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Former Felon Turns Scholar

By Jeralyn, Section Inmates and Prisons
Posted on Wed Jun 01, 2005 at 06:11:49 PM EST
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In Houston, former felon Darrell Bruines has been granted a full scholarship at Texas Southern University. Bruines served 34 months in prison on drug charges, after losing one of his legs in a shootout. After jail, he went on to graduate from Community College with a 4.0 average.

Bruines wasn't always so focused. As a youth, he joined the wrong crowd, started dealing drugs and quit high school. He went to prison in 1994, a year after he was shot when someone tried to steal the rims from his tires; his right leg had to be amputated. Today, he considers that experience, including his 34 months in prison, a blessing.

"I feel this way because it took me off the streets and eventually led me to where I am now," he said. "Once I decided to change, I found out people were willing to help me."

Rehabilitation works.

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    Former Felon Turns Scholar | 13 comments (13 topical)
    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#1)
    by DawesFred60 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Why?

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#2)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Rehabilitation works.
    What does rehabilitation have to do with this story? Neither the linked story nor Google say anything about rehab. 34 months in prison apparently did Bruines some good. Good for him for doing so well (he's gotten better grades than I did in my first two years at college), but I think TL is looking too hard for a way to push the "rehabilitation works" line.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#3)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    “but I think TL is looking too hard for a way to push the "rehabilitation works" line.” I agree. They guy was shot in a robbery, not really what I would call a ‘shootout’. And I don’t consider him a criminal for dealing drugs, more of an entrepreneur. In high school and afterward I dealt drugs for dope and profit. I have a much better job now but I don’t consider myself rehabilitated, nor in need of. Five kids though; this guy needs a good job.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Will he ever be able to vote? PW, I like you a lot better now. : ) Roy... he said that when he asked for help it was offered to him. Can we assume this help wasn't offered by fellow chain gang members on the labor detail? Can we assume it included access to books and media resources? Can we also assume that some of the people that helped him were involved in prison outreach programs and were paid by tax dollars to do so. Now... how much did we spend incarcerating Mr. Bruines in total? A man who clearly needed choices and alternatives he didn't receive in his community. Given the choice Roy, of Mr. Bruines receiving the incarceration OR the services, which do you think helped Mr. Bruines the most? See... It pisses me off royally to start hearing these stories about people being incarcerated to receive services - Health care, mental health care, education, counseling. What a fu**ing crock we've made out of freedom and justice.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    More precisely, rehabilitation can work. In this case, it did, as it has in many others. It will never be possible to quantify with any precision all the factors that might make rehabilitation successful. So there is ample opportunity for ugly people to sneer and be cynical at the inevitable failures. However, a wealthy society that aspires to be just must always offer the opportunity to change to convicts. There are utilitarian arguments for this -society needs as many summa cum laudes like Darrel Bruines as it can get - but the real reason is that providing rehab opportunities is simply the kind of thing just societies do in order to be thought just.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Mfox...(aka biker babe) See... It pisses me off royally to start hearing these stories about people being incarcerated to receive services.. I'm with ya (sorta)... I'm sure at least some of these services were available to this guy beforhand... he just chose (for whatever reason) not to use them. Unfortunately, many people need that "kick in the ass" to get them started. It looks like in this case rehabilitation (if we are calling it that) worked.... too bad there aren't more cases like this.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#7)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    I guess it depends on how you define rehabilitation. In these threads we usually talk about it as medical / psychological treatment and education as an alternative to long prison times. Bruines says prison helped him, not by providing services, but by removing him from his old environment. He probably had access to educational material and a doctor, but that's not "rehabilitation" as we usually discuss it, that's just the usual prison library and hospital.
    Roy... he said that when he asked for help it was offered to him. Can we assume...
    Do you mean this comment:
    "I feel this way because it took me off the streets and eventually led me to where I am now," he said. "Once I decided to change, I found out people were willing to help me."
    Is he talking about help before or after prison? Government organizations, or private? There's nothing to back up the assumption that Bruines recieved anything beyond the basics as part of his sentence. If you want to talk about the benefits of private organizations providing services to ex-cons, that'd be an interesting topic, but it's not what we usually call "rehabilitiation" for criminals.
    Given the choice Roy, of Mr. Bruines receiving the incarceration OR the services, which do you think helped Mr. Bruines the most?
    Many services were available to him before going to prison. He was more employable before being convicted (and before being shot) so he could have gotten health insurance and afforded to go to school.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#8)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Re-reading my own comments, it looks like I'm making the unsupported assumption that Bruines didn't recieve rehabilitation. That wasn't my point. My point is simply: A) It's not clear what got Bruines to go straight, other than being removed from his old environment for a while B) It's not clear what help Bruines has recieved C) It's not clear who provided that help D) It's not clear who's idea it was for Bruines to get that help E) It's not clear what subset of that help would be sufficient to explain his success so far F) Give A-E, crediting rehabilitation with his success is premature

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Roy has two arguments. One is with the technical definition of rehabilitation. The other is with assigning a cause for Bruines' transformation. Regarding the latter, Roy surely knows that ascribing causation in an accurate fashion is an exceedingly difficult task. It was hard enough to establish that cigarettes cause lung cancer. The task of finding the cause, or even a group of causes, for a complex social phenomena like Bruines' is immeasurably harder. Even with sophisticated statistical analysis, at best it's not much better than guessing. Therefore, an investigation into what "caused" a profound turnaround in a person's behavior will never be able to identify those causes with enough certainty to satisfy those who are opposed to rehabilitation programs in the first place. Roy is prepping to advance a classic libertarian/conservative argument. Well, we *know* that getting him away from his environment was a factor 'cause that was a new variable. But about the rest, who knows? After all, he had even more opportunities to do the right thing before prison. So should we wasting a lot of money on what may be puffery when simply isolating a guy from his bad friends will do the trick just as well? That the causes of positive change cannot be well-quantified -and may never be- is hardly an excuse to deny prisoners access to the help they need to change. Since we cannot know precisely what factors lead to rehabilitation of a criminal (rehabilitation meant colloquially), then it is only right and just to have a wide variety of options available. Both research and common sense should determine what those options are and which are the most effective. Some won't work at all, some might work on a few, a few might work for a fair number of people. Since people and their culture never remain static, these programs will always have to be looked at, refined, changed, improved, or eliminated. But Roy's assertion that it is "premature" to claim that access to rehabilitation was a significant part of the process of a positive change in a prisoner's life does not make sense, common or logical. If that were the case, human behavior would be a lot simpler to understand than it is. And pathological/criminal behavior could be "fixed" merely by tightening a few cognitive screws.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#10)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    tristero, Well written. I'm pretty nuetral on this whole subject, but... "But Roy's assertion that it is "premature" to claim that access to rehabilitation was a significant part of the process of a positive change in a prisoner's life does not make sense" This is the foundation of your argument and it's entirely false - Roy did not assert that. Roy did not speak in the abstract - "change in a prisoner's life" - he spoke specifically about this prisoner, Bruines. Are you aware of some "rehibilitation" programs Bruines had access to that we are not? And: "That the causes of positive change cannot be well-quantified -and may never be- is hardly an excuse to deny prisoners access to the help they need to change." See, another false argument. If the causes of positive change cannot be well-quantified, then you can't truthfully say that this "help," whatever it may be, is what they need to make positive changes. That fallacious argument will only fly with those that are supportive of rehabilitation programs in the first place. Hardly the folks who need convincing I think.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:37 PM EST
    Sarcastic unnamed one: Well argued as well. Back at you: 1. Agreed Roy was being specific to Bruines. I see no reason why that fact challenges my claim that Roy's diagnosis of prematurity was itself premature because: 2.Causes of positive change can never be well-quantified. Causality is difficult to prove even when it is open and shut. I understand from statisticians that there are serious underlying mathematical problems with nearly all assertions of causality. Therefore, the kind of argument that Roy is a variaton of "turtles all the way down," because no amount of proof can ever be assembled to prove to Roy's satisfaction causality of the sort the Bruines case brings up. For example, Roy thinks that Bruines' isolation was the only new variable but he is, of course, totally wrong. Roy forgets about the nature of time, the humiliation of being captured, a possible talk with relatives among many other things which don't require isolation from one's environment. Finally, 3. If I implied that I know what, beyond a doubt helps, I didn't meant to. Just the opposite! I don't think it will ever be possible to say that one thing and only one thing (or two, or three) is the thing that caused Bruines' rehabilitation (in the ordinary meaning of a positive transformation). What I'm saying is that simply because you can never have absolute (or even reasonable for some) proof of causality in something this complex, that is not an excuse to eliminate or disparage the importance of access to rehabilitation programs that may have a reasonable success of being helpful. It will alwasy be a guess to those who demand clear cause/effects. So I don't see the logic, or morality, of the libertarian position, namely locking 'em up and not providing access to services that might have a chance to help a prisoner change his/her life. Of if you prefer, I find the libertarian position fallacious and a bit timid. Better, I think, to take a commonsense chance on something reasonable that might change a life than do nothing. Put another way: No matter what, you will never really be absolutely sure what worked and what didn't in the Bruines case. That doesn't relieve you of the moral imperative to act. Witholdhing access to potentially rehabilitative programs/opportunities is as much an act as providing them. I say err on the side of providing them.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#12)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:38 PM EST
    More words have now been spent arguing about my argument than in my actual argument. And far more words than we have as first-hand accounts from Bruines, which is the problem. If Bruines had said something like this: "I was offered a reduced sentence if I got treatment for my drug addiction and anger issues. I took it, and it helped me a lot." I would have never complained. I would have silent thought that 34 months is still a pretty long time to satisfy my conservative vengeance-lust, and rehabiliation (with no dictionary quibbling) seems to have benefited society. But he says no such thing. TL and Tristero want to use Bruines's story as anecdotal evidence that rehabilitation works, with no particular evidence that rehabilitation helped Bruines. It's not sound reasoning. That said, I'm sure they could easily find specific cases where rehabilitation clearly did help. Maybe not 4.0 students, but people who switched from crime to honest work. I think TL has posted a few such stories before. I sometimes complain when rehabilitation is portrayed as a magic cure-all, but I admit that it does help. Rehab + incarceration is generally better than just incarceration. And this, I'm just curious about:
    Roy is prepping to advance a classic libertarian/conservative argument. Well, we *know* that getting him away from his environment was a factor 'cause that was a new variable. But about the rest, who knows?
    "Libertarian/conservative" identifies me pretty well. That argument sounds very conservative (change is bad!), but I thought most libertarians were open to improvements. Rehabilitation is often more cost-efficient in the long run, and libertarians complain about high taxes, so I thought they'd like rehab.

    Re: Former Felon Turns Scholar (none / 0) (#13)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:38 PM EST
    "What I'm saying is that simply because you can never have absolute (or even reasonable for some) proof of causality in something this complex, that is not an excuse to eliminate or disparage the importance of access to rehabilitation programs that may have a reasonable success of being helpful." Agreed. Thanks for the "may" and not a "will."

    Former Felon Turns Scholar | 13 comments (13 topical)