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By Patrice Gaines | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES
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“The Cost of Incarceration”
is an eight-part occasional series written by Patrice
Gaines, former Washington Post reporter; author and
co-founder of The Brown Angel Center, a program in Charlotte,
N.C. that helps formerly incarcerated women become financially
independent. Gaines received a 2009 Soros Justice Media
Fellowship from the Open Society Institute to research
and write articles on the impact of mass incarceration
on the Black community. The National Newspaper Publishers
Association News Service has agreed to make this exclusive
series available to its membership of more than 200
Black-owned newspapers.
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(NNPA) - Mika’il DeVeaux
was 22 and facing a lengthy sentence for murder in the second
degree. The last thing on his mind was a relationship.
“No need to involve another person in that type of
ordeal,” said DeVeaux.
But Wanda Best, an old friend from high school, remembered
DeVeaux as a good-hearted guy. So, she began writing; then
visiting. Eventually, a love developed. The two married in
1990.
Love, marriage and sex among prisoners are subjects seldom
talked about publically. An emphasis on harsher sentencing
has created a prison industry that focuses on punishment and
deprivation. Yet professionals who work with incarcerated
people and their families know that their opportunity to develop
intimate relationships and the health of those relationships
has an impact on the health of the public at large.
Ninety-five percent of inmates will come home one day, and
research shows that those who maintain or develop healthy
relationships are less likely to commit crimes again or return
to prison. Meanwhile, sexually transmitted diseases exist
at a higher rate inside prison, so people with mates who are
incarcerated must be counseled about healthy sexual behavior.
DeVeaux became a leader in the Muslim community and counseled
many other inmates while in prison. “Relationships help
people in the restoration of their own humanity,” he
said. “The capacity (to love) may be there but we all
have to learn to love. You can’t learn behavior when
there is no means for engaging in it.”
DeVeaux was released from prison in 2003 after serving 25
years. He and Wanda Best-DeVeaux recently celebrated two decades
of marriage. They reside in Queens, N.Y.
Whether we want to believe it or not, people who are incarcerated
are members of our community, even while they are away.
“That way of looking at certain segments as being
separate doesn’t work. If we’re not taking care
of one segment’s health and emotional needs, it impacts
everybody,” said Marcella Tillett, a program coordinator
at The Osborne Association in New York City.
According to most recent statistics available from the Bureau
of Justice Statistics (2004), of the 1,226,200 men and women
in state prison, 199,871 men (16.3 percent) and 223,168 women
(18.2 percent) are married. For 129,300 inmates in federal
prison, the numbers are: 33,489 married men (25.9 percent)
and 34,394 women (26.6 percent). No one keeps statistics on
how many of these marriages survive incarcerations. But everyone
agrees that maintaining a relationship when one person is
incarcerated is difficult and often impossible.
“These relationships could work if people were guided
thru them. Like in life, people need mentors,” said
DeVeaux.
The imprisoned person has to redefine his role in the family
or relationship since he is unable to support his loved ones
in the same way he had before incarceration.
“So the question is: “What other benefit can
they be to the other person?” said DeVeaux.
While he was in prison, DeVeaux, who had two masters degree,
encouraged his wife to continue her education and they worked
together on her lessons.
“Helping her facilitated having other conversations
that had nothing to do with prison or our relationship,”
he said. “We were just two people involved in the world.”
Today, he teaches sociology and history at Medgar Evers
College while maintaining the same job he had inside prison
as a program evaluator for a foundation. Wanda Best-DeVeaux
is a director of programs for women of domestic violence at
Volunteers of America.
While she missed her husband when he was incarcerated she
said with his help, “I was more devoted to self development
than feeling sorry for self.”
To help other women in similar situations, Best-DeVeaux
founded Citizens Inc. (www.citizensinc.org), offering services
that include counseling, referrals and workshops on anger
management and domestic violence as well as support services
for the children. Their work with the organization helped
the DeVeauxs focus on something larger than the difficulties
of adjustment that came after Mika’il was released.
“Being married in prison, you are married but not
living the married life,” said Best-DeVeaux.
Although the DeVeauxs had known each other for years, in
some ways they were strangers. They had never had time to
get used to each other’s day-to-day habits, to develop
a rhythm that normal couples develop when they spend hours
and hours together.
But the DeVeauxs, determined to make it, worked through
the adjustment period. They are a rarity among families who
have experienced separation by incarceration. The “Get
on the Bus” program at the Osborne Association of New
York City counsels women with incarcerated mates, though the
core of the program is HIV prevention.
“You can’t talk about HIV or STD prevention
in the absence of a discussion about relationships,”
said Tillett, who noted that the women often talk about stress,
isolation, sadness and financial strain.
“We speak specifically about (sexual) risks associated
with an incarcerated population,” said Tillett. “Some
women engage in sex in visitation rooms where they can’t
use protection. We have honest conversation about things that
happen.”
Tillett knows that some in the general public don’t
understand how their lives are impacted by the lives of people
in prisons. But with HIV rates10 times higher there and people
returning home all the time, she said the concern should be
obvious.
Mika’il DeVeaux said people have to get beyond thinking
of inmates as “different” and prisons as “a
place of punishment only.”
He concludes, “If another human being is taking interest
in someone who is incarcerated, society should try to enhance
the quality of that relationship - and see that it will benefit
us all. There is a need to be concerned about the condition
in which people return to the community.”
Patrice Gaines is an NNPA contributing writer.
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