Remember Those in Prison
“Prisoners are human beings,” Prison Fellowship®’s Craig DeRoche says in his interview with FOX 17 in Michigan. “And they have the same-size hopes and dreams of people on the outside”
On Monday, DeRoche visited the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia County, Michigan.
“As a country we are really good at punishment.” So says Danielle Sared, director of the Common Justice program at the Vera Institute of Justice. “It’s passive, it doesn’t require people to act or think. It certainly doesn’t require them to change.
For many of the men and women charged with serious crimes, punishment starts long before the trial.
Under the current bail system in most states, charged defendants are given the opportunity to pay an amount of money, commensurate with the severity of the crime and the risk of flight, to ensure that they will show up for their court date.
When the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was first built in 1829, it promised to be the leading edge of what was to be a reform of the corrections systems around the world. In contrast to other prisons that focused primarily on retribution, Eastern State put an emphasis on reform instead of punishment, and served as the model for more than 300 prisons worldwide.