I am a hypocrite and a liar. Not a “bad” person, but I’m not nearly as good as I want to be. And since I’m being honest, I’ll admit there have been moments when I’ve even chosen to be a bit naughty. As for mistakes? I’ve made many. But I’m lucky, most of them were harmless.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go around lying. But at one point or another, I have. My faults are abundant. I’m not fishing for compliments; I just know I have room to grow in the human department. Yet despite my shortcomings, I’m fortunate I can walk through life never to be judged by my worst mistake.
This, however, is not the case for people who exist within a criminal justice system without the hope of parole.
I often reflect on Sister Helen Prejean’s message of restorative justice. I did more intensely after my grandfather moved in with us. A retired Methodist minister, he regularly corresponded with a prison inmate with a life sentence. This man had committed violent crimes but spent years improving himself.
In 2020, I wrote this inmate to tell him about my grandfather’s passing. I wasn’t comfortable continuing the correspondence and I’m ashamed I judged him by his past. I’m unsure what has become of him. It was clear from his letters that he was not the teenager who had committed atrocities decades ago.
Recently, Prejean shared a link to The Visiting Room Project, a website that “invites the public to sit face-to-face” with men serving sentences without parole in Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison. And so, I did.
That’s how I met Kenneth Woodburn, who was beaten as a child and tried to hide his bruises and protect his parents. He was in jail the first time his father told him he loved him. And Terrence Guy, who loves to cook and bake — he’s managed to get a culinary degree while incarcerated.
Then Sammie Robinson stopped me in my tracks. He was seemingly the oldest profiled, 81 when filmed, 17 when incarcerated. Robinson talks about his youth, when people didn’t have the chance to get educated like today. He desperately hopes he’ll get out one day. Robinson speaks with joy but also with palpable sadness — eyes welling up with tears because deep down, he knows he will die in prison. And he did. Two years later.
I met Jeffrey Nelson, too, who after 23 years of serving, still cannot explain why he committed the crime he did. His guilt is visceral. Nelson says he sees himself as “less of a human.”
I see them all as human beings. Almost all of them are broken. Tortured by their own demons, by their own doing. But it’s clear that while we sit in judgment, these men have had nothing but time to work on their souls. Listening to them, I felt as though I had been to church, and the sermon was a hard one for my soul.
One inmate, Hannibal Stanfield, questioned whether “there is actually a justice system or if it’s really [an] injustice to take a human being basically and just take the worst decision he ever made and hold him responsible for it for the rest of his entire life and not even consider that he may have changed. Department of Corrections. ‘Correct’ is the root word to [sic] it. It seems like if you had intentions on correcting a person, you could at least evaluate him and see if he’s been corrected.”
What difference does it make in Maine? Isn’t this in Louisiana? Well, Maine abolished parole in 1976, and a recent effort to restore it by Rep. Jeff Evangelos has been very slow. Clearly, Gov. Mills has no appetite for it. I’m certain Paul LePage is even less interested. But the Legislature recently passed L.D. 842, which charges a commission to examine reestablishing parole.
If our justice system is about punishment, then we can lock people up, and throw away the keys. If it is about “correction,” then we must acknowledge that people can be abused, be mentally ill, or even make horrible decisions, yet can be rehabilitated. They must prove they’ve changed. But we must give them hope to rejoin society. Parole does that.
What about justice? Justice will never bring back a life lost. But is it just to have one soul destroyed and then destroy another? Or can justice mean honoring a life taken by trying to reform a life that was so clearly broken?
Regardless of whether inmates receive parole or not, to be a civilized society we must at least try and look for the humanity in prison inmates. Admittedly, it is a task easier said than done, especially for any relatives of victims of violent crimes.
However, if we can’t, we might as well go back to stockades and guillotines.
Hilary Koch lives in Waterville. She can be reached at: hilarykoch@pm.me
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