A Prison Director's Sleepover—A Response

Letter in Response to “Colorado's Prison Director Spent 20 Hours in Solitary—but That's Not Enough” by Andrew Cohen.

“So, who’s next?” This was my first question after reading about Rick Raemisch’s courageous sleepover in solitary confinement. I ask because if treatment of prisoners, especially the half who are mentally ill, is ever going to become humane then more of us, like him, must similarly train our empathy muscles. As a resident-pastor of Denver in an area with a high concentration of formerly incarcerated people, I see how stingy our compassion is for this people-group. So long as this is the case, we cannot passively “root” for Raemisch as if we were watching a wily gladiator sweat it out in an Olympic death-match; rather, we ourselves must jump in that haunted cage with him and experience life as “the other.”

I care about this issue because I follow a God who became "the other”—One who left heaven to endure every human experience. One who befriended thieves and eventually died as a “criminal.” The way of Jesus shows us that compassion is not a one-time event but a lifestyle that must be cultivated.

Mr. Raemisch, I commend you for taking a necessary first step through cultivating your empathy for the population you serve. I hope that more of us will join you. Let’s start a public immersion sign-up list through which citizens not only experience the conditions associated with incarceration, but also its full range of civic disenfranchisement: joblessness, homelessness, voting suppression, and hunger. But let’s do so with an underlying desire to reform these social conditions beyond the rhetoric and data-splicing that minimizes the true problem. Let’s start with compassion, but end with justice.

Anthony Grimes