More Learning Experiences

It's been an interesting week - very educational. I really love that sometimes my VISTA position involves supplemental training. These last two days have offered me unique opportunities to learn even more about the social service sector.

Yesterday I toured the Plainfield prisoner re-entry facility. In essence, it's a minimum security prison that aims to reduce recidivism by giving prisoners the tools they need to succeed in the "real world" when they're released. When prisoners are released from their terms, there is often nothing for them beyond the prison gates. Their families and friends have moved on. Sometimes they've missed decades of progress. Some of the guys in the Plainfield facility are learning how to use debit cards because the cards didn't exist when they started their sentences. Others have no idea how to turn on a computer because computers were barely used when they started their sentences.

When Indiana prisoners are released, they have $75 in hand and the clothes on their backs. Many of them end up homeless because they don't have support networks waiting for them, they don't have the financial resources to find housing for themselves, and they've been so severely institutionalized that they don't know how to function in our day to day lives any longer. Because of this, more than 60% of prisoners end up back in jail, and soon. That's not reformation. It's just sad.

The Plainfield facility is working to combat those numbers by mimicking life on the outside. It's more of a campus than a prison, with dorm-style living and the freedom to wander around within the prison fence. The inmates attend classes on construction skills (from plumbing to carpentry to electric) or the culinary arts. This helps them have some marketable skills for their release. Some of the men never had real jobs prior to their incarceration. The men also must work several hours each day around the prison - earning their keep. They receive support services and are encouraged to re-unite with their families.

As I walked through the facilities and looked in each of those men's faces, I found myself wondering about them. What did they do to get in there? Did they feel remorse? Would they make it? But more than that, I found myself contemplating grace - again. These men are being offered another chance at life, and I want them to have that chance. I want to see them succeed and thrive and make a positive impact on the world around them. Perhaps that's not a chance they deserve to have, but that is grace.



Today I had the opportunity to tour a couple of properties operated by Partners in Housing Development Corporation (PIH). PIH is dedicated to creating supportive housing solutions for our homeless neighbors in Indianapolis. Basically that means that they pair social services, i.e. case management, with affordable housing units. Indy's Blueprint to End Homelessness calls for the creation of 1700 new affordable housing units in the city. PIH is making it happen, and it's incredible to see. They, too, are about second chances and third chances...and fiftieth chances.



I hope that I really believe in this kind of grace on a personal level. I do desperately desire it for the people our organizations serve, but do I extend that kind of forgiveness and fiftieth chance when it comes to my day to day interactions? to my personal relationships? I'm not sure I always do, and I don't understand why that inconsistency exists. Why is it harder for me to extend grace to a prisoner serving out a 20 year sentence than to someone who personally wrongs me? Is it because that prisoner's offense is impersonal to me? I think that maybe grace on a personal grace is the deepest kind of grace there is...because it requires the most of us. It is truly sacrificial. I want to love like that.