Recovery is a life-time goal- Poverty Scholarship on Prop 5

by RAM/ PNN Race and Poverty scholar

I have lived with formerly incarcerated people who tried to get clean and their lives on track without the prison industrial complex holding them back. I know from personal experience how it separates families and prevents us from raising our own kids who end up in the clutches of child protective services (CPS)--leading to the revolving door of juvenile hall, county jail and ultimately prison.

I grew up with addicted parents. I was the victim of their addiction and domestic violence. After they separated, police raids and sexual pressures put upon my single mother pressured me to leave the house at age 11. I left to better my condition and be an example to my little sister--who was born a week after my 10th birthday. I wanted to go to school in a better district so that my sister would follow my example and strive for a better education instead of handing out in the hood and doing hood things. I had no summer vacations--I changed diapers, fed her, took her to doctors appointments and cared for her everyday after school.

My father passed when I was 16, leading to my mother's decision to get clean. I decided to venture into heavy drug use and alcoholism. While she was getting clean, I was getting dirty, which lasted 8 years. I had my first daughter at 22. When she was 3 I entered my first program (Walden House) of my own recognizance. I was 25.

Recovery is a lifetime goal that I'm still struggling with. Going to meetings, changing my crowd, living in a residential treatment facility where you can't get drug and making the decision to get clean I changed the people, places and things in my life.

My first time at Walden House was a 2-week stay; the second, 3 months; the third, 10 ½ months. I was housed in the same room as my mom who graduated in 1996. The third stay gave me enough time to let it soak in instead of simply biding time. My kids drove me to get clean, but living with my mother--a drug counselor--is my motivation to stay clean.

I am personally in support of proposition 5 because it takes the government out of raising our kids. Since I made the decision to get counseling, my kids have a better chance of going from preschool to school and then to work instead of the preschool to prison pipeline. I believe we need to get rid of the prison industrial complex--it just doesn't work.

A quick glance at California's prison industrial complex reveals the preferred method of dealing with people struggling with drug addiction: incarceration, incarceration, and incarceration. Prop 5 is on the November ballot. It puts forth a lasting solution to replace mindless incarceration of people who need help with drug addiction.

Prop 5 will reduce criminal consequences of non-violent drug offenses by mandating a three-tiered probation with treatment and will provide for case dismissal and/or the sealing of records probation; it will limit court authority to incarcerate offenders who violate probation or parole, shorten parole for most drug offenses, including sales. It will create numerous divisions, boards, commissions and reporting requirements regarding drug treatment and rehabilitation. Prop 5 emphasizes treatment,not punishment as a solution to drug addiction and seeks to expand and increase funding and oversight for individualized treatment and rehabilitation programs for non-violent drug offenders and parolees.