05/14/08:'Thank You For Not Giving Up On Us' - Madison-area Urban Ministry
'Thank You For Not Giving Up On Us' - Restorative Justice Process Helps Prisoners, Victims
The Capital Times :: CAP TIMES :: 40
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Phil Haslanger
James P. Hill stood before his fellow graduates, pride in his stance and in his voice. But his words were not what you might expect to hear at the graduation ceremonies that will be occurring this spring.
"I am deeply sorry for all the crimes that I have caused," he said. Then he added a few words on behalf of his fellow graduates dressed in dark green shirts sitting before him. "We thank you for not giving up on us."
The 45-year-old Hill, you see, is a prisoner at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, one of Wisconsin's maximum security prisons. This graduation ceremony marked the completion of a program called restorative justice that aims to help prisoners come to grips with how their crimes have affected victims, society, their own family members.
Eighteen of the 20 men who began the program were sitting in the prison visiting room on this last Monday morning in April along with about 40 community members who came to cheer them on. There are now about 50 men out of the 800-plus prisoners here who have graduated from the restorative justice program.
Gary Grams, the prison warden, was there. So was state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, who is on the Assembly's Committee on Corrections and Courts. There were a number of ministers, university students, a professor from Edgewood College, members of a social justice study group from Holy Mother of Consolation Catholic Church in Oregon.
Also there was a young woman named Tanya. She was a victim of crime, pistol whipped by a robber who assaulted her at an ATM machine in 1999. She had talked to this group earlier during their 13-week program in the prison. "They represent my offenders," she said. "I represent their victims."
That's an important part of the whole concept of restorative justice. It brings together perpetrators, victims and society in a way that tries to move each party beyond the actions of the legal system. It does not seek to excuse perpetrators from doing their time. It does not demand that victims forgive the perpetrators.
One of the nation's leading voices on restorative justice, Mark Umbreit of the University of Minnesota, describes the process as holding people who violate the law accountable, "but in a way that helps them repair the harm they've caused to individuals and communities."
Former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who now teaches at the Marquette University Law School, has been a major force behind bringing the restorative justice initiative into Wisconsin's prisons. And the Rev. Jerry Hancock of Madison, a former assistant attorney general who became a United Church of Christ minister, runs the program at the Portage prison as part of his Prison Ministry Project.
Even though there are a number of church folks involved with this, they are all quick to point out that restorative justice is not a program that has any religious requirements or sectarian agenda.
Each of the 18 grads spoke a bit as they came forward to accept their diplomas from Sue Heneman, a Madison volunteer who was one of the teachers in the program along with Diana Shaw. What was striking was how many of them talked about becoming aware for the first time of the consequences their actions had on their victims, on the community. These men were here for big-time crimes - murder, sexual assault, running prostitution rings.
"It is important for society to know that there are offenders who wish to repair the damage they have done," Paul Wozny said. Antonio Hunter talked about the "hurt and harm" he had caused not only his victims, but his own family.
Robert Mallory, the "dean" of the group, imprisoned for life for killing a Milwaukee police officer in 1973 during a robbery at a tavern, choked up as he said, "I want to apologize to the community and to the victims."
Dante Cottingham had been selected as the class speaker to offer a longer reflection on his experience in the program. He is in for the fatal shooting of a man during an argument in Racine in 1995. He talked about the paintings that exist on what he called the canvases of each person's mind.
Each person, he said, still has blank canvases where there is always another chance for expression. Of the restorative justice program, he said, "Together we began painting a rich portrait, a masterpiece in our mind."
His use of the word "rich" was not random. It is the acronym the men in green (that refers to their prison garb) use to describe what they learn in this program - respect, information, connection and hope.
Barbara McKinney of the Madison-area Urban Ministry's Circles of Support program for prisoners as they re-enter society picked up on that theme as she talked to the men on what would have been the 43rd birthday of her son, TV newscaster Mike McKinney, who died of cancer in 2006.
"You allowed yourself to become vulnerable in a place where that is just not done," she told the men. "From this day forward, I challenge you to speak and live in hope."
For people who will not get out from behind bars for a long time, hope is a precious commodity, one that can change their lives and their interactions with others inside the walls. But it also touches people on the outside, people like Tanya, who say that by entering into the restorative justice process she found her own voice again, and who also said that once those men who are released from prison return home, "they will understand that they are part of the community."
For everyone involved, that is a giant step forward.
22,939 ADULTS INCARCERATED IN WISCONSIN
As of the beginning of May, there were 22,936 adults in Wisconsin's adult correctional facilites. Those facilites were designed to hold 16,648 prisoners. In the state's maximum security institutions, which include the one in Portage, there were 5,192 prisoners as of the beinning of May. Those maximum security facilities were designed to house 3,804 prisoners.
"The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners." That was the beginning of a New York Times story on April 23, which then said: "The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million pople in prison."
There is another way of measuring the U.S. prison population. The International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London reports that the U.S. has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 peope in the population. Who's second? Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. England's rate is 151, Germany's is 88, and Japan's is 63.
The Capital Times :: CAP TIMES :: 40
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Phil Haslanger
James P. Hill stood before his fellow graduates, pride in his stance and in his voice. But his words were not what you might expect to hear at the graduation ceremonies that will be occurring this spring.
"I am deeply sorry for all the crimes that I have caused," he said. Then he added a few words on behalf of his fellow graduates dressed in dark green shirts sitting before him. "We thank you for not giving up on us."
The 45-year-old Hill, you see, is a prisoner at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, one of Wisconsin's maximum security prisons. This graduation ceremony marked the completion of a program called restorative justice that aims to help prisoners come to grips with how their crimes have affected victims, society, their own family members.
Eighteen of the 20 men who began the program were sitting in the prison visiting room on this last Monday morning in April along with about 40 community members who came to cheer them on. There are now about 50 men out of the 800-plus prisoners here who have graduated from the restorative justice program.
Gary Grams, the prison warden, was there. So was state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, who is on the Assembly's Committee on Corrections and Courts. There were a number of ministers, university students, a professor from Edgewood College, members of a social justice study group from Holy Mother of Consolation Catholic Church in Oregon.
Also there was a young woman named Tanya. She was a victim of crime, pistol whipped by a robber who assaulted her at an ATM machine in 1999. She had talked to this group earlier during their 13-week program in the prison. "They represent my offenders," she said. "I represent their victims."
That's an important part of the whole concept of restorative justice. It brings together perpetrators, victims and society in a way that tries to move each party beyond the actions of the legal system. It does not seek to excuse perpetrators from doing their time. It does not demand that victims forgive the perpetrators.
One of the nation's leading voices on restorative justice, Mark Umbreit of the University of Minnesota, describes the process as holding people who violate the law accountable, "but in a way that helps them repair the harm they've caused to individuals and communities."
Former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who now teaches at the Marquette University Law School, has been a major force behind bringing the restorative justice initiative into Wisconsin's prisons. And the Rev. Jerry Hancock of Madison, a former assistant attorney general who became a United Church of Christ minister, runs the program at the Portage prison as part of his Prison Ministry Project.
Even though there are a number of church folks involved with this, they are all quick to point out that restorative justice is not a program that has any religious requirements or sectarian agenda.
Each of the 18 grads spoke a bit as they came forward to accept their diplomas from Sue Heneman, a Madison volunteer who was one of the teachers in the program along with Diana Shaw. What was striking was how many of them talked about becoming aware for the first time of the consequences their actions had on their victims, on the community. These men were here for big-time crimes - murder, sexual assault, running prostitution rings.
"It is important for society to know that there are offenders who wish to repair the damage they have done," Paul Wozny said. Antonio Hunter talked about the "hurt and harm" he had caused not only his victims, but his own family.
Robert Mallory, the "dean" of the group, imprisoned for life for killing a Milwaukee police officer in 1973 during a robbery at a tavern, choked up as he said, "I want to apologize to the community and to the victims."
Dante Cottingham had been selected as the class speaker to offer a longer reflection on his experience in the program. He is in for the fatal shooting of a man during an argument in Racine in 1995. He talked about the paintings that exist on what he called the canvases of each person's mind.
Each person, he said, still has blank canvases where there is always another chance for expression. Of the restorative justice program, he said, "Together we began painting a rich portrait, a masterpiece in our mind."
His use of the word "rich" was not random. It is the acronym the men in green (that refers to their prison garb) use to describe what they learn in this program - respect, information, connection and hope.
Barbara McKinney of the Madison-area Urban Ministry's Circles of Support program for prisoners as they re-enter society picked up on that theme as she talked to the men on what would have been the 43rd birthday of her son, TV newscaster Mike McKinney, who died of cancer in 2006.
"You allowed yourself to become vulnerable in a place where that is just not done," she told the men. "From this day forward, I challenge you to speak and live in hope."
For people who will not get out from behind bars for a long time, hope is a precious commodity, one that can change their lives and their interactions with others inside the walls. But it also touches people on the outside, people like Tanya, who say that by entering into the restorative justice process she found her own voice again, and who also said that once those men who are released from prison return home, "they will understand that they are part of the community."
For everyone involved, that is a giant step forward.
22,939 ADULTS INCARCERATED IN WISCONSIN
As of the beginning of May, there were 22,936 adults in Wisconsin's adult correctional facilites. Those facilites were designed to hold 16,648 prisoners. In the state's maximum security institutions, which include the one in Portage, there were 5,192 prisoners as of the beinning of May. Those maximum security facilities were designed to house 3,804 prisoners.
"The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners." That was the beginning of a New York Times story on April 23, which then said: "The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million pople in prison."
There is another way of measuring the U.S. prison population. The International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London reports that the U.S. has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 peope in the population. Who's second? Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. England's rate is 151, Germany's is 88, and Japan's is 63.
Submitted by wnpj on Fri, 05/16/2008 - 9:45am.