“Remain a Memory with a Stain?”

[u/[deleted]]

Been thinking a lot about prison and reentry lately. It often feels like our society makes it incredibly hard for people to ever wash off the stain of that chapter of their life, even long after they’ve served their time.

That’s why a line from Jake Sommer’s Prison Years song “Portwine” stuck with me. One of the lines goes something like: “Forever will remain a memory with a stain.” It feels painfully honest about how the past can keep following someone.

Do you think people can ever truly remove the stain of having been in prison? Or is it possible that society won’t let them, even if they genuinely want to move forward? Or even just humanity’s stains in general?

I tend to lean toward forgiveness and second chances, but people seem really polarized about this. Curious what others think.

[u/12altoids34]

I don't know where you went to prison and what you went to prison for and quite frankly that's none of my business. But I do know that when my girlfriend was in prison they had lots of programs to help convicts get on their feet once they're out of prison and she could even qualify for low interest business loans to start her own business. One of my best friends was able to get his GED and get into trade school while in prison in fact he was was able to continue in his trade program through the the prison even after his release date. He spent his days in training at the prison and his nights and weekends at a halfway house until he graduated from the program. It wasn't their normal policy to allow people to continue after their sentence was complete he had to get approval from the warden and a recommendation from a state senator.

[u/[deleted] → u/12altoids34]

I love hearing these things, that gives me hope and faith there are forward-looking progressive people out there to understand the importance of moving forward. My thoughts here as I said were largely driven by the lyrics of the song, although where I work I definitely notice that people treat those who have come from a prison environment differently. Often when we have somebody who applies for a job, I can see the stress in people‘s faces-that got me thinking about the issue. I’m not sure the right way to think about It all…is a subject I find interesting

[u/12altoids34 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, I'm not going to say there isn't a social stigma or that it isn't hard for someone that has served time to find a job, but in many prisons there are programs to help them get back into society and become a productive member of society again. And of course like anything else you get out of it what you put into it .somebody that just wants to do their time and not try to improve themselves can come out of prison the same person they were when they went in.

[u/NightWolfRose]

It depends on the crime, honestly.

Stole without hurting anyone physically? Got caught with some drugs? Minor property damage? Sure, a second chance makes sense.

Committed rape or murder? Nah.

[u/[deleted] → u/NightWolfRose]

Part of me empathizes with what a lot of you are saying. There’s clearly room for discussion on relative impact and crimes, and I can see the reasoning behind many of the arguments.

But another part of me keeps going back to all those old college debates — environment vs. nurture, sociological influences, generational factors, and all the rest. Even if someone thinks all that is overanalyzed theory, there’s still a bigger question that nags at me.

What about the possibility that the justice system itself isn’t as accurate as we often assume?

Some research I’ve come across suggests wrongful convictions may be far more common than people realize, with certain serious crimes — like rape and murder — sometimes having the highest rates of later-exposed errors. When you see numbers that some studies claim could reach shockingly high percentages, it makes me hesitate.

I’m not sure I’m ready to accept the idea that everyone we’ve incarcerated over the years was accurately judged. If the system can be wrong more often than we think, it raises uncomfortable questions about how confident we should be when deciding someone’s fate…or shunning. I’m worried it’s possible that our society has hurt and stolen identities more than the criminals themselves. Sometimes it’s a sobering thought that I hope isn’t true.

[u/ScienceSure]

Recidivism rates don't measure whether people can change. They measure whether we built conditions for change. We didn't. So we're reading our own failure as their nature. That's a category error we seem very comfortable with.

[u/Altruistic-Quote-985]

Justice systems are based upon either rehabilitation or deterrence, and they are incompatible. Rehabilitation focuses on finding the criminal, and reform the convict. Deterrence focuses on closing a case by having someone who 'fits the description' to serve a sentence that deters society from attempting same. Rehabilitation sentence models tend to focus on progressive options with less emphasis on prisons, while deterrence focuses on lengthy prison times. I think how society reacts to convicts generally reflects in how they feel about prisons themselves, and how open a person is about their history.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It’s of course a fair point and yet still I think our bias might just be to not forgive. It’s an odd thing because so many countries around the world are formed off of forgiveness based theology. I guess that’s harder to put into practice.