III. ROLLING AWAY THE STONES
You can see why people rarely make it out of the underground.
I’LL GO WITH YOU
In my twenties, I travelled through Latin America a lot. Even though I spoke decent Spanish, I constantly felt lost.
My travels were rarely along tourist routes. I was visiting grassroots organizations in Guatemala City’s “red zones.” Or a cooperative of coffee farmers in the mountains of Honduras. There was no Disneyland-like map with clear, colored arrows guiding me through a successful experience.
I had to exchange money at border crossings, get in the right line to stamp my passport, find the right bus terminal to buy the right ticket to a small city whose name I forgot. To call someone for help, I had to learn about the cell phone networks, different providers, find out which place would sell me a phone, which bodega could sell me minutes. I had to ask strangers how to help me call the automated numbers to apply these purchased minutes.
I felt so afraid. So stressed. And most of all, I felt so stupid and ashamed at feeling afraid and lost.
When someone would just tell me where to go next, I despaired. My brain stopped listening. I just wanted to ask, “Would you mind going with me? Please?”
More than once, I felt so overwhelmed, so out of my element, I panicked and actually changed my flights at the first computer I could find: to go home early. I’m embarrassed to even admit that here, for the first time.
I understand how guys out of prison suddenly backpedal, reverse their plans, and retreat to what is familiar.
But when the Honduran farmers sent someone to meet me in the city, standing with a smile when I got off the bus, taking my backpack and putting it in the back of the car, my travel terror turned to joy. My host took me to lunch. I asked a hundred questions about what I needed to do that day, got my map out… but he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get it done. I’ll go with you.”
And then: “We are so glad you’re here and you made it OK.”
That was just a taste, for me, of how most everyone releasing from prison feels when they first get off the bus and face the foreign world—and all the barriers still ahead—of Official Society In America.
It’s scary. It’s confusing. It’s overwhelming.
They just need someone to go with them.
*COVID-ERA MODIFICATIONS ARE BELOW. BUT PLEASE READ THE NORMAL MATERIAL, FOR THE BIG PICTURE.
RIDES
So this is the season we talked about a few modules ago: Rides, rides, and more rides.
This is not a drag. Rides are where it’s at.
Both your person, and your own town, will become more real to you as you accompany them through all the reentry steps these first two months.
Some of the offices and appointments you’ll need to navigate together may be familiar to you: Department of Licensing, Social Security office, grocery store, setting up a bank account, getting a simple cell phone and a cheap minutes plan.
But some offices will be new to you, too: DOC parole office for checking in with the “CCO” (Community Corrections Officer), welfare offices for health insurance and food benefits to get started, chemical dependency treatment agency for a required evaluation, local municipal court to quash old warrants or set up a payment plan on old traffic debt.
You’ll figure it out easily with a Google search on your phone.
What’s important, at this point in your preparation, is setting aside the time. Budget the resource of your time during the first month of release. Mark that whole first month in your calendar.
Get your friends and family on board: praying for you, understanding what you are busy with, offering their moral support and backup.
THE GATES OF HADES ARE THICK
Remember: you are navigating the next layer of the gates of Hades.
It’s not just the prison walls, the hassle of JPay, or phone calls, or visiting policies. You are now entering the many barriers between the land of the living we know… and the American underground in which most every formerly-incarcerated person remains stuck, even after leaving prison.
As you go from one office to the next (see list below), you start to get a feel for how far “underground” your friend has lived. That is, how many legal, social, and economic systems intersect (and schedules conflict) into an intimidating barricade. You see how many programs and fees one must climb to get out from underneath the system into a “legal” existence.
As with the heavy barriers over Lazarus’ tomb, these barriers are hard for folks out of prison to handle on their own. So your team’s energy and time accompanying your partner through these systems is deep church work. The gates of Hades cannot stop this movement, Jesus told his disciples.
That’s us.
PRESENCE
Picking up your released friend and taking him or her to these different appointments, visiting various departments, looking resources up online… it’s not just tangible assistance.
It’s also time together.
This has been the core of my pastoral work for years, after prison letters: conversations in the car. Laughing in court lobbies and driver’s licensing centers, while waiting for our number to be called. Sudden confessions and deep struggles come up as we park outside their house and I turn the engine off. That’s where I’ve most often prayed with men. This is where communion happens.
Rarely have guys initiated time together with me, calling to say, “Let’s get coffee this week and chat!” It doesn’t happen that way. Real connection usually happens along the way—as we walk the road of their reentry together.
So find excuses to take care of these tasks by going together. Because trust and relationship grow when you are in each other’s presence.
Your presence is power in this system.
Here’s a story.
In my first year as a volunteer jail chaplain, one of the guys who got out and contacted our ministry was Zane: a towering white guy—standing at 6 feet 6 inches—with a shaved head, huge hands, tattoos crawling around his arms, out of his shirt and up his neck. Not the pretty kind we see these days, but the old fashioned kind scrawled in prison cells when guards aren’t watching. Zane used to cook and sell meth. He’d had an encounter with Jesus, he said, in our Bible studies, and wanted to know if that kind of love we talked about as chaplains was available outside of the jail prayer groups. Out here in our community.
He took us at our Word.
Zane had lots of court debt. Old misdemeanors, traffic fines, old convictions—they each come with a pile of fees that balloon with interest in courts, then even higher rates in the collection agencies who buy the debt. These legal financial obligations (LFOs) are a primary barrier to reentry, one of the biggest “stones” that seal millions of formerly incarcerated men and women into a legal and financial underground.
Zane asked me to go to a little municipal court with him, to ask the judge to let him set up a payment plan and take the hold off his driver’s license. I had no idea how to help. I just tagged along, really.
We took off our belts to walk through the courthouse metal detector, then found some seats in the nervous pews of the courtroom. I sat there for two hours with Zane, who got out of his seat often to pace in the lobby. I watched, listened, and tried to figure out the liturgy of the legal rituals playing out.
Zane’s name was eventually called, he stood before the judge and pointed backwards to me as his “community support,” as he tried to describe positive changes in his life. The judge’s eyebrows actually went up—like my scrawny presence meant something. He granted Zane leniency, offered to wipe the entire debt if Zane showed three months’ consistent payment of $50.
Once we got outside, this large, intimidating man slumped into the posture of a little boy and hugged me.
“Bro, none of this would have been possible without you.”
“You kidding? I didn’t do anything.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. “I was f—ing terrified to be here today. I was sweating and nearly had a panic attack being in a courthouse again. If you weren’t with me in there, I would have taken off and left. Like three times. But I didn’t because you were here with me. I never woulda crossed this fear if it wasn’t for you.”
That’s what your simple presence can do.
You don’t have to be an expert. Just be there.
PAY ATTENTION
You don’t have to be an expert. Rather, just by paying attention and keeping track—of details, paperwork, dates, basic stuff—you are offering brain strength your person might not have when they are so overwhelmed.
So while you support your friend’s new practice of putting all appointments into a calendar (in their phone is most common now, and they’ll never forget it at home or on their bedroom wall), you should also keep as many early appointment dates in your calendar and help remind your person of a date coming up. Either that you are taking him or her, or try to make sure another team member can.
In prison, you don’t need a calendar. You don’t need to keep track of your schedule. You live inside an automated machine. All jobs, visits, and classes only happen when you get a “call out.” Your life happens on an assembly line, a conveyor belt.
Learning to control the sudden free-flow of time into an invisible grid of calendar dates, and daily hours, is quite an existential transition, if you think about it. You can help with that.
*COVID-ERA ACCOMPANIMENT
During the global pandemic, most of these offices were closed. It’s all online now (or for the time being). Which is an even bigger barrier to those with little online access, devices, or experience navigating clunky websites and professional jargon.
So accompaniment looks different.
Find time to meet up in a space you both can feel comfortable and responsibly distanced, or masked. Have a nice beverage or lunch.
Or, you can talk on the phone with your friend while you have your laptop open on your end. And start wading through websites of the agencies below, Google the phone numbers, write it all down, keep track.
You can call into offices as a three-way call and do it that way. It’s possible. The point is: you can find a way to do it together.
You know how much you love waiting on hold for Comcast customer service? Oh wait, you hate it? Well, folks out of prison are even more intimidated and will hang up when the press-a-number options are overwhelming.
So just putting your phone on speaker, making one call at a time together, setting up phone evaluation dates, re-visiting the online portals the agency tells you to use… that’s how we roll away the stones and practice resurrection in this digital era.
The gates of Hades—no matter how they morph and update in the modern age—can’t stop the movement of Jesus’ people. (Matthew 16:18)
And it’s still time together—around a laptop. Don’t forget to savor, enjoy, this lovely, anxious friend of yours. Take time to laugh, talk about your lives, take a walk in the sun.
PREVIEW
There will be a complete “FIRST DAY, FIRST WEEK, FIRST MONTH” module ahead. But here’s a preview of the common machines/agencies/gates you will definitely need to accompany your released friend through the first week/month. None of this should be new as you have read your different ROLES that started in the ROLLING AWAY THE STONES module months ago.
But here’s how the first appointments will look, in order:
DOC OFFICE
Most folks released from prison still have “probation” or “supervision.” (What used to be called “parole.”) Your friend is still under Department of Corrections authority for sometimes 6 months, sometimes 2 years.
First 24 hours out of prison: they have to check in to the local DOC office in their release county. Might be good to Google that and see where it is, near you. They have to meet with their “CCO” (Community Correctional Officer). It’s essential for them to keep a positive, working relationship with their CCO. The CCO will let them know how often they want to do home visits, office visits, or phone visits.
It’s best not to get involved, or advocate for your person with the CCO. Just let your person know they can mention to the CCO that they have a team of community members with a local church supporting their reentry. That’s you. That will be good news.
DSHS
The welfare office. The second or third day out, you’ll either go to the office or do some online application + phone call. Why? There are essential (yet meager) funds to help people exactly in this start-up season of need: Food Benefits, Cash Benefits, Apple Health Insurance. It’s just wading through tedious applications, establishing their current zero-income status, and getting set up.
Health insurance is necessary for the next steps. And try to get a ID/Driver’s License voucher, if they have one, for the next stop…
DOL - dol.wa.gov
Department of Licensing is the gatekeeper for breaking out of the underground. For some, it can be harder than you think to get an ID card—proof that you exist in the modern age. That little prison ID they had in prison? Even though it’s issued by the state, it does not qualify as government-issued ID. (If you are incensed or confused by this, you are paying attention. This is how people stay underground.) Get the ID.
And ask for a printout of what is necessary to get their Driver’s License. (Or on the website, fish around for any function that outlines any holds on their license, or their status. This is a puzzle we have an entire module dedicated to helping your team solve.)
DRUG TREATMENT
It’s very likely that DOC supervision will require a chemical dependency evaluation. Every community has their own “recovery services” agencies. Your person will need help calling that agency and setting up an appointment for an evaluation. (Now’s where that Apple Health Insurance will cover the bill and move things along on the first call.) The evaluation results might recommend no treatment, or dictate weekly “outpatient treatment” (addiction counselor meetings, group meetings). If so, be encouraging to your person: we got this. Plug it into the calendar. “You are taking care of you first. You’re worth it. It won’t be forever.” Rides will be necessary for a while.
MENTAL HEALTH
This is essential. Many, guys especially, downplay their mental health needs. We have had many hopeful, healing, intelligent men start to unravel and go off the rails in their second month out—because (we found out later) the short supply of mental health meds they were released with ran out. There is shame here.
I always say, “We want to support your mental health, and your total health. You’re worth getting all the support you need to take care of YOU.”
Some DOC offices will even require this evaluation, in addition to addiction evals. Good. Set up the appointment. Sometimes it’s the same agency. Set up the intake/evaluation. Help them apply their health insurance to go fill their prescription.
Down the road, they might be in a stronger place and decide with their mental health prescriber that meds are no longer necessary. But this is the most disorienting, stressful transition of their life. This is not the time to detox a brain off of mental health prescriptions.
COURT CLERKS
Many folks leaving the underground have holds on their driver’s license—old traffic offenses, with ballooning court debt, sitting in some municipal (city) courts. Our Driver’s License module gives our full strategy for going directly to these courts, asking the clerk or judge to take the fine out of collections (if it’s in collections), setting up a payment plan (ask for $20/month). That takes the hold off the license! Do that in each court where there’s a hold. It’s getting easier these days. It just takes time. And calendar reminders to make those small payments.
SOCIAL SECURITY
This office is always terrible. But it might be necessary to try and recover a long-lost SS Card. If you read this soon enough, ask your incarcerated partner to work with their prison “counselor” (reluctant social worker / disciplinarian / supervisor) to help them apply for a SS Card while still in prison. Much easier.
Some men or women releasing from prison might have a more involved Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) application to re-activate—be it a physical or mental health disability. Ask your released friend if this is the case.
FOR TEAM DISCUSSION
Was all this overwhelming? Be honest with each other.
Does this change any assumptions you might have had about what men and women need in order to change their lives when they get out of prison?
Anyone relate to the opening Latin America story? Can you think of a time you felt totally lost, in a different country maybe? How did you navigate that? Did someone help you? How did that feel?
Does anyone feel encouraged, that just your presence can be a game-changer?
Who among your team is most rich in time availability for rides that first month out?
Who might have some experience in the health, or mental health, professions? Try to match team members’ skills with different systems to help navigate. ie, “I’m a nurse. I’ll work with T on the insurance and evaluation stuff.” Group high five. Thank that person. And so on. Go team.
A word of blessing: Churches are great at handling the many needs that arise when there’s a death and funeral. You come together. You figure it out. A community is forged more deeply. How much more when bringing someone back to life, getting a person set up in the land of the living?
CONGREGATIONAL CONNECTION: Get your friends, family, and congregation on board with your plans. Ask them to pray for you. Let them know why you are so busy. Ask for their ideas for support and backup.
