Newt Knows

Two weeks ago dozens of conservatives gathered in Washington, DC to assert that they are at the forefront of the prison reform movement. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted, conservatives now realized that their drive in the 1980s and 1990s for long prison terms had the “unexpected consequences” of imprisoning too many non-violent offenders.

            Many in attendance at the conference credited to the late Chuck Colson for inspiring them to push for prison reform. Colson, known as the “hatchet man” for the Nixon Administration during Watergate, served time in a federal prison. He had a “Damascus Epiphany” while awaiting sentencing. His conversion allowed him to see the waste – in both money and lives – that prison is for all but the sociopaths who need to be segregated from society. Colson used his experiences as the basis for starting the group “Prison Fellowship,” a faith-based non-profit organization which has shown remarkable success in changing inmate’s lives.

            Colson wrote and spoke extensively about the evil lurking within America’s prisons (he did so before the advent of blogs!). What he witnessed convinced him that Christians must speak out about excessive punishment, waste, and despair evident “behind the walls.” This wasn’t limited to high-security prisons. Even low-custody, “soft” facilities, operate in a repressive manner. Prisons destroy. And, for so many behind bars who have known nothing but failure and disappointment, it leads only to anger, and bitterness and more failure.

            Newt and his conservative brethren know America can do better. Mr. Colson knew God expected more from us. Irony is defined as an event or result that is the opposite of what is expected. My life these past six years, meets that definition. Like Mr. Colson, I had an epiphany about my entire outlook while sitting alone in a jail cell. And like Mr. Colson, I realized all the assumption I spouted, all the things that motivated me, were false. Something else mattered.

            I don’t know if I would have come to that realization years earlier if it would have saved my marriage. I only know that I wasn’t willing to see it until, until that day in that cell.

            I think that helps explain the likes of Newt and Jeb, Edwin and Richard, and the hundreds of other “conservatives” who know now what they didn’t know then. Mr. Colson, thank you.