Another prisoner supporter speaks out
I spotted the article “Remembering a forgotten people” on the front page of the Nov. 30 Enterprise and was immediately drawn to the story. What an incredible gift of love Susanne Drescher displays for men and women who are truly forgotten by most Americans — those incarcerated in various institutions. Her kindness is spreading rapidly, as evidenced by the growing number of other volunteers to take time to pen a short message to those unable to spend Christmas with loved ones.
As the article pointed out, America has over 2 million men and women incarcerated in federal, state and local facilities. I can attest from experience that most Americans simply block this fact out, many with the attitude, “Lock ‘em up and toss away the key.” We tend to be judge, jury and jailer simply on the assumption of guilt, not innocence, and politicians and others ignore some of the travesties of our legal system in order to be “tough on crime.” (I could write an in-depth article on the good and bad things I see from our judicial system, but that is for another time.)
In 2000, while living in California and working for Lockheed Martin Aerospace, a church friend invited me to join the Match Two program. Volunteers were matched with prisoners for one-on-one visitations in state prisons. The program has now ended; however, I am happy I was involved. For 20 months, I visited a man in a state prison near us every other Saturday. The program’s purpose was to show we care about folks who have broken laws and are paying for it — and by mentoring them, perhaps they would not return to prison again.
During visits, I did a little Bible studying and we had a great time bonding over sports discussions, having lunch together and playing dominoes. Although it was a hassle going through the high security prison process and meeting with this man for about six hours at a time, each visit gave me a great feeling of satisfaction and I witnessed first hand my effect on him. Sadly, his sentence is a long one and he is incarcerated in another prison — in fact, I visited him twice at another unit and have continued to correspond with him for 17 years now.
When Judy and I returned to Fort Worth, Texas, following my California assignment, we joined the Prisoner Visitation and Support program. For about six years, we both visited dozens of women incarcerated in the Carswell Federal Medical Center FMC, a high-security facility. The FMC houses all women in the federal system with serious medical ills (heart, lungs, etc.), are pregnant or have mental issues. There are 1,300 or so women at any one time at the FMC — some get transferred to other facilities when they are healthy; others stay there for their entire sentence.
Judy and I went to the prison every other Monday night and met with one to three women in a visiting area — the purpose of PVS is to let inmates know we do care for them and want them to have productive lives after serving their sentence. With women, a jail term can be very hard on the children, as evidenced out in our discussions with the ladies.
When we moved to Arkansas, the closest federal facilities with the PVS program are 100-145 miles from where we live. It made it impractical to continue with PVS. I searched out other ministries and I have been incredibly blessed by two.
As I have written before in the Enterprise, I belong to the Christian Motorcyclists Association. CMA’s main focus is spreading the Gospel to bikers, but an auxiliary function is visiting men and women prisoners. Since CMA began in Arkansas (but has spread over the U.S. and to 40 other countries), the headquarters established an excellent relationship with the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
I am part of a volunteer group who visit 8-9 Arkansas prisons, one a month, for about 9 months each year (April-October), and mentor hundreds of incarcerated folks. About 15-25 volunteers, at their own expense, meet at a prison when the dates are set, and we spend two days, morning to night, seeing men and women prisoners.
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