IAN SINCLAIR
Response to 'The Restoration of Mana' by Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena
"The vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air:
It's only what is good in Man that wastes and withers there"
From ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Oscar Wilde.
It is my given purpose to comment on some principles and practices that should be central to any rehabilitative endeavour. I can only truly report upon my own peculiar experience and reflect as best I can upon its wider implications. I want to begin by directing attention to the nub of the ethical justification for rehabilitation. That is, the answer to be obtained from any individual or society to the question, "Do other people, people you don't know, matter?"
If they do not matter, and they have transgressed against common values and beliefs in a way deemed criminal, then it is easy to respond retributively, to justify harshness and to be entirely unforgiving towards them. It is not so long ago that starving people were routinely hanged in England for the theft of a loaf of bread or the like. Unintended and even catastrophic consequences can also arise for societies which adhere ideologically to an apparently expedient populist and punitive position. This possibility has been well illustrated by how the State of California was bankrupted by the explosion of its prison population following the USA’s ‘3 strikes’ Act.
Alternately, if such people do still matter to the society in which they live and against which they have offended, then it matters also that means are discovered and deployed to enable them if possible to resume- or to find for the first time- a proper role in society. This is a much more challenging position to adopt. A society which does this moves beyond harshness and retribution for its range of responses, embraces the possibility of rehabilitation, and the ethic, perhaps, of forgiveness. Paradoxically, this is a more pragmatic approach, reducing costs and improving overall outcomes, both financial and social. Some will, as you well know, bitterly oppose what they take to be a 'soft' option adding unwonted risk to the society.
What is entirely evident is that the success of a rehabilitative approach requires significant levels of social investment and tolerance, and an acceptance of transgressors back into the society whenever possible, positions that come directly from granting people such as myself an innate human dignity, no matter what we have done. It is necessary then to make sufficiently available a range of well-thought-out interventions which contribute to enabling transgressors to make critical changes in their relationship to society. While the central choice we make on this major social issue remains open, what follows assumes both an inalienable right to human dignity and the prudence, as well as the ethical value, of the rehabilitation of offenders.
People are different. That it is a truism to say that what works for one may not work for another, does not make that inconvenient statement untrue, or trite. It seems blindingly obvious that some modes of rehabilitation will be appropriate for some categories of offender and not for others. Also, regardless of the means by which a group is categorized, it cannot be assumed that all within that group will benefit equally from any particular treatment modality. Indeed, a potential for unlooked-for negative effects cannot be ruled out and must be guarded against. There needs to be variation in approaches to rehabilitation, adapted progressively to meet individual needs, applying the scientific method to assessment, practice and evaluation.
My main point here, however, is that despite these undeniable individual differences and their significance in rehabilitation, there exist certain general principles, centred on the humanity of the person, applicable to all persons requiring rehabilitation.
In this cathedral setting it is entirely appropriate for a secular humanist such as myself to refer to Jesus Christ’s reported attitude towards the sinners amongst whom he courageously took his stand.
Compassion, forgiveness, redemption, rehabilitation are examples of general values normally regarded positively, though they are not actually specific to any particular identity, such as that of being Christian.
Similarly non-specific as to identities are complementary undesirable attributes; those of malice, vengefulness, a readiness to ostracise, or to ‘throw away the key’, honour-killing and the like, these value-positions having in common a seemingly equal likelihood of manifestation. Society can choose, for example, whether or not to legitimate capital punishment, or to institute sharia law, both abhorrent to contemplate.
It is Manichean to suggest that constant conflict between these two main groups of attributes exists in each individual human nature, as well as throughout the range of human societies. It may be archaic to claim loosely that proponents of one group are on the side of the angels, while those manifesting the other-on the dark side-are doing the work of the Devil. What is certain is that in New Zealand some individuals will be demonized routinely for what they have done.
There is no offender who gets worse press than a child sex offender. I recently attended a public lecture on advances in gene therapy. The speaker referred to one brilliant lead researcher (I.Q. 174, 7th Dan black belt in Aikido) whose conviction for such an offence he claimed to have perhaps been instrumental in holding up progress along a promising line of investigation. He got the shocked gasp from his audience that he perhaps sought. Having made this conjecture, he then permitted himself, for reasons obscure to me, to stray even further from his theme, posing an ethical question: “Can a bad man do good things?” He might have posed the question as: “Can a good man do bad things?” Posed in this alternate way, the question would not have been worth the asking. His actual phrasing, however, demonized the researcher, and seemingly had no other function in his speech.
My experience of rehabilitation has been fortunate. My progress through the penal systemwas different from that of Rawiri, but it shared some common features of course. For example, and not trivially, I also played ‘crash’, a rough contact sport designed for limited exercise space.
Playing social and physical games is important to people. We all need human contact, or we will ultimately sicken and die, being no different in this from other mammals. I grieve for prisoners who are so confined as to be unable to engage even in conversation with their peers. Such confinement, especially solitary confinement, should never be a matter of fiscal convenience, as I fear it often is. The public is kept in the dark about the extent of 23/24-hour lock-downs as routine. The real possibility of irreversible psychological damage done to those so confined for some time in such a manner seems beneath remark, as if an hour of perambulation in a small yard beneath a sky of razor-wire were enough for anyone. Anyone concerned with conditions in prisons should make themselves familiar with “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” by Oscar Wilde, still the best writing on the subject. Prisoners are well aware that they are in prison as punishment, not there to be punished further, but they are denied a voice with which to complain against systemic injustice.
The central question now before this forum is how to develop systems to help those who have offended criminally to move from punishment and exclusion to participation in society. Reasons for doing so are easy to find, not least being the crippling financial cost of doing anything else. I shall not dwell on justifications, nor on the possible reasons why society is as reluctant as it is to take so obvious a choice. The ‘how’ of rehabilitation is not easy to address but it is essential to do so, and to do so clearly.
Society entrusts persons in a spectrum of its institutions with this exact responsibility in respect of those who have criminally offended. We have a right to have those collective expectations fulfilled in knowledgeable, just, and honourable ways. Approaches are required that seek to impart a range of social skills and address strengths, not only deficits in knowledge and skills. Grounding all practice in the humanity of the other person, they need to address the full range of psychological, familial and practical issues that can be mitigated, to such extent as is possible.
A story, first, to illustrate that the attitudes of ordinary people matter most; expressly, to emphasise that rehabilitation is not solely, or even predominantly, a professional concern.
I am fresh out of prison, on parole, and looking for work. Anything, any work, maybe washing dishes, I can do that. I like a clean kitchen. What do I do, lie? No, not possible even if I were stupid enough to want to. I can’t do that. I’m on parole, I have to report, they have to check. So I study the Jobs Vacant column and rock up immediately and early on my bike when the first dishwashing job is advertised. There we are; Wayne - the manager - and I, a convicted child sex offender on parole, looking at each other, when I tell him he needs to know that I am on parole and the exact nature of my offending. I tell him too that, if he employs me, he has to give me time off in the afternoon once a week in order that I can report.
And he gives me the job.
I did a good job as a dishwasher because that is part of who I am that has never changed. He did a good job as a manager, but better as a human being, and I shall never forget my gratitude to him for taking me on. He overcame the considerable inconvenience I presented, in order to help me, a stranger, a condemned man. He could easily have said “No”, but he didn’t. All is not lost as long as people like Wayne live and care.
Being on parole is irksome. It takes time, effort and money. By this stage, though, it was a familiar thing to comply with Corrections requirements and, as it always had been, easier by far to do so. My parole officer was young, female, and quite smart enough to be looking for another more rewarding job, which she was. She took no particular interest in me, nor did I wish her to. We quickly sized each other up, rather, and decided the relationship would go okay if we didn’t fuss. Neither of us was likely to rock the boat.
She undertook to do some research and reported back that, as far as she could tell from the literature, my information belonged to me. That is what she said. It was up to me what I did with it. It was not incumbent upon me to pin a notice on my door telling the world what I had done. For me, this casual but considered comment was immensely affirming. It bolstered my resolve and supported my hope that I had a future at least crudely under my control.
I passed most of my sentence before parole in a specialist unit, Kia Marama. This was in ‘huts’, away from the main Christchurch prison block. The architecture is important, with individual ‘huts’ in rows forming three parts of a square; administration, kitchens and so on forming the fourth. This is a good design, providing security, community and privacy. There was opportunity for an excellent team of Corrections Officers, very well managed and led, to promote, within a secure perimeter, the well-being of 66 men, social outcasts of the worst kind.
We didn’t have to pretend we were not what we were there for. You certainly couldn’t say that about the main prison, where the truth would invite brutal treatment from other inmates. In K.M., some stayed in denial, but such denial was generally disapproved. The collectivity expressed a certain jaded weariness with denial. Better, went the ethos, to man up, especially when we were all basically in the same boat. K.M. is a specialist unit, and we all worked there on the reasons for our offending, to greater or lesser effect. Some people remained plainly dangerous, though not as many as you might think.
One day a mate of mine hurt himself and I gave him first aid. Afterwards, the Senior Corrections Officer, Pam, the heart of the unit, came up to me, and, unprompted, said: “You are a decent man”.
This statement had a great impact on me. Consider my situation. There I am, in prison for inflicting damage upon an innocent child in a most indecent way. Despite my offending, I do still think of myself as fundamentally decent. From my perspective, here was an unsought, confirmatory, independent assessment from an experienced Senior Officer, who had watched this incident with her staff from the guardhouse window. Pam did an excellent job. She did make a difference, and not, I know, just for me. I honour her here.
Responses to situations like these, I submit, constitute expression of a core principle of rehabilitation. There has to be a human recognition of, and a human response to, the essential plight of the offender, whatever he or she has done. Crucially, the environment must promote this potential expression, not restrict it. It is the guards who are brutalized when conditions are inhumane. I have seen this, in the main prison. The inmates themselves are then victimized. Think Abu Ghraib. Rehabilitative needs are quite separable from justifiable punishment, and also from the important task of providing security for society at large.
Further, there exists a pervasive unctuous self-righteousness characterizing some societal responses to criminal behaviour that, in my opinion, has the potential to damage our society far more than does the behaviour of the criminals it seeks to victimize. An ever-present tendency to this form of fascism is to be resisted, indeed fought against strenuously, or it will win. An informed society is much harder to fool with the plausible rhetoric of, say, being tough on crime.
In denying the humanity of others, we deny also our own. Whereas, if we affirm their humanity, then, whether or not we intend it, we grow into our own. The same phenomenon can be observed in society at large, where the decision as to which social impulse to follow is essentially a political choice, with policy and public opinion shaping each other.
Music has always been an important part of my life. Those of you who are present in the cathedral will shortly hear me share a song I have written. The persona of this song is not me, let me say. Another group of prisoners is perhaps represented. Song is important, as I am sure Rawiri would agree. Song reaches places in the heart that spoken or written words may not. But for those who have only this text before them, here is another true rehabilitative story, this time about music at Kia Marama.
One of my fellow-inmates was a pianist. I have always been a singer, fond of classical music. We found some sheet music and obtained permission to practice with a piano in a somewhat out-of-bounds location in the unit. This was generous of the Officers. They showed trust in us, took a small risk. So, having the necessary leisure, permission and opportunity, we made music. Bach, Gounod, Vaughan Williams, Mendelssohn, and Phantom of the Opera for fun. Officers seemed to enjoy these sessions, which they could not help but overhear. At least they knew what we were up to. Wonderful afternoons these were, yielding the richest of deeply satisfying pleasures.
It was possible then to shelve for a time the pain of prison, the shame of it all, the loss of friends and family, the incessant guilt at an inability to make right that which we had, by our own undeniable fault, made wrong. There were other similar opportunities, to work, for example, to study and to play, to meditate, to look at the stars and the passage of the moon across the skies as the seasons passed.
I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society, who helped maintain material contact with the outside world. No small thing, this. I want to thank the Corrections Officer, Mike, who ran the Tailor’s shop, giving us activity and structure to our day. This work unit, incidentally, was closed when he retired, to his disgust, because prison clothing could be sourced more cheaply from China, or so it was claimed. The rehabilitative component of his professional life counted for nothing in the business decision.
I want to thank my wife, who had every reason to reject me entirely, and did not. I want finally to thank my brother and his family, who accommodated and supported me while I was on parole.
I made the decisions very early on to accept my punishment and to do whatever lay in my power to mitigate the damage I had done. I am of course aware that not all offenders make these decisions, which I myself think fundamental to the success of most rehabilitative effort. That is to say that it is not all up to society. Much is up to the individual. Some need more time and help than others to realize that.
I wish this forum well in its endeavours.
Response to 'The Restoration of Mana' by Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena
"The vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air:
It's only what is good in Man that wastes and withers there"
From ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Oscar Wilde.
It is my given purpose to comment on some principles and practices that should be central to any rehabilitative endeavour. I can only truly report upon my own peculiar experience and reflect as best I can upon its wider implications. I want to begin by directing attention to the nub of the ethical justification for rehabilitation. That is, the answer to be obtained from any individual or society to the question, "Do other people, people you don't know, matter?"
If they do not matter, and they have transgressed against common values and beliefs in a way deemed criminal, then it is easy to respond retributively, to justify harshness and to be entirely unforgiving towards them. It is not so long ago that starving people were routinely hanged in England for the theft of a loaf of bread or the like. Unintended and even catastrophic consequences can also arise for societies which adhere ideologically to an apparently expedient populist and punitive position. This possibility has been well illustrated by how the State of California was bankrupted by the explosion of its prison population following the USA’s ‘3 strikes’ Act.
Alternately, if such people do still matter to the society in which they live and against which they have offended, then it matters also that means are discovered and deployed to enable them if possible to resume- or to find for the first time- a proper role in society. This is a much more challenging position to adopt. A society which does this moves beyond harshness and retribution for its range of responses, embraces the possibility of rehabilitation, and the ethic, perhaps, of forgiveness. Paradoxically, this is a more pragmatic approach, reducing costs and improving overall outcomes, both financial and social. Some will, as you well know, bitterly oppose what they take to be a 'soft' option adding unwonted risk to the society.
What is entirely evident is that the success of a rehabilitative approach requires significant levels of social investment and tolerance, and an acceptance of transgressors back into the society whenever possible, positions that come directly from granting people such as myself an innate human dignity, no matter what we have done. It is necessary then to make sufficiently available a range of well-thought-out interventions which contribute to enabling transgressors to make critical changes in their relationship to society. While the central choice we make on this major social issue remains open, what follows assumes both an inalienable right to human dignity and the prudence, as well as the ethical value, of the rehabilitation of offenders.
People are different. That it is a truism to say that what works for one may not work for another, does not make that inconvenient statement untrue, or trite. It seems blindingly obvious that some modes of rehabilitation will be appropriate for some categories of offender and not for others. Also, regardless of the means by which a group is categorized, it cannot be assumed that all within that group will benefit equally from any particular treatment modality. Indeed, a potential for unlooked-for negative effects cannot be ruled out and must be guarded against. There needs to be variation in approaches to rehabilitation, adapted progressively to meet individual needs, applying the scientific method to assessment, practice and evaluation.
My main point here, however, is that despite these undeniable individual differences and their significance in rehabilitation, there exist certain general principles, centred on the humanity of the person, applicable to all persons requiring rehabilitation.
In this cathedral setting it is entirely appropriate for a secular humanist such as myself to refer to Jesus Christ’s reported attitude towards the sinners amongst whom he courageously took his stand.
Compassion, forgiveness, redemption, rehabilitation are examples of general values normally regarded positively, though they are not actually specific to any particular identity, such as that of being Christian.
Similarly non-specific as to identities are complementary undesirable attributes; those of malice, vengefulness, a readiness to ostracise, or to ‘throw away the key’, honour-killing and the like, these value-positions having in common a seemingly equal likelihood of manifestation. Society can choose, for example, whether or not to legitimate capital punishment, or to institute sharia law, both abhorrent to contemplate.
It is Manichean to suggest that constant conflict between these two main groups of attributes exists in each individual human nature, as well as throughout the range of human societies. It may be archaic to claim loosely that proponents of one group are on the side of the angels, while those manifesting the other-on the dark side-are doing the work of the Devil. What is certain is that in New Zealand some individuals will be demonized routinely for what they have done.
There is no offender who gets worse press than a child sex offender. I recently attended a public lecture on advances in gene therapy. The speaker referred to one brilliant lead researcher (I.Q. 174, 7th Dan black belt in Aikido) whose conviction for such an offence he claimed to have perhaps been instrumental in holding up progress along a promising line of investigation. He got the shocked gasp from his audience that he perhaps sought. Having made this conjecture, he then permitted himself, for reasons obscure to me, to stray even further from his theme, posing an ethical question: “Can a bad man do good things?” He might have posed the question as: “Can a good man do bad things?” Posed in this alternate way, the question would not have been worth the asking. His actual phrasing, however, demonized the researcher, and seemingly had no other function in his speech.
My experience of rehabilitation has been fortunate. My progress through the penal systemwas different from that of Rawiri, but it shared some common features of course. For example, and not trivially, I also played ‘crash’, a rough contact sport designed for limited exercise space.
Playing social and physical games is important to people. We all need human contact, or we will ultimately sicken and die, being no different in this from other mammals. I grieve for prisoners who are so confined as to be unable to engage even in conversation with their peers. Such confinement, especially solitary confinement, should never be a matter of fiscal convenience, as I fear it often is. The public is kept in the dark about the extent of 23/24-hour lock-downs as routine. The real possibility of irreversible psychological damage done to those so confined for some time in such a manner seems beneath remark, as if an hour of perambulation in a small yard beneath a sky of razor-wire were enough for anyone. Anyone concerned with conditions in prisons should make themselves familiar with “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” by Oscar Wilde, still the best writing on the subject. Prisoners are well aware that they are in prison as punishment, not there to be punished further, but they are denied a voice with which to complain against systemic injustice.
The central question now before this forum is how to develop systems to help those who have offended criminally to move from punishment and exclusion to participation in society. Reasons for doing so are easy to find, not least being the crippling financial cost of doing anything else. I shall not dwell on justifications, nor on the possible reasons why society is as reluctant as it is to take so obvious a choice. The ‘how’ of rehabilitation is not easy to address but it is essential to do so, and to do so clearly.
Society entrusts persons in a spectrum of its institutions with this exact responsibility in respect of those who have criminally offended. We have a right to have those collective expectations fulfilled in knowledgeable, just, and honourable ways. Approaches are required that seek to impart a range of social skills and address strengths, not only deficits in knowledge and skills. Grounding all practice in the humanity of the other person, they need to address the full range of psychological, familial and practical issues that can be mitigated, to such extent as is possible.
A story, first, to illustrate that the attitudes of ordinary people matter most; expressly, to emphasise that rehabilitation is not solely, or even predominantly, a professional concern.
I am fresh out of prison, on parole, and looking for work. Anything, any work, maybe washing dishes, I can do that. I like a clean kitchen. What do I do, lie? No, not possible even if I were stupid enough to want to. I can’t do that. I’m on parole, I have to report, they have to check. So I study the Jobs Vacant column and rock up immediately and early on my bike when the first dishwashing job is advertised. There we are; Wayne - the manager - and I, a convicted child sex offender on parole, looking at each other, when I tell him he needs to know that I am on parole and the exact nature of my offending. I tell him too that, if he employs me, he has to give me time off in the afternoon once a week in order that I can report.
And he gives me the job.
I did a good job as a dishwasher because that is part of who I am that has never changed. He did a good job as a manager, but better as a human being, and I shall never forget my gratitude to him for taking me on. He overcame the considerable inconvenience I presented, in order to help me, a stranger, a condemned man. He could easily have said “No”, but he didn’t. All is not lost as long as people like Wayne live and care.
Being on parole is irksome. It takes time, effort and money. By this stage, though, it was a familiar thing to comply with Corrections requirements and, as it always had been, easier by far to do so. My parole officer was young, female, and quite smart enough to be looking for another more rewarding job, which she was. She took no particular interest in me, nor did I wish her to. We quickly sized each other up, rather, and decided the relationship would go okay if we didn’t fuss. Neither of us was likely to rock the boat.
She undertook to do some research and reported back that, as far as she could tell from the literature, my information belonged to me. That is what she said. It was up to me what I did with it. It was not incumbent upon me to pin a notice on my door telling the world what I had done. For me, this casual but considered comment was immensely affirming. It bolstered my resolve and supported my hope that I had a future at least crudely under my control.
I passed most of my sentence before parole in a specialist unit, Kia Marama. This was in ‘huts’, away from the main Christchurch prison block. The architecture is important, with individual ‘huts’ in rows forming three parts of a square; administration, kitchens and so on forming the fourth. This is a good design, providing security, community and privacy. There was opportunity for an excellent team of Corrections Officers, very well managed and led, to promote, within a secure perimeter, the well-being of 66 men, social outcasts of the worst kind.
We didn’t have to pretend we were not what we were there for. You certainly couldn’t say that about the main prison, where the truth would invite brutal treatment from other inmates. In K.M., some stayed in denial, but such denial was generally disapproved. The collectivity expressed a certain jaded weariness with denial. Better, went the ethos, to man up, especially when we were all basically in the same boat. K.M. is a specialist unit, and we all worked there on the reasons for our offending, to greater or lesser effect. Some people remained plainly dangerous, though not as many as you might think.
One day a mate of mine hurt himself and I gave him first aid. Afterwards, the Senior Corrections Officer, Pam, the heart of the unit, came up to me, and, unprompted, said: “You are a decent man”.
This statement had a great impact on me. Consider my situation. There I am, in prison for inflicting damage upon an innocent child in a most indecent way. Despite my offending, I do still think of myself as fundamentally decent. From my perspective, here was an unsought, confirmatory, independent assessment from an experienced Senior Officer, who had watched this incident with her staff from the guardhouse window. Pam did an excellent job. She did make a difference, and not, I know, just for me. I honour her here.
Responses to situations like these, I submit, constitute expression of a core principle of rehabilitation. There has to be a human recognition of, and a human response to, the essential plight of the offender, whatever he or she has done. Crucially, the environment must promote this potential expression, not restrict it. It is the guards who are brutalized when conditions are inhumane. I have seen this, in the main prison. The inmates themselves are then victimized. Think Abu Ghraib. Rehabilitative needs are quite separable from justifiable punishment, and also from the important task of providing security for society at large.
Further, there exists a pervasive unctuous self-righteousness characterizing some societal responses to criminal behaviour that, in my opinion, has the potential to damage our society far more than does the behaviour of the criminals it seeks to victimize. An ever-present tendency to this form of fascism is to be resisted, indeed fought against strenuously, or it will win. An informed society is much harder to fool with the plausible rhetoric of, say, being tough on crime.
In denying the humanity of others, we deny also our own. Whereas, if we affirm their humanity, then, whether or not we intend it, we grow into our own. The same phenomenon can be observed in society at large, where the decision as to which social impulse to follow is essentially a political choice, with policy and public opinion shaping each other.
Music has always been an important part of my life. Those of you who are present in the cathedral will shortly hear me share a song I have written. The persona of this song is not me, let me say. Another group of prisoners is perhaps represented. Song is important, as I am sure Rawiri would agree. Song reaches places in the heart that spoken or written words may not. But for those who have only this text before them, here is another true rehabilitative story, this time about music at Kia Marama.
One of my fellow-inmates was a pianist. I have always been a singer, fond of classical music. We found some sheet music and obtained permission to practice with a piano in a somewhat out-of-bounds location in the unit. This was generous of the Officers. They showed trust in us, took a small risk. So, having the necessary leisure, permission and opportunity, we made music. Bach, Gounod, Vaughan Williams, Mendelssohn, and Phantom of the Opera for fun. Officers seemed to enjoy these sessions, which they could not help but overhear. At least they knew what we were up to. Wonderful afternoons these were, yielding the richest of deeply satisfying pleasures.
It was possible then to shelve for a time the pain of prison, the shame of it all, the loss of friends and family, the incessant guilt at an inability to make right that which we had, by our own undeniable fault, made wrong. There were other similar opportunities, to work, for example, to study and to play, to meditate, to look at the stars and the passage of the moon across the skies as the seasons passed.
I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society, who helped maintain material contact with the outside world. No small thing, this. I want to thank the Corrections Officer, Mike, who ran the Tailor’s shop, giving us activity and structure to our day. This work unit, incidentally, was closed when he retired, to his disgust, because prison clothing could be sourced more cheaply from China, or so it was claimed. The rehabilitative component of his professional life counted for nothing in the business decision.
I want to thank my wife, who had every reason to reject me entirely, and did not. I want finally to thank my brother and his family, who accommodated and supported me while I was on parole.
I made the decisions very early on to accept my punishment and to do whatever lay in my power to mitigate the damage I had done. I am of course aware that not all offenders make these decisions, which I myself think fundamental to the success of most rehabilitative effort. That is to say that it is not all up to society. Much is up to the individual. Some need more time and help than others to realize that.
I wish this forum well in its endeavours.