What We Believe

by Matt Kelley · 2009-11-03 06:59:00 UTC
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Thanks to Gideon at A Public Defender, I recently came across some powerful essays from prisoners on the beliefs they hold at their core.

The essays come from “This I Believe, ” an essay and podcast series exploring the core beliefs we hold in our day to day lives, inspired by a 1950s radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow. I’ve heard some incredible personal stories on this podcast and on NPR over the last few years, and this group of prisoner essays is no exception.

John, a prisoner in Massachusetts, writes of the cruel Catch-22 of his life: it wasn’t until he got to prison that he realized he had value to others, and now that he’s there he worries that he can’t have the impact he’s meant to have:

The worst part about prison isn’t the violence or the loss of freedom, it’s not being a part of anything that’s good and decent. And it’s the fear that I don’t matter to anyone.

A man named Jim writes that he doesn’t know what he believes -- and maybe that’s why he ended up at a federal prison camp. The president of Oglethorpe University in Georgia writes about the human dignity he saw on a visit to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison.

Carla, a prisoner in Florida, asserts that she has yet to find a person who is all bad, and that people have an essential goodness. “I believe that no person is defined by their worst action, decision or mistake,” she writes.

Gideon added his own “This I Believe” essay to the mix, on his blog.

“Man is neither inherently good nor bad,” he writes. “I believe that we all have a breaking point; a point at which “we” become “them”. Some of the nicest, most docile men that I have met are those that have taken another life. Some of the angriest, most close-minded men are those that seek to judge others without recognizing the same capacity in themselves.”

There’s nothing like crime and punishment and freedom and incarceration to force us to consider what we believe -- and what we’re willing to do for those beliefs.

Here's my own: I believe that by raising the level of awareness and discussion about justice and our prison system, we can reexamine the way we treat prisoners, defendants and victims of crime, and we can build a more effective, and more human, system.

These podcasts and essays, from Gideon and the prisoners who share their stories, are helping us move along this path.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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