Reading anything about former prisoners doing good? Me neither.
Marcia and I were watching the news, as a reporter explained that the man who committed this particular crime had recently been released from prison. That’s the kind of stuff that makes the news, and that’s the kind of stuff that sets back possibilities of parole for many others. We have no hard data to support this, but all of us involved in this kind of work are convinced that this negative publicity just stiffens the position of the Michigan Parole Board. It gets tougher for worthy inmates to catch a parole. I’ll be the first to admit that, even in our small organization we’ve been stung. People who we thought were good immediately resumed doing bad things the moment they got out. But the story that seems to get missed by the media (and I tread lightly here, because I was a part of the media for nearly 30 years and I felt that my reporting was very balanced) is the wonderful story of second-chance successes by ex-offenders. This whole topic is fresh in my mind because