Washington D.C., Apr 3, 2017 / 05:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As Pope Francis and U.S. bishops insist upon helping ex-convicts re-enter society, advocates are pointing to a litany of obstacles – over 40,000 legal regulations – for such re-entry that need to be addressed.“That's what we want...(to give) attention to,” Craig DeRoche, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy with Prison Fellowship, told CNA, “the important principle of closure.”“You ask somebody that has done something wrong to square their debt. They do that, that's the right thing for that person,” he said of punishments for crime. “We should want that person to move forward up and away from their old life, and we're doing too much to prevent that in America today.”DeRoche spoke at a “Second Chance Month” press conference at the National Press Club on March 30, joined by other advocates for criminal justice reform from organiza...
Washington D.C., Apr 3, 2017 / 05:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As Pope Francis and U.S. bishops insist upon helping ex-convicts re-enter society, advocates are pointing to a litany of obstacles – over 40,000 legal regulations – for such re-entry that need to be addressed.
“That's what we want...(to give) attention to,” Craig DeRoche, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy with Prison Fellowship, told CNA, “the important principle of closure.”
“You ask somebody that has done something wrong to square their debt. They do that, that's the right thing for that person,” he said of punishments for crime. “We should want that person to move forward up and away from their old life, and we're doing too much to prevent that in America today.”
DeRoche spoke at a “Second Chance Month” press conference at the National Press Club on March 30, joined by other advocates for criminal justice reform from organizations like the NAACP, Heritage Foundation, ACLU, and Americans for Prosperity.
Prison Fellowship, an outreach to prisoners and their families, has declared April 2017 to be “Second Chance” month. A senate resolution introduced by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) calls for the same.
“With 95 percent of inmates set to be released one day and two-thirds of released inmates back behind bars within five years, too many Americans are caught up in a cycle of crime,” Portman said.
“I hope that we all can join together on a bipartisan basis during Second Chance Month and all year round to support those who are returning from prison and want a fair shot at living an honest and productive life.”
Pope Francis, in November, asked countries to consider clemency for “eligible” prisoners during the Year of Mercy. He asked for criminal justice “which isn't just punitive, but open to hope and the re-insertion of the offender into society.”
The Pope's visit to a Philadelphia, Pa. correctional facility in 2015 was inspiring, DeRoche admitted, and serves as an example for all Americans. “It was wonderful to see that Pope Francis went directly into a prison,” he said.
“Prison Fellowship believes that every American should take the opportunity…to visit a prison,” he said at the National Press Club, emphasizing that especially “elected leaders” should visit prisons.
“And many people who aren't aware of how involved the Christian church is [in prison ministry], they often ask 'why?'” DeRoche said. “And I say 'well it's one of the only things that Jesus actually commanded people to do.'”
Why are advocates pushing specifically for a “second chance” initiative? Former inmates face far too many barriers to living a normal life once they re-enter society, one former prisoner says, and such restrictions may well enhance their risks of re-entering prison.
Casey Irwin, who was convicted for bank fraud and drug-related offenses, now owns a million-dollar business. Yet for a while after her time spent in multiple prisons, she struggled to find her way in society.
“I made poor choices,” Irwin said at the National Press Club. “I’m still a normal human being, and I need a place to eat, and I need a place to sleep, and I need a place to work. And so all those things have been difficult to obtain.”
“I can get a job, but it wasn’t going to pay me any money, and I wasn't going to ever move up. So I think that's a barrier for everybody,” Irwin told CNA of her efforts to find a job that would pay well and offer her career advancement opportunities.
She still faces “many barriers” including in housing and employment, she said, noting that the societal stigma against someone with a criminal record is quite real when she applied for housing or for jobs after she had served her prison sentence and, in her words, paid her “debt” to society.
Just “the way people look at you” when they hear about a criminal record, she explained, “you tell people you're a felon and they think you killed five people.”
“That's their automatic reaction,” she said, and societal change needs to happen through peoples' minds, not legislation. “That comes from peoples' mindsets being changed about 'criminal people.'”
“I sold drugs to supplement my income for my rent, because I was in a place I couldn't afford. And she [the landlord] knew it. I knew it. But I needed a place to stay, so I'm like 'I'll take it,' knowing that I couldn't pay for it,” Irwin said. She was caught selling drugs and sentenced to prison again.
“One of those things was like how do I get ahead without criminal behavior? How do I get ahead without trying to skirt the system?” she said. “And so I had to really push through that, and take a low-paying job, and just allow myself to develop, where a lot of people who are in that criminal mindset, they don't think like that because they want it now, and right now.”
Her first big break came when a friend she had worked with referred her for a management position at Kentucky Fried Chicken. She was offered to be manager of a franchise.
“I was so excited,” she recalled, noting she had an opportunity for success “without having to look over my shoulder.”
Yet ex-convicts face tens of thousands of obstacles and restrictions – over 46,000 “collateral consequences” at the federal, state, and local level across the U.S., John Malcolm, a legal expert with the Heritage Foundation, noted at last Thursday's event.
In a report he co-authored in March on “collateral consequences,” he noted how some states have hundreds of consequences for persons with criminal records including barriers to specific careers. Employment barriers make up most of the consequences, he noted – 60 to 70 percent, according to the American Bar Association.
And a dozen states “restrict voting rights even after a person has served his or her prison sentence and is no longer on probation or parole,” Udi Ofer, director of the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, noted at the event.
The disparity can fall sharply along racial lines, too, he added. “Black Americans of voting age are more than four times more likely to lose their voting rights than the rest of the adult population, with one out of every 13 black adults disenfranchised nationally.”
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(Vatican Radio) Russian authorities say at least 10 people have been killed and 50 others injured in an explosion on an underground metro train in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who was in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, said investigations are ongoing on whether the Monday blast was related to terrorism. Listen to the report by Stefan Bos: As the investigation began, rescue workers, medics and security forces were seen rushing to the bloodstained scene. Ambulances and helicopters evacuated some of the many injured survivors. Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee said an unidentified explosive device went off at 2:20 p.m. local time on a train that was leaving the Technology Institute station and heading to the Sennaya Square station elsewhere in the city. The St. Petersburg subway immediately shut down all of its stations. And the national anti-terrorism body...
(Vatican Radio) Russian authorities say at least 10 people have been killed and 50 others injured in an explosion on an underground metro train in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who was in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, said investigations are ongoing on whether the Monday blast was related to terrorism.
Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:
As the investigation began, rescue workers, medics and security forces were seen rushing to the bloodstained scene. Ambulances and helicopters evacuated some of the many injured survivors.
Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee said an unidentified explosive device went off at 2:20 p.m. local time on a train that was leaving the Technology Institute station and heading to the Sennaya Square station elsewhere in the city.
The St. Petersburg subway immediately shut down all of its stations. And the national anti-terrorism body said security measures would be tightened at all key transport facilities across Russia
Speaking from Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg, Putin said authorities were investigating whether the blast was an act of terrorism and he offered his condolences to the relatives of those who died. "At the beginning of our meeting I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families of those who died and were injured," he said sitting next to his Belarussian counterpart.
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"I have already talked to the heads of the special security agencies and the FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service] head," Putin explained to reporters. "Law enforcement agencies and special services are working; they will do everything possible to reveal the reasons and to give a full assessment of what has happened. Local and federal authorities will take action to provide support to the victims' families and injured citizens," he added.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. Yet, the Islamic State group has in the past threatened attacks in Russia in revenge for Russian bombing in Syria.
Earlier Russian transport facilities have been the target of terror attacks by Chechen militants. Double suicide bombings in the Moscow subway in March 2010 killed 40 people and wounded more than 100 people.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for that attack by two female suicide bombers, warning Russian leaders that "the war is coming to their cities."
The high-speed Moscow-to-St.Petersburg train was also bombed in November 2009 in an attack that left 26 dead and some 100 injured. Umarov's group also claimed responsibility for that bombing.
Vatican City, Apr 3, 2017 / 11:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican has taken in three new Syrian families, some members of which were ISIS prisoners before gaining freedom and fleeing the country.According to an April 3 Vatican communique, the families – two of whom are Christian – took the place of the families welcomed by the Vatican last year, who with the help of various organizations have now become independent, and have moved out of their Vatican apartments.The decision to welcome them was made in response to the Pope's Sept. 6, 2015, appeal for all European parishes, religious communities, monasteries and shrines to house one refugee family. At the time, the Pope said the two Vatican parishes – St. Peter's Basilica and St. Anne's parish – would also be hosting one family each.St. Peter's Basilica provided an apartment for an Eritrean family, consisting of a mother and her five children.The family hosted by St. Anne's parish was a Ch...
Vatican City, Apr 3, 2017 / 11:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican has taken in three new Syrian families, some members of which were ISIS prisoners before gaining freedom and fleeing the country.
According to an April 3 Vatican communique, the families – two of whom are Christian – took the place of the families welcomed by the Vatican last year, who with the help of various organizations have now become independent, and have moved out of their Vatican apartments.
The decision to welcome them was made in response to the Pope's Sept. 6, 2015, appeal for all European parishes, religious communities, monasteries and shrines to house one refugee family. At the time, the Pope said the two Vatican parishes – St. Peter's Basilica and St. Anne's parish – would also be hosting one family each.
St. Peter's Basilica provided an apartment for an Eritrean family, consisting of a mother and her five children.
The family hosted by St. Anne's parish was a Christian Syrian family, consisting of the parents and two children, who fled from the Syrian capital of Damascus and arrived in Italy the same day Pope Francis made his appeal.
Both families had made their way to Greece, their homes having been bombed, and made it to Italy with the help of the “Humanitarian Corridors” project run by the Sant'Egidio Community and the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy to provide refugees safe passage without risking their lives in the Mediterranean.
Numbering 13 people in total, the new families taking their place arrived at different times: one in February 2016 and two in March of this year.
Of the two families who arrived in March, both suffered “kidnapping and other types of discrimination” because of their Christian faith.
The first family is composed of a mother and her two adolescent children, their grandmother, an aunt and another Syrian woman who lives with them.
The second family consists of a young couple and their newborn daughter, Stella, who was born two weeks ago in the apartment they are now living in.
According to the communique, the mother had been a prisoner of ISIS for “several months,” but now, after arriving in Italy, “has again found peace.”
The third family, who arrived to Italy in February 2016, is Muslim and consists of parents and their two daughters, the eldest of whom is ill.
However, the family has begun a process of integration in which both children attend school and their mother is enrolled in a graduate course for Intercultural Mediators,entering just a few days ago a program for career training.
To date some 70 families, including those hosted by the Vatican, have arrived to Rome with the help of the Humanitarian Corridors project, totaling 145 people between them.
Apart from the assurance of a warm welcome through various parishes, communities and associations, the families are accompanied after arriving by volunteers, who help them in the integration process, beginning with learning the Italian language.
In addition to the families hosted by the Vatican, an additional 21 Syrian refugees – who came back with the Pope after his 2016 trip to Lesbos – receive economic assistance from the Holy See, and in some cases are hosted by religious or private families.
