Staycrime

Purpose:
Our purpose is to provide you, the family, with
information that will help your loved one be crime and
drug free. This will help to make our communities a
better, safer place to live. The goal is to break the cycle of
your family member's returning to jail or prison so your
family can move forward to a better future.
Can You Help?
As a result of your loved one’s actions, maybe you feel at
times that you are serving time right along with them! If
so, we would like to give you some food for thought and
maybe some skills that will help you and your loved one.
This brochure is intended to be educational, informational,
and motivational. There is nothing magic about “going
back home.” It takes hard work and the willingness to
change. But sometimes we need to be motivated to change
and to do hard work. So let us try to find some motivation.
We want you to read the questions below and answer
them, even if you do not write the answers down.
1. Would it be enough for you if your loved one stopped
getting caught doing wrong, or would you want him or
her to make real changes?
2. What do you think motivates your loved one when he
or she does wrong or breaks rules?
3. Why do you think your loved one should change if he
or she decided to?
4. If your loved one did make changes in his in her life,
what would things look like for you and him or her?
Think about these questions seriously. You can even
write down your answers. If you do, they could provide
you and your family member more reasons to make
changes.
Thinking About Your Situation
If the answers to these questions have you thinking, the
rest of the brochure may be of help. Or if you just want
your family member to have a better chance of staying
crime and drug free and did not even answer the questions,
then the rest of the brochure is for you.
In the rest of the brochure, you will find some ideas and
skills and concepts that have been long used to benefit
loved ones of people who have been in the criminal justice
system. The first one is called Enabling.
Enabling:
The first topic we want to discuss is called ENABLING.
When people ENABLE someone, they are giving support
for bad behavior. In other words, ENABLING someone is
making excuses for them, making light of their negative
behavior, or overlooking their bad actions.
Some people are ENABLERS because they do not want to
admit their friend or family member has done bad things.
Others enable people because they want to keep the
behavior a secret. Still others enable friend or family
members because they are afraid the family member will leave them, hurt them, not talk to them again, or stop
loving them.
Enabling only makes the problem worse. When someone
is enabled, her or his bad behavior is supported, which
helps support a cycle of crime and drug use. To stop
enabling, a person must hold the family member
accountable for his or her actions.
Accountability:
ACCOUNTABILITY means that someone holds a person
responsible for his or her behavior, which means NOT
accepting the family member’s excuses for bad behavior.
Holding a friend or family member accountable when she
or he shows bad behavior or a bad attitude means keeping
it real, saying what really is happening, and telling the hard
truth. This is also called “tough love”.
An example of Accountability:
Tony, your family member, paroles out to your home. One of his
conditions of parole is that he not use any alcohol or drugs. Tony
has a history of alcohol use. The next night you come home and find
that Tony had his old friends over and they were drinking alcohol.
After his friends leave, you remind Tony that he is not supposed to
be drinking. He says he only wanted to celebrate his freedom. As
an enabler, you would say “Oh, Ok, I understand” and let it go. As
someone who is using accountability, you would say, “Remember
that if you want to keep your freedom, you’ve got to do what the
parole rules say” and maybe offer to get him to an AA meeting or in
touch with a sponsor.
This type of response is a form of good communication.
There are many good communication skills that can help
your friend or family member to stay drug and crime free.
Communication:
Communication is another way someone can affect
whether a friend or family member stays crime and drug
free or not. Good communication with a family member
who has been involved with drugs or crime is important.
Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings,
Problem Solving:
Everyone has problems at one time or another. How
problems are handled is what will lead to more trouble or
not. Some basic steps of problem solving are:
• Stop and Think When you realize there is a problem
give yourself some time to think before you act.
• Describe The Problem Describe the problem without
putting blame on anyone. Writing it out is best.
• Get Information Figure out who all is involved in the
problem and how they feel about the problem.
• Choices & Consequences Think of ways to handle the
problem and what would happen to everyone involved
if those ways were chosen.
• Choose the Best Solution Choose the best way to handle
the problem that will result in no one getting hurt and
gets your family closer to a normal life.
• Keep Learning Always remember to learn from
mistakes. Use your experience about old problems that
were handled well.
Many of our problems are better solved when we ask for
help, which is another skill to keep friends and family drug
and crime free.
Asking For Help:
There are times when we can not decide how to handle a
problem or we need more information before we make a
decision. Here are a few simple steps we can take to be
better at asking for help that we need:
1. Decide what help is needed.
2. Decide whom best to ask.
3. Think of ways we can ask this person (the phone, a
letter, or talk to them face-to-face?).
4. Decide when would be the best time to ask the person
for help or information (for a face-to-face, should we
just show up or make an appointment?).
5. Then ask!
If someone is on the wrong side of the things we’ve talked
about so far, Enabling, Accountability, Communicating,
Problem Solving, and Asking for Help, that person would
be more likely to end up in the trap of Co-Dependency.
Co-Dependency:
Co-Dependents are those who live for others and put
others first at their and their family’s expense. A person
who is co-dependent “depends” on another person so much
that the other person can treat them any way they want. A
co-dependent person (and his or her family) suffers the
negative consequences of the other person’s bad behavior.
So someone covers for a substance-using family member,
and ends up going hungry because she lost a job. Or a
parent “pulls some strings” to keep her son out of jail, and
the son ends up stealing from the parent. Or a girlfriend
covers cuts and bruises gotten in a beating from a
boyfriend, but she ends up just getting beat again.
There are always exceptions, but co-dependency is usually
passed on from family members to other family members.
It affects the ability of everyone in a family to have
healthy, satisfying relationships.
Co-dependents have relationships that are one-sided,
where only the needs of the other person are met. The co-dependent ends up having less and less of a life, maybe
even becoming depressed or suicidal. Relationships like
this affect everyone in the family, with children often
learning to be a co-dependent or an abuser. In other
words, a child sees the co-dependency or abuse as normal,
and the destructive cycle continues. We want to help
break that cycle.
Using the skills covered here is one way to avoid the codependency
trap. If a person does not enable, holds a
friend or family member accountable, uses good problemsolving
skills, knows how and when to ask for help, and
avoids becoming co-dependent, then the offender will be
less likely to be involved with crime and drugs. And when
they get out of the system, they’ll stay out!
__________________________________________________ __
The New Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC)!
In the past several years, the Department has made MANY
changes, a great many of them for ONE SINGLE
PURPOSE. This purpose is TO KEEP PEOPLE who have
gotten in trouble FROM COMING BACK after they get
released out of the criminal justice system.
These changes have many names and have many people
involved. Evidence Based Practice, What Works, Reentry,
and Transitioning from Prison to Community are a few.
But they all are intended to help offenders like your loved
one NOT COME BACK into the system once they are out.
This purpose has come from the President, the Governor,
the Commissioner, and maybe even fellow members of
your community. Think about it this way. Two offenders
are about to be released from prison. One, we’ll call
Johnny, exits the gate. He has clothes, a bus ticket, and
$25. The other, Jimmy, has clothes, ticket, and $25, but
has taken the opportunity to go to the new programs that
research has shown to reduce his chance of getting back
into substances and crime. Here’s what Jimmy might have
been through (please note that many of these programs
have limited space and restrictions on who can attend):
COMPAS: COMPAS is a questionnaire that all offenders
complete that tells the GDC what they should be working
on to keep them from coming back to prison. Some of the
things that might be identified are education, work skills,
substance abuse, and attitudes. The COMPAS results are a
crucial part of keeping your loved from returning.
Day Reporting Centers: DRCs help those who have
substance abuse problems. Judges can order selected
offenders to go through a day reporting center instead of
returning to prison. Offenders in DRCs receive intensive
outpatient substance abuse services and other services and
skills intended to keep them out of prison, such as
monitoring, GED help, and assistance finding jobs.
Corporate Take 5: local corporations agree to “take” five
offenders who get released. The offender receives special
training, a good paying job and money set aside for
release. The corporation receives benefits such as tax and
bonding help, and monitoring of the offender by the GDC.
Housing Initiative: Some offenders spend months and
years in prison after they become eligible for parole
because they have no place to live. Selected offenders
who have this problem are given help. Sources from the
arguments, and even fights. Good communication can
prevent such problems.
Good communication is more than just talking. It is also
listening and understanding. Sometimes people speak and
listeners say they hear what was said when they did not.
Here are some keys to good communication:
• At least two people are involved in every conversation,
so listening and speaking are both important.
• Look at the person.
• Take turns when speaking.
• Ask the other person a question to see if they
understood what was said. Do not just ask, “Did you
hear me?” but ask if he or she understood what was said
or ask him or her to repeat what was said in his or her
own words.
Good communication takes practice and patience but it is
worth the effort when everyone gets along better. Much of
the communications we do are about problems. In order to
help friends or family stay crime and drug free, effective
problem solving is another good skill to know.