A few weeks ago a listener called me – off-air – and railed about my views on criminal justice. “What about the victim?" he shouted, sounding as though he’d made an original accusation. “Don’t you care about the victims?” he repeated.

In the more than 40 years since the Fortune Society began, that cry has been bellowed at me…usually sanctimoniously…as if the accuser had made an original allegation, and was blessed with saintliness.

I often want to respond “What have you done about victims and victimization lately?” But tempting as that is, it would be avoiding the issue and just making it personal. I have found that the accusers when probed are usually advocates of stiff punishment and a throw-away-the-key philosophy, with little thought of the implications and our failed prison system.

In fact, over the years, many colleagues and I have been involved with victims’ organizations and at joint meetings of people who have been imprisoned and people who have been victimized. The truth and reconciliation progress in South Africa, after the legal end of apartheid, has had pockets of emulators on these shores. Some of those gatherings have been startling, revealing, and often tear-filled. Cleansing and healing sessions have never been popular with people who claim to be law and order advocates…who voice concern for victims.

Any careful assessment of our prison system reveals that it is a major factor in the continuation of violence and crime. It barely breaks cycles.

At the Fortune Society, where we are witness to people dramatically reshaping their lives, you can often hear men and women express the sentiment that they know they cannot undo the damage that has been part of their past but they can live their lives each day with new-found values and work with others who have been released from prison after them. They recognize that the real fight against crime and for decreasing the number of future victims begins when you create an atmosphere – a space – where people can explore the possibility of something different and positive in their lives. Change is not easy, and it comes slowly…but it can come.

Recently, on this program, my colleague Angel Ramos spoke eloquently on the subject of remorse – a word tossed glibly about in the tabloids and shock TV shows. Angel has said that he privately lives each day with the enormity of what brought him into prison – but that remorse can’t be merely a word expressed to convince others of a changed attitude. He stated that remorse is what he does with each of his remaining days – not by words, but by how he lives his life. Angel can speak for himself, but I have seen him as a concerned counselor at the Fortune Society working with men and women released after he was, and giving them guidance and support so that they can reinvent their lives.

In the play The Castle, as part of an ensemble he reaches out to offer strangers a glimpse of what can be overcome. Last week, I joined Angel and others at a national anti-violence conference – a group with which he had become involved while still incarcerated. Caring about victims and victimization, Angel has taught me is not showing remorse by a tear, a grimace or a well-phrased statement. It is what you do, how you live your life, each day, every day…not of interest to those who want pat solutions and a sound-bite.

The great failure of our prison system in America is that it takes men and women accused and convicted of antisocial acts, conduct often nurtured by drug and alcohol abuse, and place them in an environment which rarely confronts what they did, why they did it and what avenues should be taken to avoid repetition. In fact, jails and prisons are designed to nurture the very behavior that leads anyone into the life of an exile. To survive in most prisons, you have to practice the behavior that brought you there. And the drugs and alcohol to numb the sensibilities are easily obtainable.

We then expect an individual to return to society with a new awareness. We are not ready to forgive but we expect a changed attitude and behavior as we enforce job and housing restrictions, reinforcing the alienation. Little is done in prison to prepare anyone to function upon their return to the streets. All decision-making has been removed, and the outside world has become a puzzle. That, teamed with suppressed rage, brings the anticipated result, which we describe with statistics about recidivism. It takes time and commitment to examine and explore the institutional failings, prisons and jails…to see how alienation is created and nurtured in the home, on the streets, in the schools, and eventually, the prison system.

As bleak as it sounds, it is not a hopeless situation. In the four decades that the Fortune Society has existed, I have been witness to hundreds, or rather thousands, of men and women who have reclaimed their lives. Learning how to care about and for one's self is the first step before sympathy for others can be achieved. Institutional life often means a suppression of feelings and those layers must be peeled away. It is essential to create a space that challenges and supports people who want something different. To meet each week with the 60 residents at the Castle, the Fortune Academy, is to see all that is possible. It happens in slow motion. There is no single dramatic transition.

In the play The Castle, Caz Torres says when he first came to the Fortune Society he was motivated by the promise of a free metrocard.; he wasn’t ready for change and he spent some more time in Riker’s Island. But, he tells the audience, when he returned the second time, he no longer just wanted a metrocard, he wanted his life.

It is that simple and that complex…all at once.

There are victims and there are victims. We have to do a better job with our social problems than anonymous shout outs. It takes work, time, and caring. But it is possible. We just have to want it.


I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!