The Briar Philosopher - The Least of These

One of the things I do every week is visit the website of the Jackson County Detention Center and download all the recent inmates. We publish the mugshots every week, as you know if you’re a regular reader of this paper. Every Monday, I log on to the Detention Center site, and every Monday, I cry when I see the faces of those who have erred to the point that they have been incarcerated. My heart breaks for them and for their families and loved ones. So many of them look so broken and alone, so lost and afraid, so forlorn and deeply sad.  

When we tell you their story, as is often the case, we are only giving you a tiny bit of who they are and what their life has been. When we publish their picture, it is just a snapshot of a moment. It doesn’t in any way tell you any more about them, how they came to be who they are at that moment, or where and who they may be in the future. But there they are, stuck in time in our minds; fallen, broken, open to pity, anger, fear, and almost always, judgment. 

Now, I am not in any way saying they don’t necessarily deserve to be where they are when that camera snaps that moment. They have broken the law, and they must face the consequences of their own actions. I’m very committed to the idea of personal responsibility. But that doesn’t stop my heart from feeling compassion for them. There are so many wrong turns that people can take in this life. No child ever dreamed of being a drug addict or a thief, or any of the other things that can land one in custody. No child ever thought, “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to go to jail.” And they were all children once. We have no way of knowing what happened to lead them down the wrong path, but we can guess, given the circumstances of so many in this county, what some of the contributing factors might have been. There is so much poverty, so much despair, so much generational addiction, so many broken homes and families torn apart. Children in such circumstances, who are often taught self-respect, personal responsibility, dignity, who never know a day’s peace, who never hear that they are wonderful and beautiful and full of potential, such children often stand no chance of breaking free from cycles in which they have been trapped by circumstances that were completely beyond their control. They are not given positive coping mechanisms, encouragement, or support, or a shoulder to cry on when life’s inevitable sorrow comes knocking at the door. So, when they finally manage to grow up, against the odds, they often have no idea how to navigate what it can be to be an adult, and they fall into the pitfalls that are so numerous around them. 

No, none of that excuses their actions, but sometimes it explains them and helps us understand. With understanding comes compassion, and I believe that with compassion comes a determination to address some of those underlying issues and help them find their way back to some of the potential that got lost along the way. 

It bothers me that all we often see of them is that moment, that mistake, that fall, and it bothers me that we judge them solely on that tiny sliver we see in the paper. I can almost hear some of them crying out from that mugshot, “This is not who I am. Please see that. This is not who I want to be.” 

We are quick to judge in this culture, in this county, in this world, even though we were commanded not to do so. As a child, I knew the force of such judgment. It was not unusual for the eyes that fell on my ragtag little self back then to be the eyes of judgment. “Just another one of those dirty Abner kids.”  “She’ll never amount to anything.” “Look at her clothes, her hair, her parents.” It is hard to stand against such things and decide they have no effect on you. If one is told over and over that they are worthless, they learn that they have no worth. If one is told over and over again that they are “bad”, bad is often what they will become. I was fortunate enough to have a deeply stubborn streak that allowed me to define myself, and the encouragement of a mother who told me never to listen to the judgment of others but to my own inner potential. There were also teachers and community members who saw beyond my poor estate. 

None of those people who judged me as a child would have believed I would one day grow up to be the General Manager and Editor of the Jackson County Sun, but here I am. 

I don’t ask that we cease to incarcerate those who have broken the law. I only ask that we see them as human beings still and that we open our hearts to the possibility that they are so much more than those mugshots and headlines.  Remember that “there but for the grace go we all.” 

Some turn, some tragedy, some circumstance beyond our control could easily have changed our path and landed us right there beside them. We don’t like to believe that because we like to believe we are somehow superior to them and would never make the same decisions. We are wrong. Life can do things to you that break you to the point you can’t put yourself back together all by yourself. If we learn again to see them as pieces of ourselves, as part of our community, maybe in some way we can learn to help them find some of the lost pieces of themselves and reclaim their dignity. I myself am trying to find a way to do that. In this week’s issue, you will read the success story of one such person. If you know of someone who is also a success story, please have them reach out to me at cabner@jacksonsunky.com. We need to see such stories. If you are a success story yourself, please know that we will not judge you based on past behavior and that we are very proud of you for your efforts to reclaim your lives and break cycles.