By: Justin Chambers
My
oldest brother has been in jail for the majority of my life. In fact,
he is in jail now. My mom used to try to get me and my other brother to
write our oldest brother in jail. I had no interest in it. As they
say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Being in jail so often, my brother
was rarely in sight and only on my mind when my mother mentioned him.
If I were to say that we were close when he was around, that would be a
lie. Not only did he make bad choices, but he frequently dragged me
into the messes he had made. To be honest, I did not have anything I
wanted to say, much less write, to him. When he would call me collect
on my phone, I would become angry; what I perceived as his manipulation
did not seem to stop, even at a distance. He asked me to deliver
messages to lots of people, but he never asked about me.
A couple of months back, we started a letter writing campaign at
Mercy to encourage our sisters and brothers in jail. I started writing
people I have known for little over a year, and others whom I have never
met, reminding them that they are loved and missed. I was surprised to
realize that every jail or prison has different guidelines as to what
type of mail can be received and sent by inmates. In one jail, inmates
can receive letters in standard envelopes; another jail requires that
mail must come in the form of plain white three by five postcards issued
and pre-stamped by the post office. All of them seem to differ on how
or if newspapers, books (including Bibles), or other packages can be
sent. It took me quite a while to sort it all out—the first batch of
letters came back with big red stamps informing us that we needed to try
again and adhere to policy.
Part of my job is to encourage our community to write our community
members who are in jail. I was surprised with how much resistance I
met. Many folks did not want to write someone else as no one had
reached out to them when they were last locked-up. The loneliness and
bitterness was apparently still very fresh for them. People are now
rising to the occasion, however. I think this is in part because our
community is beginning to understand that, as Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘We
must be the change we want to see in the world.’ I also think it is in
part because people we have written are coming back into the community
and are expressing their appreciation for the letters. I am now sought
out by members of our community about the writing program: folks want to
know if they have received correspondence from a friend in jail, if
there are new people to write, and if I have new postcards to reply to
letters already received. It does my heart good to hear this change of
heart in our community.
Now I realize how hard my heart had gotten towards my own brother and
how hurtful my silence may have been. Until I started trying to write
inmates, I never imagined how difficult communication could be—perhaps
it was not that my brother did not care about me when he called, but
that I actually picked up the phone and was the only lifeline he had to
communicate with others.
My eyes were opened further when I had the opportunity to visit a
county jail, as well as a maximum-security prison. While at Jackson
Diagnostic and Classification Prison, I felt sick to my stomach.
People--our people, God’s people--were chained and bound, locked down in
little cells, practically confined to their beds, bunked three high,
for twenty-three out of twenty-four hours each day. Long gone are the
days of exercising in the yard or watching television, much less
receiving services that might help an inmate to one day leave the prison
as a productive, skilled member of society. Our ‘correctional system’
no longer aims to ‘correct’ behavior patterns. Instead as Chaplain
Harrell explained it to me, ‘There was a problem in society—someone
committed a crime, so we corrected it—we removed them from society.
Prob-lem solved.’ In this business of warehousing people, any contact
where someone is known by a name, not just a number, is welcome and
rare.
I never expected this year to bring healing to a place in my heart
broken and bruised and buried so deep I nearly forgot it was there—my
relationship with my brother. My heart has softened, maybe not yet as
much as it may, but it is a start. In this digital age, we forget how
important a hand-written three by five post card reminding us that we
are beloved can be.
