Hope - For What?

As I write I'm sitting in a comfortable hotel in Ontario, California after a week in the high desert at the Federal Penitentiary in Victorville. I have gifts of appreciation from the Bureau staff in my carry-on luggage packed for my flight back to Seattle tomorrow morning. To paraphrase an actress living nearby where I sit tonight, "They appreciate me! They really, really appreciate me!" It will be good to get back to Seattle, sleep in my own bed and not have to crawl out of from under the covers at 5:00 am.

The problem is, I'm having difficulty getting my thoughts - and spirit - out of USP Victorville. I spent three days with forty men who are living in a high security prison and two more days training the treatment staff working not only with these men but with many more.

Most of the men in the workshop this week would probably say they deserve to be where they are. Some said just that during our time together. No one mentioned what they did to deserve their present address but it wasn't hard to imagine the possible crimes as they spoke of the sentences they were serving. One man had been in prison for twenty-five years, having started serving his sentence at the age of twenty-five, and had twenty-five years left. Not everyone in the room was staring at that kind of time but a majority were years from release.

One man, I would guess he was in his late twenties – serving eighty-two years – talked about being on the phone last Friday with his young daughter who was celebrating her birthday. He asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said, “I want my daddy to drop me off at school like my friends’ daddies do!” He said they were both crying during that phone call. It caused me to ache for the daughter who did nothing to cause the loss she knew in her young life.

I’m reading a book this month entitled, “Change or Die.” In it the author says that hope must be present for a person to make the effort to change any significant part of their life. I must say I can’t imagine having any kind of hope if I were looking at 40, 50, or 82 years in prison.

But it seemed to me that I could see hope in the eyes of every one of the men in the room this week. Hope for release? No, not for many. The hope was, rather, focused on creating something of value from the ashes of their lives. And, for some, they are finding a path to freedom while knowing they will never be released from prison.