“We wanted a seat at the table, so we created our own”

Khalil Chait. I went into this programme with a very open mind. I was hoping to make new contacts and friends and meet like-minded people.

The programme lasted two weeks and was very intense. There were activities every day. We went to visit prisons, in particular the former Robben Island prison where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. When I was there, I called someone with whom I had served a sentence in the Netherlands. He’s serving a life sentence, and I wanted to share this experience with him, knowing that he’ll probably never get the chance to do it himself. It was a special moment that we were able to create.

We all got to speak with each other about our home countries. A fellow from South Africa told us that he had graduated from law school and was providing paralegal training to community leaders and formerly incarcerated people. He said that the existing South African laws are quite fair but enforcing them is a very different challenge. To have rights is very different from getting them. He wants to teach people how to ensure that their rights are respected.

During the programme, I found it very interesting to compare what we do in the Netherlands and what they do in South Africa. I could see the similarities and the differences. Each country has its own way of dealing with its problems, most of them depending on their budget. For example, in South Africa, it’s not the government itself that provides reintegration programmes, but rather NGOs funded by the government. In the Netherlands, we spend millions on reintegration programmes and facilities. But in both countries, many formerly incarcerated people return to prison.

At the end of the day, all fellows came to the same conclusion: no matter what country we’re from, we all have the same way of dealing with people who don’t obey the law: we lock them up. That’s why we face similar problems.

KC. One of the objectives of the programme was to create a charter. We worked on it every day and had a lot of fruitful discussions. We split into small groups to discuss individual topics, sharing our stories, perspectives, and opinions. The discussions were organic, and each day we tackled a different topic that we wanted to cover. We exchanged ideas with the other groups and learned from each other’s reflections.

In the Charter, we emphasise that formerly incarcerated people should have a greater presence on NGO boards, and we call on NGOs to create pathways and opportunities for this to occur. Former prisoners could thus become experienced experts able to ensure that policies take into account the realities on the ground. They could provide NGOs with valuable insights stemming from their first-hand experience. They have a unique added value that we can’t find in policymakers.

I believe that what needs to change is the way we look at people who were formerly incarcerated. I believe in the potential of people in prison. We need to give them opportunities, not stigmatise them. By coming to the table, these people can develop professionally and personally, and expand their network. A ripple effect can occur, because helping one person can help many others.

That’s why I set up my foundation. We couldn’t find a platform because people didn’t want to hear us. We wanted a seat at the table, so we created our own.

In the Netherlands, experienced experts are starting to gain momentum. For example, I recently gave a lecture at the University of Amsterdam as an experienced expert to criminology students. This type of event is starting to develop, and the future of experienced experts seems very promising.

KC. Everyone who commits a crime comes from a community. The problem is that when a person commits a crime, the community no longer considers that person as one of its own, whereas it should take its share of responsibility for the factors that led the person to commit the crime. Placing a person in prison excludes them from their community and pushes them out of sight. The community no longer feels the need to look after that person. It’s an escape from the problem rather than a solution.

I’m not saying that the perpetrators aren’t responsible for their actions, but I do think that communities create contexts in which someone can become desperate enough to make the wrong choices. For example, when a country like the Netherlands chose to cut mental health care budgets, we did so as a nation, as a community, as a society. However, what happened was that citizens suffering from mental illnesses began to self-medicate and ended up in prison for making the wrong choices.

Today, we only read about crimes in the press. We should instead be looking at our own responsibility in creating the context for such actions. We produce heroes and villains, but we need to take ownership of both, not just the heroes.

Before I started working for Humanitas, I worked in a homeless shelter. In the Netherlands, the law states that if a person commits a large number of minor offences in the span of one or two years, they can be given a long sentence. Many social workers and assistants who see people drinking too much on the streets or becoming a nuisance put together a file to monitor them and see if they repeatedly break the law.

In collaboration with the police, they build up a file of all these minor offences and they hope that the file will be large enough within a year for the offenders to be sentenced to a prison term of two or more years. This illustrates a way of circumventing the problem instead of tackling its root cause. What does prison do to help them change from being a nuisance? Nothing, so once they are released, they return to being a nuisance, and prison is once again seen as the solution, a never-ending cycle.

When we look at the way societies treated offenders 100 years ago, we see it as barbaric. A hundred years from now, they will look at us and think the same. So much remains to be done.