Jesus wept

The only time we read in the Bible about Jesus breaking down and weeping is over a death.

Somehow, I think he's still weeping over deaths...especially deaths of prisoners.

My heart breaks when we receive word of deaths behind bars. Our recent blog entries have discussed the deaths of Otto and Joey. We discussed those deaths in our recent newsletter.

The sadness of those deaths didn't sweep over just family and friends...it swept right into the HFP office.

And we were just recovering when two women in the Huron Valley facility---the only facility in the State of Michigan to house women---reported this weekend that Linda had died. She was in the infirmary with cancer, and for some reason, no one could persuade the Parole Board to let her go home to die. I just don't understand this stuff. I don't mean to digress, but I keep thinking of pieces I read in the newspaper about parolees who got out only to re-offend. They agree to release these people, but refuse to release the dying? There is some logic here that escapes me.

Well, we couldn't make anything happen for Linda.

But there are other women in the infirmary with cancer who are dying. Do you think the Parole Board, in its infinite wisdom, should keep them there because these ladies are threats to society?

Raise your hand if you think anyone really cares.

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm raising my hand because there are those who do care. Unfortunately, it usually has to become personal to us in some way before we care. By "personal", I mean we go from it not being something that occupies much of our daily thought process, to an all-consuming drive to make things right...taking on people and agencies, legislators and Presidents just to fix things and make that cloud hanging over us go away. Changing the status quo means educating the populace, one video screening and Criminal Justice Reform discussion at a time. Change will come. It's grindingly slow, but the glacier DOES move.
February 2, 2014 at 5:19 PM
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