REHABILITATION IS ESSENTIAL

The average prisoner is housed in the United States for about $20,000 per
year. The correctional attitude of "custody and care" replaced the concept
of rehabilitation many years ago in the federal system and in most state
systems. So, while we spend enormous sums of money during an increasingly
tight economic environment to imprison people, we give them little or no
training as to how to assume their proper place in society. This can only
be a recipe for disaster.

While the News-Leader editorial pointed out that drug convictions account
for 57 percent of the federal inmates, throughout the United States there
is an additional 15 to 20 percent who are convicted for crimes related to
drug abuse. Armed robbers, burglars and even violent crimes are committed
by offenders who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or by
criminals who are trying to get the money to buy their drug of choice.

What we have in society is a drug and alcohol problem caused by three
categories of people. There is obviously the end user, the addict or
alcoholic who commits a crime to get their drug of choice or who commits a
crime while under the influence. Statistics show that about 10 percent of
our entire population has an "addictive" personality and there is evidence
this has been the case since man first crushed grapes.

Then we have the drug profiteer who makes money on illicit drug sales and
is "addicted" to the grandiose lifestyle created by the enormous sums of
money they have made in the past. They need incarceration and retraining to
help them understand that society will not tolerate those who choose to
profit on the misery of others.

Then we have the rest of us - the crux of the problem. We have supported a
drug war that doesn't work, a war that costs us an estimated $50 billion
each year. We have a prison system that makes us feel secure but does
nothing to help solve the problem. We have a mentality that a drug user is
a criminal and not a spiritually sick member of our society. Perhaps worst
of all, we have a distorted view of life that tells us that rehabilitation
is possible without regeneration of the mind.

If we can take off the blinders long enough to see that people will
continue to use drugs and alcohol until they have achieved a feeling of
happiness in their life in some healthy way, we will see that what we call
rehabilitation must actually be a complete reorientation of their life and
their thinking.

People may be given the information that will lead them to this water, but
they must drink of the water themselves. While the prison system may give
them the information, it is God working through his people that must carry
this message to those who continue to choose to be enslaved to drugs. In
turn, we need also carry this message to our government leaders who
perpetuate the large budgets that prison bureaucracies crave.

These ex-felons are going to be our neighbors some day. Shall we build
higher fences, first around our prisons and then around our homes? This is
the direction we are moving. We are building more prisons than ever and the
prisons are still overcrowded.

I suggest we take personal responsibility to work within the system as
volunteers to show inmates that we are ready to accept them back into
society as soon as they are ready to have their life changed for the
better. Take the water to those who thirst and perhaps they will drink of a
new wine.