Not Locked Away, But Brought Back In
What I learned from visiting the DC Jail
“Community is what we needed, and what we need,” one man incarcerated at the DC Central Treatment Facility told me as we sat in a small circle of folding chairs, leaning in to hear each other over the hum of conversations bouncing off of the cement walls. Nearly 50, he serves as a mentor to young men who are housed in the DC Jail’s Young Men Emerging (YME) unit.
I was able to visit the DC jail and talk with men on the YME unit through a visit facilitated by the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice which provides an opportunity for those in free society to visit 21 different correctional facilities in 15 states. The goal of these meetings is to spur empathy and care for both the visitor and the person incarcerated, while creating human connections important for both sides.
The YME unit is very unique – the program is a specialized correctional unit for men 18-25 that offers group counseling, mentoring, job training, and educational programs. All of this in service of preparing participants to be released and re-enter their communities. YME is meant to be a safe space for young men to engage with social issues like racial reconciliation and toxic masculinity, but also to learn practical skills like cosmetology or budgeting.
The goal of the YME unit is to give young men a space to grow before reentering the community or going on to another facility. As Michael Woody, co-creator of the YME program, noted in an interview with NBC Washington: “in order to change our mindset and to change our mentality, we needed a safe space, a therapeutic environment in which we can do that.”
My Conversation with YME Participants
Our visit started with a large group discussion to get to know one another and then transitioned into small groups so we could have a more candid conversation.
The small group discussion started with structured questions designed by the Douglass Project. One of which asked us to consider how we show our friends and family that we love them. One of the men in our group urged us to tell our loved ones that we love them as much as possible, since we have the privilege of doing it face to face. He talked about how he’s had to learn to show love in new ways since being incarcerated, but that since we are able to show love more easily, we should do so as much as we can.
After our structured questions, we were able to have a great conversation with the men in our group. We largely focused our discussion around community and restorative justice.
We were lucky to have one of the mentors from the unit in our group and he emphasized to those of us visiting that we all made mistakes in high school, it’s just that some make worse mistakes than others. The problem, he said, with putting young men and women behind bars in perpetuity is they never have the chance to learn how to become better members of their community. He explained that many of those incarcerated for crimes committed in their teens genuinely did not know the harm they caused. Keeping them behind bars will do nothing to bring true justice and healing for victims.
“Locking away people for decades to serve long prison terms has resulted in a tremendous loss, predominantly in communities of color, of brilliant and committed people who, when provided proper resources, have much to contribute to a safe and healthy world.” – From the Justice Policy Institute’s report on the YME
Our group also emphasized the importance of these causes being community driven. “I don’t want the government doing this, I want it to be my neighbors,” stressed one of the participants. For the men we talked to, community care and involvement would be what would do them the most good and would have helped them avoid getting involved with the justice system in the first place.
Unfortunately, community ties are weakening. American social and civic life has been declining by every measure since the 20th century. This community decline is especially prevalent for those with lower levels of education, these individuals are also statistically more likely to commit crimes.
Programs like YME seek to help those who come from broken communities “heal, grow, and learn.” While the men in the YME unit have made mistakes, the goal is to prevent them from making more when they are released. Data from 2019 showed of the 72 men who had completed the YME program and been released, only 8 had returned to jail – only 11%. This is a major improvement compared to the general population which has a recidivism rate of around 66%.
From my short time visiting the unit, it was clear that the program is working and that the men involved are dedicated to improving themselves. The men I talked to were kind, empathetic, and articulate. It was a joy to spend an afternoon with them and to learn about who they are, their children, and their dreams.
While many prisons in the U.S. have classes, jobs, and rehabilitative programs on paper, many don’t have them in practice. The U.S. penal system has long focused on retribution over rehabilitation, with great cost to human dignity and to the fabric of communities and little success at preventing future crimes. Evidence-based solutions to mass incarceration like the YME unit can help restore communities and reduce recidivism. But lowering the incarceration rate in the U.S. also requires investing in the conditions that prevent crime in the first place. If we want safer neighborhoods, we have to be willing to invest in our neighbors – not just punish them.
Time Users
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What I’m Listening To: Fertility expert Alice Evans is on Vox’s Today Explained Podcast talking about pro-natalism and Elon Musk. It’s a great conversation and hits on many overlooked aspects of the birth dearth
What I’m Making: I made some blueberry syrup with some slightly overripe blueberries last week and I’ve been putting it in everything. It’s especially yummy in lattes and in gin-based cocktails