PHOENIX RISING Transitions’ Inner Core Team (our incarcerated leaders) recently invited one Leader from each of the 30 MACG Member Institution to visit and share with them in Relational Meetings at the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI). The men requested these RMs to discover what pressures were pushing, what shared self-interests existed, what Actions were brewing, and what Issues they could support upon their release from prison. Five MACG Leaders accepted that invitation, and on May 16th they joined PHOENIX Leaders for “An Evening of Relational Meetings with MACG Leaders.”

Afterward, I asked those MACG Leaders to reflect on their experience. Thanks to each of them for taking the time to visit our men and to send their reflections to us. As I suspected, the writings were excellent and will make great additions to our newsletter, Transformations. But first, I wish to offer them here, where I hope they will draw attention to the depth and scope of PHOENIX’s vision and work—here, where I hope they will promote further consideration of the Problem PHOENIX lifted up at last May’s Assembly. This biennium, the Department of Corrections (DOC) cost Oregon Taxpayers $1,200,000,000.00. That is 1.2 billion dollars not spent on Education; 1.2 B not spent on Health Care or Prescription Costs for the elderly; a staggering fortune never to be spent on anything else. Now if that isn’t a Problem composed of many workable and winnable Issues, I don't know the first thing about Issues or Problems.

Besides the reflections below, I wish to offer a few stats and facts that I hope will agitate you as much as they agitate me. Kevin Mannix (Mannix Depression might be a good title for this article) is the guy that in 1995 brought us Measure 11, thereby:

• locking-up 15 year-old high schoolers with hundreds of sexual-predator inmates in Oregon’s maximum and lesser security-level prisons
• boosting the prison population by almost 200% between 1995 and 2008
• boosting the DOC overall cost by almost 180% (from $632 in 1985 to $1133 in 2007 PER TAXPAYER!)
• this same Kevin Mannix – still funded by non-Oregon interests (this time, it’s a multi-millionaire Texan) – is now pushing another just-as-well-thought-out Measure 11-like Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Proposal (this one focuses on non-violent & property crimes)

In 2006, more than 2.25 million Americans were locked-down in prison or in jail; that number excludes incarcerated probationers. That is about 10% of the population—the highest incarceration rate in the world. Please consider what that implies in conjunction with this statistic: the children of parents who are or who have been incarcerated are eight times more likely to end up in prison than other children.

Unfortunately, there is no way to measure the human misery involved in Mannix’s magnum opus (Measure 11) so we can’t calculate that type of damage.

Now, to banish the gloom evoked by Mannix’s “Prison is the answer!” philosophy, I lift up the brilliant, hope-filled reflections of our own trusted MACG Leaders.

Musa Olsen, Leader
PHOENIX RISING Transitions