A Call for Community and Parole
“[The Lord] has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” (Isaiah 61:1)
What is the point of building community across prison walls? Who does it really benefit?
Last month, Dr. Catherine Besteman and I kicked off the Week to End Mass Incarceration for the National Lawyers Guild chapter at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. We led two separate conversations on our work around community-building and creating a restorative pathway to decarceration and abolition. In the first session, we spoke primarily to law school students. Future prosecutors and defense attorneys were genuinely interested and engaged in meaningful dialogue around our three-part restorative pathway published in the first three months of The Bollard this year.
Then, in the evening, we engaged with not just law students but also professionals in the fields of law, social work, and more. Together, we explored some of the ways in which we are scaling prison walls to build community. We talked about the necessity of cultivating connection between the inside and outside worlds to facilitate safe re-entry and reintegration after incarceration. We engaged with people on the power of healing family bonds and establishing beautiful webs of interconnection between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people. We also spoke about the transformative nature of this kind of community-building.
For almost two years, I have been blessed to be part of a growing family. It started with the 2021 Freedom & Captivity Project. With funding from the American Council of Learned Societies and support from Maine’s Department Of Corrections, that project has grown into a model of what transformative community-building can really look like. People have joined this F&C family from across all MDOC facilities and most of the counties in Maine. Every week, up to five dozen of us from both sides of the walls meet on Zoom to explore concepts like forgiveness, healing, loss, repair, accountability, and transformative justice through free online classes co-facilitated by incarcerated and non-incarcerated scholars. Our F&C community responds to the hunger for meaningful connection we know exists throughout our state.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times: Community safety only comes through community-building. Incarceration does not make us safe. Tearing people out of their families, support networks, and avenues of service does nothing but cause more harm. When we come together to envision something better, what we see is the restoration of families, the reweaving of support networks, and the reestablishment of avenues of service. Statewide, organizations see the need for change and are stepping up to make it possible.
Now, with LD178 – An Act to Support Reentry and Reintegration into the Community about to be voted on by the State Legislature, Maine has a real chance to tap into a vast pool of human resources currently incarcerated in Maine’s prisons. Those of us who have caused the greatest harm in our communities are in the best position to interrupt the cycles of harm and violence that the current criminal legal system merely perpetuates. We have been preparing for years and decades to pay forward what we cannot pay back. We have engaged in higher education and become recovery coaches, personal trainers, peer support specialists, experts in restorative practices, mentors, tutors and policy experts. We are ready.
If Maine lawmakers have the good sense to pass LD 178 into law, to create a restorative, rehabilitative, victim-supportive parole system, our state will be so much better for it. Some people may look at Joseph Eaton, the man charged with murders in Bowdoin and shootings in Yarmouth last month, as a reason we can’t have parole. Yet, as the citizens collective Parole-4-Maine recently shared in their newsletter, “Joseph Eaton would never have been paroled under LD 178.” Instead, “The parole process established through LD 178 includes investigation and support on the outside which would have certainly flagged Eaton’s mental health and substance use struggles and history of domestic violence. Parole is an extra layer of protection because the parolee remains under the custody and supervision and control of Corrections with conditions that a Board may impose upon granting parole.” There were no such safeguards with Eaton.
Across-the-walls community-building efforts like the Freedom & Captivity Project prove that it is no longer impossible to facilitate healthy and redemptive connection in preparation for future release. You have the ability to make Maine safer, healthier, and more healed through joining and supporting efforts like these (the three F&C courses will be open to the public this fall). You can also have a hand in showing Maine lawmakers that Mainers are no longer afraid to stand up for their brothers and sisters in cages. So please write to your State Senator and State Representative and let them know Maine is ready for community. Maine is ready for parole.
For more information, please go to parole4maine.com and check out the Resources section.
Leo Hylton is a recent Master’s graduate of George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison. His education and work are focused on Social Justice Advocacy and Activism, with a vision toward an abolitionist future. You can reach him at: Leo Hylton #70199, 807 Cushing Rd., Warren, ME 04864, or leoshininglight@gmail.com.
