Michelle Jones Gives Us A Three Dimensional Understanding of BAN THE BOX

FIRST, A DEFINITION (from wikipedia) --  

• Ban the Box is the name of an international campaign by civil rights groups and advocates for ex-offenders, aimed at persuading employers to remove from their hiring applications the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record. Its purpose is to enable ex-offenders to display their qualifications in the hiring process before being asked about their criminal records. The premise of the campaign is that anything that makes it harder for ex-offenders to find a job makes it likelier that they will re-offend, which is bad for society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

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Michelle Jones was released last month after serving more than two decades in an Indiana prison for the murder of her 4-year-old son. The very next day, she arrived at New York University, a promising Ph.D. student in American studies.

In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation, Jones, now 45, became a published scholar of American history while behind bars, and presented her work by videoc onference to historians’ conclaves and the Indiana General Assembly. 

With no internet access and a prison library that skewed toward romance novels, she led a team of inmates that pored through reams of photocopied documents from the state archives to produce the Indiana Historical Society’s best research project last year. 

As prisoner No. 970554, Jones also wrote several dance compositions and historical plays, one of which is slated to open at an Indianapolis theater in December.

N.Y.U. was one of several top schools that recruited her for their doctoral programs. She was also among 18 selected from more than 300 applicants to Harvard University’s History Program. 

But in a rare override of a department’s authority to choose its graduate students, Harvard’s top brass overturned Jones’s admission after some professors raised concerns that she downplayed her crime during the application process...

Elizabeth Hinton, one of the Harvard historians who backed Jones, called her “one of the strongest candidates in the country last year, period.” The case “throws into relief,” she added, the question of “how much do we really believe in the possibility of human redemption?”

Source: https://www.themarshallproject.org

After reading this a story a couple of times, tears in my eyes and nausea at the upper end of my stomach, I still can't figure out what happened to Michelle's son and in what order. 

• Are we saying nobody knew her mother was abusive? If there were arrests and cop visits and records, then who is responsible for her child's death?
• Did her mother hit her with a board in the stomach as punishment or to abort the baby? If there were arrests and cop visits and records, then who is responsible for her child's death?
• Was her rapist ever even sought?  If there were arrests and cop visits and records, then who is responsible for her child's death?
• Did she have her first mental breakdown before or after she had the baby? If there were arrests and cop visits and records, then who is responsible for her child's death?
• Did she have first mental breakdown before of after her son disappeared ala Casey Anthony? If there were arrests and cop visits and records, then who is responsible for her child's death?

I could research and probably find out. But the real issue here is whether or not I believe in forgiveness and redemption. If she were to stay in jail another 20 years, another 30 years, or 50 years would I believe that the child's life has been "paid for?" The answer is "No." There's no payment for that. 

The realistically achievable purpose of incarceration is to separate the criminals from the rest of us so that the rest of us, our bodies, our valuables, our society can be safe. The other purpose is satisfying law abiding citizens sense of justice, which more often than not, is pretty similar to satisfying a feeling of revenge. 

In a personal statement accompanying her Harvard application, Jones said she had a psychological breakdown after years of abandonment and domestic violence, and inflicted similar treatment on her own son, Brandon Sims. 

The boy died in 1992 in circumstances that remain unclear; the body was never found.... 

In the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him deeply and daily since....

Source: https://www.themarshallproject.org

I don't think you can satisfy a sense of justice or revenge when a child has been neglected to death.

To me the choice is between choosing to forgive or choosing not to forgive, once 20 years, 30 years, or 50 years has passed. Some crimes? It seems like ONLY God could forgive them. But in Michelle Jones' case, personally, I can see how she came to be where she wound up.  

If Harvard were talking about letting her adopt a child, I could see where there might be concerns worth discussing. But I don't see a good reason for refusing to let her attend the college of her choice. 

And, according to this particular article, there's only a bad reason to deviate from normal admission practices. 

A real worry that empathy-less donors will withdraw their money from the school

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Okay. Deep Breath.  For the most part I believe in #BanTheBox. 

Until there are life sentences for certain kinds of rape and murder, practically guaranteed for everybody including white men I can only say I'm 95% behind it. 

That is, until justice is handed out a lot more evenly, some seriously dangerous people will be let out of prison due to things like having tons of money, tons of whiteness in a localized area where it's profitable to imprison blacks and browns instead.

However, if I was ever forced into a simple "yes" or "no," I'd have to vote "yes" and be in favor of #BanTheBox. 

I'd have to support #BanTheBox because I truly do believe that the vast(?) majority of ex-convicts would have a better chance of recovering their lives if they didn't have a SCARLET LETTER effectively tattooed on their foreheads.  

And from #BanTheBox it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to ensuring that everybody that's done a crime, done the time and therefore paid their debt to society can vote. 

And that's important because in these-here United States some people pay for tiny crimes forever, are never allowed to fully become citizens again after going to jail for things like being addicted to illegal drugs

...while living in a black skin 

...instead of white skin (as white people tend to simply go to rehab instead of prison)

Read the whole article here and let me know what you think?

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/09/13/from-prison-to-ph-d-the-redemption-and-rejection-of-michelle-jones?