Learning about DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration) was very informative for me in giving context on what I felt was very important in understanding what comes after prison for the lives of the inmates- especially the reintegration aspect .
Traveling to Salinas- I remember vividly approaching the prison gates and feeling very uncomfortable, uneasy and out of place. Why and who I am going into a place to “see” people who because of certain reasons that are unknown to me are living a life that I had only previously read about and what common ground would I find to be able to talk, and even on a deeper level, connect?
Little did I know that the experience would be as transformative as it was.
Initially, when we were just spectators observing what was going on and invading their privacies by “looking inside” their cabins and not having any way of communicating with the prisoners made me feel very out of place. However, after having that experience and then getting to go to the correctional facility where we could interact with the prisoners was a lot more personal.
In the second prison today on asking the question in our little groups on what they felt was a major challenge that they felt was a barrier to disassociating themselves from the hurt and “dysfunctional” families that they come from and find ways to become part of society again, one of the prisoners responded by saying that “it is you, people like you, who need to stop looking at us like criminals” That answer completely humanized the experience for me and made me think of how being a member of civil society we contribute to, because of our own prejudices, the ongoing process of former gang members or prisoners being unable to re-integrate back into the society and find jobs or sources of income and end up working as construction workers or fall back into selling drugs.
Also, what I realized was that a lot of people spoke about how difficult it was to find love, to face change and to start afresh because as one of the inmates mentioned “my first and only love has been drugs” , continuing his point by saying that in order to avoid the troubled and damaged system he found that drugs was the only escape and then trying to find a way to do things sober required a kind of special effort that they did not find help or support in being able to do , while others said that they did not want to interact with people of any sort after having been through such violence at such a young age. The sense of freedom that they found in isolation and feeling alone and that they had no friends other than those in prison, which made me think of how much work needs to be done in providing peer support,councilng services and on a larger more grand scale mental services as a part of the healing, rehabilitation process.
