor.” He couldn't “find the zipper.” However much he tried, Adam couldn't find his way “home.”
In May 2007 Bruce joined Angel and Adam at the Castle, a West Harlem halfway house founded by the Fortune Society. When he was in his late twenties, Bruce shot a stranger following an argument; he spent twenty-four years in prison. Bruce is the most introverted of the three men. Compared to Angel and Adam, he is intimidatingly tall. Trying to make himself look shorter, he walks with a slight hunch. His head is always shaved smooth. At his height, who would want to add an extra inch? He often wears a baseball hat that looks comically small on his large head. Try as he might to appear shorter, he remains six foot six. Bruce is quiet and reserved. He speaks primarily when addressed and even then only sparingly. Bruce seems to have few illusions about life yet strides ahead with surprising balance.
Angel, Bruce, and Adam began their new life at the Fortune Society's Castle. A prominent reentry organization in New York, Fortune, as it is commonly known, has been around since 1968 and has helped thousands of former prisoners navigate the welfare system and find housing and work. In three New York locations Fortune offers a variety of services, including computer tutoring, substance-abuse treatment, cooking classes, and father- and motherhood programs.
Angel, Bruce, Adam, and I are as different as can be. I grew up in an upper-middle-class family in a suburb of a Bavarian city not much bigger than the suburb itself. I moved to Hamburg right after high school and immigrated to the United States in 2001. When I was growing up, the darkest shade of skin in my town was that of the two dozen gypsies that camped out on a field at the city limits for a few weeks every year. The common opinion among the permanent residents was that the gypsies were liars and criminals. Clearly, the gypsies didn't want to integrate. Unhappy with the little town's rigidity and