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Freeing offenders' voices |
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The Miami Herald
September 18, 2005 Sunday
Freeing offenders' voices
Vicki Lopez Lukis, of Coral Gables, is a member of Gov. Bush's Ex-Offenders Task Force.
Q: What is the task force's mission?
A: The goal is to identify barriers to ex-offenders' reentry
into the community. There are more than 30,000 people who will be
returning to communities from prison this year. The governor has taken
a national leadership role in this situation. If we can identify
barriers, we can also make recommendations to eliminate them. It's the
barriers that lead to recidivism. The task force represents a shift
from the hard-on-crime concept to one that is smart on crime.
Q: What elements must be in place for ex-offenders to reintegrate into a community?
A: They need family support. Family ties are eliminated because
of circumstance. You lose track of your children. Often offenders are
too far away geographically to maintain a connection. Also, people who
have found faith while in the system and were supported when they
walked outside the door have an advantage.
The task force sees three top opportunities -- housing, employment and
education. The reentry process starts when you first go to prison. One
group is studying education and substance-abuse counseling. Another is
focusing on community coalitions.
Q: You bring the perspective of an ex-offender. Why were you once imprisoned?
A: I surrendered to federal prison in 1999 and served 15 1/2
months for a mail-fraud conviction. It was an opportunity to see the
inside the way others haven't. Now I'm speaking on behalf of the
thousands of people in prison today. The ability to give voice is a
very difficult process to them. People like myself, who are somewhat privileged and have the ability to do so, should.
Q: Who is in Florida prisons?
More men than women, predominantly African American and Hispanic, the
populations most at risk. They are in the age range between 25-40; a
lot of them are parents. People really don't know who is in prison.
Would they be surprised that a woman with a drug addiction has been
placed in prison for 10 years and lost her children?
Not all prisoners are violent criminals. There are a lot of
first-timers in the system who need support. The rising crisis in our
state is that more and more women are going to prison. That's more
indicative of the drug culture, affecting women and their families.
Often women will go to prison for having lived with someone in the drug
trade. When the bust comes down, they bust everybody. She may not be a
dealer, but she's going to prison.
Q. Ex-offenders are feared, shunned and marginalized. How do you make people care?
A: That's our biggest challenge. Every member of the task force
is up against that perception. We have to give a human face to who we
are talking about and the people we are working on behalf of. They are
just like us. What separates us is economic circumstance, lack of
education, lack of opportunity. We have to stop broad-brushing who they
are.
We need to make sure that business leaders understand who they are.
Most of the people exiting prison have a skill set of survival. They
appreciate a second chance. We must engage the community and enhance
support for them.
Once people start to talk to them, they see their human side is far
more prevalent than the mistakes they made. We shouldn't be judged by
the mistake, but by what we made out of the mistake.
Herald Editorial Board member Nancy Ancrum prepared this report.
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