There is a large segment of the American population that is easy to forget.
Very few people in this country, I believe, have any knowledge of the enormity of our correctional problem. Some states, for example, lock up more folks than entire countries. And, the correctional problem is not limited to prisons. It starts in public schools with In School Suspension placements and runs the gamut to severely impaired people sleeping in the streets to armed teens in gangs. Many, many of these folks cycle repeatedly through the system until they commit significant crimes which warrant long prison sentences or perish through violence or neglect that leads to terminal illnesses. They are indeed God’s children in trouble.
Tending these people wherever they may be is very difficult work. For the most part, their placement is not a factor of chance. They have been unable or unwilling to meet society’s expectations and/or to follow God’s laws. They are often bitter and angry. They want to hold someone other than themselves responsible for their situations. It is very easy to blame the person who is there and they strike out any way they can.
The person on site is very frequently an underpaid and overworked employee stuck in a bureaucracy that is constantly breeding forms that will protect against litigation and ensure the proliferation of the agency. If this person is a Christian, the work is harder since he/she is held to a much higher standard than that of the world. Those who know the Lord are expected to follow His rules and they do not include hitting back.
For many, many of God’s “children in trouble”, the most stable and significant person in their lives is a teacher or paraprofessional, a mental health counselor, protective service worker or mental health technician, a deputy sheriff a correctional counselor or a correctional officer.
The people who do these jobs operate beneath the public radar; as forgotten as those they try to serve. Polite society would rather not ponder the plight of a teenager expelled from school, a mother who self medicates her mental illness with alcohol, a probationer with a sex offense or an inmate with a life sentence. Until the person makes a mistake or something bad just happens. Then, everyone and his brother know what should have been done.
This book is for those who keep trying to serve regardless of the odds.
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