Humanity for Prisoners

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal highlights a serious problem facing prisoners : child support payments.   Writer Howard Husock focuses on Black men behind bars, and chooses to blame Kamala Harris for overlooking the problem.   We take a much broader approach. This is a problem facing all incarcerated men, regardless of color, and attention to this serious problem should be extended to more than just political candidates.   Here’s the situation in a nutshell. Fathers have no way of making child support payments while incarcerated. Then, when they get released, reality hits them in the face with a frustrating combination of a prison record plus child support payments. The National Institute of Justice reports that, “one of the biggest obstacles to reentry is the size of a parent’s child support debt, which averages $20,000 to $36,000, depending on the state and the data used.”   So, these guys get out of prison, and if, with a stroke of luck they’re ...

" When I get out, I’m going to get me a Cadillac just like that one! Maurice Carter and I were standing on a beautiful site along Michigan’s longest river: the Grand River. He was living in a nearby senior care facility, and he was in bad health.   Pointing to the car in a nearby parking lot, he said, “Not a new one. Just a nice used car!”   Melancholy hits me every year on October 24 and 25. That’s when Maurice died. It marked the end of an emotional decade in my life. It marked the beginning of an amazing final chapter of my life!   I first met the man in the mid-1990s when a Michigan prisoner said to me: “I’m not the only person who was wrongly convicted in Berrien County! I’d like you to meet Maurice Carter.”   Here was a dear Black man, financially indigent, no support group, only a few family members…unable to attract anyone’s attention, claiming innocence.   As an experienced journalist, I looked into this case, it was true!   So, I joined ...

A couple of former prisoners sat in our office the other day. One of our clients, a friend of mine who had served 16 years (all the while claiming innocence), was finally paroled a few years ago. He and I met with our Executive Director, who also served time for a crime he did not commit. But, the frustration being shared was not over innocence or guilt issues. The topic was reentry.   Al had a difficult time getting a driver’s license. Even though he had maintained a high grade-point average in community college courses during incarceration, he found it difficult to get a job upon release. He had been approved for some good positions…that is, until his prison record was discovered. The same thing happened when he wanted to continue his education. Even one of the fine Christian colleges in the area turned him down…donors might not like it!   And that reminded me of numerous unpleasant reentry stories.   Maurice Carter was seriously ill after 29 years of incarceratio...

A headline in the August 30 edition of the Detroit Free Press shouted: Violence on rise at women’s prison! Veteran Freep writer on prison issues, Paul Egan, led off the article by saying, “Violence and turmoil are on the rise at Michigan’s only prison for women…”   For background information, some 2,000 women are housed in Women’s Huron Valley, located in Ypsilanti. They were all moved into one facility in the early years of HFP. I have personally been a champion for these incarcerated women from the very beginning. A check of our blog posts over the years will show a continuous battle for improvement. One of the times when I went there to speak with inmates, I was given a standing ovation. It wasn’t because Doug Tjapkes was so great. It was because HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS cares!   When Heidi Washington assumed the position of Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2015, she assured me in a private session that she had a personal interest in WHV. Personal in...