Visiting prisoners | Yet, they are our children
One of the seven works of corporal mercy is visiting prisoners. In this long article, we find insights and questions
Talking about works of mercy, as well as performing them, is a way to feel them closer and possible, to start looking at them as living realities made flesh.
Because they bring us face to face with real people, real situations, and pose questions that push us to change: ourselves, approaches, the world…
Visiting prisoners is, as we know, a work of mercy.
I often go to prisons to visit my clients. However, I must confess, I do not go there to conjugate and live this work of mercy. I go to prison exclusively for professional reasons: to agree on defenses, to talk about trials.
What has happened, however, is that the latest events in Rosolini, which led to the arrest of a number of people, three of whom are my clients, are raising serious questions for me and allowing me to delve more deeply into the meaning of this work of mercy.
It is the chronicle of this last period that in Rosolini a whole series of criminal events have been going on for a long time that have disturbed the serenity of our community and of each of us and have made our city a place that is anything but safe.
Events that have prompted us to question ourselves about the security problem, to organize meetings to call for a greater presence of the
law enforcement in the area, in a crescendo that has gone hand in hand with an increase in anger, disaffection with institutions, desire for homegrown justice, social impatience, but also disillusionment and resignation.
I am not exaggerating when I say that there have been feelings – perhaps humanly understandable – of hatred and rejection.
Thanks to the excellent work done by law enforcement and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, a few weeks ago, orders for the application of precautionary measures were executed, leading some of the alleged perpetrators to jail.
It should be immediately said, of course, that these arrests did not mean the end of the underworld phenomenon in the city; a phenomenon that is of far greater scope and magnitude. However, this police operation certainly had a beneficial effect, because it contributed to a kind of social reassurance.
We were able to appreciate the work of our carabinieri, strengthening the bond that binds the city to the benemerita. Indeed, when a generalized criticism was rising and we were all wondering what was being done, learning of the arrest of some of the perpetrators, who were also known to most from the many videos circulating on social media, and seeing the presence of police and carabinieri patrols calmed public opinion somewhat, even if the criminal episodes did not cease completely.
Bringing those people to justice was greeted with satisfaction, making most say: it’s about time!
However, I cannot help but say that these facts present us with issues that professionally, and let me say Christianly, must somehow be addressed, dealt with and evaluated in the right way.
I write this in response to the many friends and acquaintances who, when we get together to talk about the problem, always conclude by saying, “I recommend that you leave them where they are and hope they throw away the key.”
There is a widespread sentiment, I gather, that would like to see that those arrested inside are and inside is good for them to stay.
Certainly it is an understandable sentiment. Yet these people are daughters of our city!
This sentiment cannot be the sentiment of the people of Rosolino.
I say more: it cannot be the sentiment of man. Because if Justice wants the wrongdoer to pay, the same Justice wants the wrongdoer to pay what is right and that justice does not become revenge.
People who have committed crimes and are found guilty, it is only fair that they suffer the punishment provided by law.
However, we cannot stop there. We cannot assume that just punishment is only that imposed by the judge.
Punishment is just when it, as our Constitutional Charter provides in Article 27, is not contrary to “the sense of humanity” and must “tend to the re-education of the convicted person” for the purpose of his social reintegration.
For the Christian then, punishment is just if it is combined with Forgiveness.
Justice and Forgiveness are sides of the same coin: Justice is just punishment and never revenge, Forgiveness is the taking charge of the wrongdoer in order to welcome him back into the social community.
So, based on this consideration, I am reevaluating the true meaning of “visiting prisoners.”
Visiting prisoners is a work of mercy that is certainly not limited to merely visiting the prison (which, moreover, is not allowed to everyone). Visiting prisoners is a work of mercy that raises deep questions for us.
Are we sure that these people’s mistake is solely their own mistake or rather is there not a social responsibility that we should seek out, understand and remedy?
What can and should we do, myself first and all together, to ensure that this does not happen?
Let us be careful then about generalization.
The Gospel invitation to visit prisoners is not an impersonal action to be carried out on behalf of the prisoner as such. It is, rather, a personal visit: we are called to visit that specific person, that prisoner, with his or her story and experience.
And here is another question: what can I do for this person, for this brother?
It is a social and personal problem at the same time, which for Christians becomes an imperious necessity, no matter how uncomfortable it may be or appear.
To visit the prisoner is to visit Joan, Joseph, Philip (the names are given at random) with their humanity.
Joan, Joseph and Philip ask that my visit become a path for them to walk together:
While they pay their just punishment,
I must act to give them a chance to return well in our society.
It is truly a special moment that is confronting me, because I am recording situations that in the past I did not take the right perspective and that are now giving me much thought.
When, before they were arrested, I used to recall and urge my clients to behave themselves, I found that my words were empty, thrown to the wind, not understood. Words that bounced around in their minds like a rubber wall.
I was talking to people who at that moment did not have the ability to interact or relate; people who because of the damn drug had lost their wits, their will to be, their credibility and personality.
However, I must say – and this is symptomatic – that the relationship with these people that taught me something important.
During a dialogue I had with them some time ago (with one in particular) – a dialogue not between lawyer and client, but between two people who have known each other for a long time – I was told, “I can’t wait for them to arrest me because maybe this is the only way I can save myself.”
It is the fruit of our society. They are our children, and that makes me cringe and ashamed.
It makes me cringe to think that there are people in our community who are delinquent because they do not have the ability to do anything else and who are hoping, as a deliverance, to be arrested in order to be saved.
I come back to the question: why couldn’t we save them before they committed crimes? Where is the cause?
Two paths open up here.
First, we need to have serious attention to those who are in particularly difficult life situations, those who live in hovels, those who do not have jobs, those who cannot get out of drugs, those who live in subcultural environments, those who are uneducated, those who have no affection and experience existential loneliness and marginalization.
With respect to those of them, those of them who are not in prison, what do we do and what should we do? It is a question that makes my well thinking falter.
It also strikes me as a member of an association that has Mercy in its name.
It affects me as a Christian. It strikes me as a church.
What should we do? This question needs to be answered.
I am certainly under no illusion that I have the solution to the problem; crime has been a part of our society since the days of Cain and Abel. However, this must not become an alibi.
I know perfectly well that it is difficult, very difficult and perhaps impossible to curb crime. But even this cannot become an alibi. I know perfectly well that we will not all become better off from tomorrow just because we want to or wish to.
However, it is urgent that we confront ourselves because, in addition to demanding the utmost respect for legality – an inescapable and inalienable principle of our society – and asking institutions and social aid principals for presence and targeted and prompt interventions, we are all called to get out of our armchairs and go outside, to what Pope Francis calls existential peripheries.
We cannot fail to consider that these children of ours are often poor victims themselves. The drug addict who delinquents to buy his fix is yes a person who has broken the law, but he is himself a victim of his action.
Here is the first road we are called to take:
my visiting prisoners will make sense when in my daily life I make sure that I no longer have to visit prisoners, when I am a good citizen and a Christian who does not turn away.
Of course, we will not be able to solve everything, but-and on this I am convinced-not everything needs to be solved. If we manage to save even one of these children of ours, we have achieved the goal, and all of us will benefit.
Does not our faith teach that if one has a hundred sheep and loses one, he leaves “the ninety-nine in the wilderness and goes after the lost one until he finds it? Having found it, he puts it on his back all happy, goes home, calls his friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost”? (Cf. Luke 15:3-7).
The other way is to walk together with those who are paying their penalty. Beware of thinking that prison is the solution. Prison is certainly fundamental and important for ensuring social security and routing the offender on a path to reintegration.
However, on its own it is not enough. In fact, it can even be a criminogenic place. It is necessary that, in addition to legal avenues, there are also social avenues as well.
The work of mercy of visiting prisoners will be truly implemented
if I, we, the city community create a welcoming social humus.
In particular, two very common attitudes are to be avoided: the desire for revenge and pardonism.
I said it before: Justice does not want revenge. Rather, it is necessary to take note that the error of children is a symptom of a social evil that needs to be cured. If a part of my body is sick, I cure it. In order to make the whole body well, I cannot not cure the part of it that is sick.
Here then, in order to build a healthy society, it is necessary to take care of those who are now in prison as well.
It is not by saying “poor people” or giving alms that true forgiveness is conjugated.
Forgiveness is an act of the heart; it is, as Pope Francis says, “the Christian’s way of life.” It is not writing off the offending action as if it never happened.
It is the personal commitment not to leave alone the person who has done wrong.
I witness an initial change in some of these children of ours.
Having passed the first very difficult days due to abstinence, I have found them more fleshed out, more serene (strange to say for a recluse).
They are finding themselves as people. At the same time they are sorry for what they have done.
One of them specifically asked me, after a sincere and liberating cry, to tell her daddy to forgive her for the harm she had done to him. She was the little one in the family whom everyone loved.
Damn drugs, which ruined all her dreams. She apologizes to everyone she hurt.
It’s not a utilitarian apology. “I am in prison and here I want to stay to be the girl I was again,” she said.
In the face of this, we cannot stand with our arms folded. We cannot delegate their recovery to prison alone. Let’s care for them. Let’s take care of them.
Let us ask, for example, if they have enough to eat, enough to dress. Let’s ask if families are close and have the possibilities, economic and cultural, to help them.
Big undertakings are not necessary. Even small gestures of closeness are sufficient; gestures that are the result of true sharing.
The work of mercy, all works of mercy, do not serve only those who are the recipients of the good work.
No, no. Works of mercy nurture reciprocity.
In doing good, I receive good. Helping the brother who has done wrong helps ourselves not to do wrong.
This experience, which is marking me professionally, is making me experience the deep meaning of “visiting prisoners.”