An article in the November 16 Commercial Appeal had this headline that immediately captured my attention: After guilty plea, student to gets released to treatment program. The story was about a student, during Juvenile Court hearing, pleading guilty of shooting a class mate in a South Memphis school building in September.
The 13-year-old suspect faced a charge for attempted first-degree murder. He had initially appeared on video before a judge the day after the shooting. The judge ordered he remain detained. Now, at the hearing, all the persons responsible for the legal system were present. As part of a guilty plea, the boy was released to begin a treatment program.
I was pleased to hear of the decision for a treatment program, but also that the father of the victim appeared among the video call participants in the hearing. His son returned to school within a week of being shot. He had been vocal since the shooting with a message of mercy “In the midst of accountability, I want us to remember mercy.”
In the pervasive climate that calls for incarceration as punishment and restitution, rather than systems that seek reformation and redemption, we need, persons like the father of this victim, who will rise up as an army of care and support.
YOUTH VILLAGES, JIFF, and STREETS MINISTRIES are corporate expressions of that in our city, but we have numerous other expressions. These ministries provide relationships and skills to break the destructive cycle of juvenile crime through Christ-centered intervention. They desire to see youth flourish free from a life of crime by collaborating with churches, other ministries and the juvenile court systems to provide mentoring and other services to youth in Memphis.
2500 will be released from prison this year within a 90-minute drive to Memphis. FORGIVENESS HOUSE, a transitional living center, is a local ministry that assists men being released from incarceration and are re-entering the free world.
Memphis is a caring city. There are numerous other ministries than those noted that seek to care not just for youth and adults related to criminal issues, but also for the “lease of these” and those who have no resources or champions to assist them through their “desperate” time. All these ministries need help, volunteer’s participation in a caring group, to be a responsible member of the community, in the midst of accountability, we need to remember mercy.