Guest Blog from Jackie - Our Evaluation Project

This is a very difficult post to write. One, because it is such a large topic, and two, because Ani often has a completely different viewpoint of the subject from mine. In order to handle these two difficulties, I will a) start with the simplest and most immediate events and b) state my belief that differences of viewpoint are to be expected (and valued) anytime you have two people and I do not speak for Ani even if I might speak of my impression of his viewpoint.

Since 2002, when Ani obtained his adoption records and met his birth father and learned his birth name, birth place, tribe, and family history, Ani and I began to get a few answers to lots of things we had been searching for. Why did Ani not seem to learn from his experiences? Why did Ani keep "shooting himself in the foot" as he used to say? Why did Ani at times feel and act like he was 4 years old, or 8 years old? Why did the AODA programs he went to not seem to be enough help or to make any sense to him? Why was there such a gap between his intelligence and his ability to make good decisions or function in certain situations? Why did punishment have absolutely no effect on him? Why couldn't he anticipate the future or remember big chunks of his past? Why couldn't he keep a job or take care of himself?

What had driven such a wedge between him and his adoptive family that they asked the juvenile corrections people to instruct him not to come home or to contact them when he was released at age 18?

Were there answers that could help this make more sense? Or was it merely an attempt to divert attention from Ani's responsibility for his own choices and behaviors to even look for them? Was this a can of worms that was better left unexamined? From the Christian viewpoint of Ani's adoptive family and the Lutheran schools he attended as a child, Ani may have been seen as an ungrateful and willfully disobedient child who didn't try hard enough, with a deficient character in need of correction, discipline, and punishment. From the Correctional System viewpoint, Ani was a juvenile delinquent, who grew up to be a criminal. To the adoption/foster care system, Ani was a child who was unwanted by his parents and lucky to have a child welfare system to save him and an adoptive family willing to care for him. To the drug and alcohol program folks, Ani had to hit bottom, learn to tolerate pain ("no pain, no gain"), and become responsible for his own life. It is my impression that Ani absorbed bits and pieces of all of these viewpoints about himself, overlaying his own view that he had been stolen from his family and taken from everything and everyone that had meaning for him and that even his knowing of how that happened or how he even knew this was lost to him.

I do not have the answers and neither does Ani. Ani's response to difficult things is to put them under his mattress where they stay until they are safely forgotten or until he feels more able to deal with them. Today he told me that he had just found a whole lot of things under his mattress when he changed his sheets. Ani has limited ability to deal with difficult things and I suppose this strategy has enabled him to survive with his sanity intact, but it doesn't lend itself to a long term project with repeatingly difficult issues like getting the correctional system to allow him to have a thorough and competent neuropsychological evaluation.

There are many steps to this project. For 7 years both he and I asked the Dept of Corrections to allow him to receive treatment that had been recommended for him by an attachment therapist who saw him in 2002. A year ago we hired an attorney who agreed to help us to ask the Dept of Corrections to allow him to receive a more thorough evaluation to establish if there are neurological functional issues interferring with his ability to do things. It has taken one year for the attorney to learn enough for us to jointly develop a plan for moving forward.

In two days the attorney and I will be meeting with Dr. Wargowski who is a professor in the UW School of Medicine and also has a clinical practice. He is reputed to be an expert. The purpose of our meeting is simply to find out if he is the man we want to help us to design the evaluation, get the right professionals to be part of the team, and help us to summarize the findings, discuss the implications, and attempt to implement any treatment or accommodations that might be indicated.

Once we get the evaluation we want planned and outlined, and people on board willing to travel to the prison or see Ani in Madison at a locked facility (paying for Ani to be transported and for the guard who will watch him the whole time who knows how many times), the attorney will then write a detailed request to the prison describing what we want and why. Then we will wait to see if the prison will allow it. We may have to take legal action if they won't allow it, or perhaps they will and there won't be an issue.

Throughout all of this, it is of utmost importance that Ani be involved in decisions that need to be made and in defining and refining our purpose and goals. And, of course, once the evaluation is set up and approved, he will have to participate in it the best he can. These are things that are extremely difficult for him and he puts them under his mattress for them to go away....

So - wish us luck. We will keep you informed of our progress.

Jackie

I'm Just Saying...

I know that its been a while since my last post, and the delay isn't due to my hectic life. Then again, I suppose that prison life can indeed be hectic. Sadly, this is not the case. Prisons come in two flavors: hellholes and voids. A hellhole prison is one where stabbings, staff assaults, and other unsavory activities are a daily occurrence. These prisons do exist in the United States, but mostly are located in third world countries. The other type of prison, the void, is where the Division of Correction exerts such control over every aspect of day to day life that anything that could be dangerous is removed. By dangerous, that means anything that could cause spontaneous smiling or laughter has been removed from recreation, education, and the food. Guess what kind of prison I exist in?

I don’t like to complain about prison life for a variety of reasons. The first is the most obvious reason: If you don’t like how they run their prisons don’t be a criminal. I’m stupefied when I hear murderers, robbers, and other assorted tough guys whine about the quality and quantity of food, or not being allowed to watch “R” rated movies on the in-house CCTV. My personal belief is that the loss of freedom, something so important that it was mentioned second in the Declaration of Independence, is punishment enough. If I’ve harmed another human being so grievously that I must by segregated from others then how does the infliction of harm on me serve society’s goals?

Punishment is an anachronistic, foolish, and self-defeating policy that only appeals to society’s lowest common denominators. It’s hard to explain to people why dehumanizing prisoners is counter- productive (not to mention grossly hypocritical) to the goals of reformation. On the one hand as a Native American I do understand the inner drive to watch this world burn and to engage in the extinction of the white race. That’s a wee bit extreme but from time to time I get those urges. This desire to get even, for revenge not mere retribution, is human. I get it. I also understand that ultimately this is completely wasteful, a denial of everything this world could be.

I swing wildly between the two viewpoints: hugs and kisses for all or lay waste to all I see. I don’t know where the pendulum will come to rest, but if history is any guide then at some point in the future I’ll be free. What type of man do you want to look in the eyes when the bars are no longer between us and no one is there – the man filled with compassion an empathy for others whose first impulse is to laugh and smile or one that is filled with rage and resentment, devoid of self esteem, and with nothing to care about, or cared by, has nothing to lose?

I have no easy answers. Prison is hard and it should be. Prison should not make people worse and it does. It needs to evolve on a thousand levels from how its run to how it responds to the needs of the inmates, the community, and the needs of society. Bigger minds than mine are needed. Punishment is an anachronism. Reformation is a concept we all mouth toothlessly, unable to marshal the sophistication needed to be better human beings. I know I’ve misspent my meager reserves of potential but I still have a desire to not only be a better human being but to live in a better world.