Talk about Un-Mentionables
If you ask for something, it will be given to you. Of course, it wont necessarily be what your expecting. All day I've been looking for something to write about that matters. I feel like my blogs have been pretty running focused, but that's only a part of me and honestly, not even my favorite part.
One of my favorite things is to sit and talk with people about unmentionables. Unmentionables? You know what they are. Religion and Politics. 30 people just stopped reading and closed out of the blog. Ha-ha. That's ok. Kind of. But it's time they talk about them anyways, and Juan Vasquez is my case and point. Who the heck is Juan Vasquez? Juan was the answer I was looking for today as I was scrolling through a popular time wasting website. Juan was an LA gangster. He did gangster things. However, the story didn't end there. Juan had a baby, and a familiar story emerged. His "I don't care to die" mentality turned into "My kids are more important than anything in the world."
I don't care what someone's motivation for changing is. That's not what matters. The thing that matters is the forgiveness we offer them. Here in the United States we have the highest incarceration rate in the world except for North Korea. But here's the thing, our country doesn't think the jail time is sufficient. We have laws and corporate restrictions all over the place limiting what people are allowed to do with the rest of their lives.
Why does this matter?
The first comments I will see here are "So you think a bank robber who gets out of jail should be allowed to buy a gun?" or "Someone who commits murder should be allowed to just go and get a job?"
Yes.
I do.
And here are my response questions,
"If we as a society let them out of jail, why do you think they should still be restricted? If they need to be restricted, shouldn't they still be in jail? Or did someone make a boo-boo by letting them out?" If we are going to continue using prison as a punishment for variance from the law in the United States, then we had better get on board with the idea that it changes people. (It doesn't, our recidivism rates are horrendous and that has a lot to do with the private prison system, which is a whole other direction for another post). However I do think we need to be lifting the restrictions on people. Juan Vasquez is someone who now has a lot to offer society by being a emergency room nurse in a dangerous area of the country. What if that hospital didn't hire violent offenders? What if that hospital didn't hire people with tattoos? What if that hospital didn't hire someone who had drug charges or gang charges brought up against them in the past. I don't know his entire life story, but it is a pretty fair guess that Juan Vasquez of the Los Angeles gang scene is bi-lingual. I would take a guess and say that having bi-lingual people working in a Los Angeles ER is a good thing.
Yes, this gentleman has a job and has successfully integrated himself into acceptable society. But hundreds of thousands of people in the US are not being successful in that regard. There are so many road blocks, they didn't have a father to show the way, selling drugs is the only life they know, never finished high school, addicted to drugs and alcohol, whatever the reason, those reasons are out of our control. What is in our control is 2 things. How we vote, and how we treat people every day.
This is especially important as my generation continues it's rise up the corporate ladder. I'm 29 and on my way to my 30's real fast, which means my generation isn't running the country yet but we are on deck. So this post is going out to everyone that can make choices, and everyone that is about to start making choices. The next time you have the opportunity to hire someone, or let them into a school, or see them moving into your neighborhood, or your kid dates their kid, or whatever happens, just remember that having a past does not determine your future. You never know what you'll miss out on by rejecting a person based on their past.
Having laws that downgrade citizens after they have "done their time" does two things. It degrades the value of the prison system, and it pushes people back into the crime life they may be trying to leave. But the laws are just a culmination of how our citizens think, because we vote. So if we are voting to keep the system as it is then how it is, is how it will be. And right now we say that we are the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. It is the Home of the brave, but with North Korea being the only country in the WORLD to have a higher per capita incarceration rate than the US, it is not the Land of the Free. It's the land of the expanding prison population. It's the land of the fatherless generation. This isn't the Civil War or the World Wars where entire generations of men died fighting for freedom. This is men being locked up (mostly for non-violent crimes) and not raising families.
Fatherless Generation. Lets change that.
One of my favorite things is to sit and talk with people about unmentionables. Unmentionables? You know what they are. Religion and Politics. 30 people just stopped reading and closed out of the blog. Ha-ha. That's ok. Kind of. But it's time they talk about them anyways, and Juan Vasquez is my case and point. Who the heck is Juan Vasquez? Juan was the answer I was looking for today as I was scrolling through a popular time wasting website. Juan was an LA gangster. He did gangster things. However, the story didn't end there. Juan had a baby, and a familiar story emerged. His "I don't care to die" mentality turned into "My kids are more important than anything in the world."I don't care what someone's motivation for changing is. That's not what matters. The thing that matters is the forgiveness we offer them. Here in the United States we have the highest incarceration rate in the world except for North Korea. But here's the thing, our country doesn't think the jail time is sufficient. We have laws and corporate restrictions all over the place limiting what people are allowed to do with the rest of their lives.
Why does this matter?
The first comments I will see here are "So you think a bank robber who gets out of jail should be allowed to buy a gun?" or "Someone who commits murder should be allowed to just go and get a job?"
Yes.
I do.
And here are my response questions,
"If we as a society let them out of jail, why do you think they should still be restricted? If they need to be restricted, shouldn't they still be in jail? Or did someone make a boo-boo by letting them out?" If we are going to continue using prison as a punishment for variance from the law in the United States, then we had better get on board with the idea that it changes people. (It doesn't, our recidivism rates are horrendous and that has a lot to do with the private prison system, which is a whole other direction for another post). However I do think we need to be lifting the restrictions on people. Juan Vasquez is someone who now has a lot to offer society by being a emergency room nurse in a dangerous area of the country. What if that hospital didn't hire violent offenders? What if that hospital didn't hire people with tattoos? What if that hospital didn't hire someone who had drug charges or gang charges brought up against them in the past. I don't know his entire life story, but it is a pretty fair guess that Juan Vasquez of the Los Angeles gang scene is bi-lingual. I would take a guess and say that having bi-lingual people working in a Los Angeles ER is a good thing.
Yes, this gentleman has a job and has successfully integrated himself into acceptable society. But hundreds of thousands of people in the US are not being successful in that regard. There are so many road blocks, they didn't have a father to show the way, selling drugs is the only life they know, never finished high school, addicted to drugs and alcohol, whatever the reason, those reasons are out of our control. What is in our control is 2 things. How we vote, and how we treat people every day.
This is especially important as my generation continues it's rise up the corporate ladder. I'm 29 and on my way to my 30's real fast, which means my generation isn't running the country yet but we are on deck. So this post is going out to everyone that can make choices, and everyone that is about to start making choices. The next time you have the opportunity to hire someone, or let them into a school, or see them moving into your neighborhood, or your kid dates their kid, or whatever happens, just remember that having a past does not determine your future. You never know what you'll miss out on by rejecting a person based on their past.
Having laws that downgrade citizens after they have "done their time" does two things. It degrades the value of the prison system, and it pushes people back into the crime life they may be trying to leave. But the laws are just a culmination of how our citizens think, because we vote. So if we are voting to keep the system as it is then how it is, is how it will be. And right now we say that we are the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. It is the Home of the brave, but with North Korea being the only country in the WORLD to have a higher per capita incarceration rate than the US, it is not the Land of the Free. It's the land of the expanding prison population. It's the land of the fatherless generation. This isn't the Civil War or the World Wars where entire generations of men died fighting for freedom. This is men being locked up (mostly for non-violent crimes) and not raising families.
Fatherless Generation. Lets change that.
Comments
Post a Comment