Street Roots • October 20-26, 2017
News
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R E-EN TRY, fro m page 10
become the father of her three children.
Together they manufactured and distributed
drugs, amassing wealth and assets together.
Yet despite her criminality, she had until
that point kept true to her promise to
herself as a child and had never used hard
drugs.
She was enraged when she discovered
that her partner was using cocaine. But
eventually, he persuaded her to try it.
“I was a dope fiend from that point
forward,” Whitt said.
A series of events, including betrayal from
her partner, led her to become homeless.
While living on the streets, she became
involved with a man who physically abused
her and introduced her to crack. Within nine
months, she was in prison.
“I still didn’t understand that I had all this
untreated trauma,” Whitt said. “I still didn’t
understand that I had mental health issues.
I didn’t know anything about that. Matter of
fact, I would reject anything of the sort
because there’s a high stigma around mental
health issues, and I did not want to be
associated with that, so I refused to even
consider that I might have something going
on.
According to the Center for Prisoner
Health and Human Rights, about half of
prison and jail inmates abuse or are
dependent on substances, and over half
meet the criteria for mental illness.
“The majority of people that are in prison
have untreated trauma, undiagnosed mental
heath issues, domestic violence, drug
addiction - which is a social crisis, not a
crime,” Whitt said. “We criminalize
addiction, and addiction should not be
criminalized. It’s a social issue, and it’s
everybody’s problem; it’s not just the person
addicted to drugs. Because we are your
community, we are your neighbors, we are
the parents of your child’s friend at school.
And we need help.”
Turning points
It was during their last stints in prison
that Rucker and Whitt decided to get clean
and change the direction of their lives.
For Rucker, it was a book shared with him
by an inmate he wasn’t supposed to talk to.
PH O TO BY A R K A D Y BR O W N
Jackie Whitt’s first day o f her last prison term was the day she decided to get clean and sober.
The California prisons he was in were
heavily segregated, and there was very
limited interaction among different races, a
stark change from Rucker’s hometown of
Pasadena, where, he said, “everybody hangs
out with everybody.”
But one day, a white man approached
Rucker, who is black, in the T V room on a
day the black inmates had control of the TV.
“I think he took advantage of the moment
no one was there,” Rucker said. “He said,
‘Man, these jail rules. I grew up in Long
Beach. The majority of my best friends are
black and Hispanic.’ He goes, ‘But these
rules, we have to follow these rules.’ And I
damn near wanted to cry.”
The other inmate told him about a book
he read that “changed his whole perspective
on life,” and Rucker asked to borrow it. He
read the whole thing in one night - “The
Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, a book about the
laws of attraction and getting from the
universe what you put into it. The book
struck a chord with Rucker, and from that
day, he said, he had a “mind-frame change.”
So when he received his $200 from the
prison on his release date, he didn’t head to
Skid Row and spend it on drugs, a backpack
and a hygiene kit, like he usually did.
Instead, he bought a ticket to Portland.
In Portland, he became involved in
Central City Concern’s recovery and mentor
programs.
“I went to treatment, I learned those
tools, and everything started lining up,” he
said.
He got a job at Dollar Tree. Three
months later, he was hired on call at Central
City Concern, and he was promoted a year
later. A year after that, he was hired on full
time as a case manager at Transition
Projects. In 2014, having housed the most
people of any case manager, he won the
Skidmore Prize, which Willamette Week
awards to outstanding nonprofit workers.
As for Whitt, she “knew from the day I
went to prison everything about my life had
to change,” she said. “Not just some. Every
single aspect of my life.”
She became heavily involved in her
spirituality and went to treatment. She
stayed away from people that didn’t respect
her boundaries, worked full time as an
orderly, and attended church services and
all the classes that she could.
Yet she wasn’t allowed to finish her
treatment program. “Their reasoning behind
it was they felt I wasn’t going to stay clean,”
she said.
When she got out, she had 16 certificates
of completion from different programs and
classes. She took Rent Well classes,
attended Mercy Corps re-entry
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programming, took vocational rehabilitation
classes and accessed mental health
services.
She was able to keep her apartment, and
she started family counseling with her
children. “Since then, I’m crime free,
domestic violence free, and my clean date is
when I went to prison,” she said.
Today, Whitt is part of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union
Local 48. She is also a peer support
specialist, and she lives with her children.
Rucker, meanwhile, is working toward his
Bachelor of Arts in health administration,
owns a home in St. Helens and has custody
of his young son.
Both have felony status but have
overcome many of the barriers that come
with that. Yet they both agree that prison
created more barriers than it removed.
“It’s just so sad because the system is so
built like that,” Rucker said.
“It’s about money,” Whitt added.
“This is a system; this is how it goes,”
Rucker said. “A few of us are able to
maneuver out. But some people, I got
friends who have surrendered to that life.”
“Shaping a Future: Life After Prison” will
give Rucker and Whitt the opportunity to
shed light on the injustices they witnessed
and experienced in the prison system.
Imani hopes people in attendance will
learn about these injustices, such as the
lack of access to services, mandatory-
minimum sentencing and the disproportion
ate imprisonment of people of color.
“I want to challenge the community, that
if they really want a better community, like I
know they want a better community, they
need to worry, and they need to care, and
they need to ask questions,” Whitt said.
“Like what’s happening to those people
when they get to prison? What situations
are they being put into, and what access do
they have to get mental health help?
“When people start learning about this
stuff, there’s going to be a lot of people that
are outraged, even regular community
members, at the state of affairs, and why
and how they got that way. And there are
going to be people that change it. So I’m
looking forward to that. I’m going to be one