“Whoever in charge of Securus must don’t have no locked up loved ones. [Crying emoji. Broken heart. Broken heart.]”

Judah approached

“Then Judah approached him [vayigash eilav yehudah]” (Gen 44:18).

At this point in the Genesis story, a powerful leader in Pharaoh’s court has a member of Judah’s family in custody, accused of a serious crime. Judah and his brothers do not yet know that the leader they face is their long-lost brother, Joseph.

The leader and Judah are already in the same room. So why does the text tell us Judah vayigash, “drew near”?

Maimonides notes that nagash, “to approach,” can mean to contact, to become nearer in space, or to approach intellectually (Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 18). Contemporary psychology talks about the relationship of these ideas in the theory of “proximity.” Being nearer to someone — in terms of contact or physical closeness — can lead to greater understanding.

“No locked up loved ones”

“Whoever in charge of Securus must don’t have no locked up loved ones. [Crying emoji. Broken heart. Broken heart.]” — X post after hours of no service and no announcement from Securus on 5/21/24.

Securus is the company providing phone, email, and e-tablet services to hundreds of thousands of incarcerated individuals and their families. The above was posted during a communications service failure that lasted for many hours, accompanied by complete corporate silence and shutdown of customer services. For more than 12 hours, people outside carceral facilities were not only unable to communicate with their inside loved ones, but were given no word at all acknowledging the situation or estimating when service might be restored.

This meant hours of annoyance, concern, disappointment, and a range of other emotions and experiences for a substantial portion of the US population. At the same time, others on social media remarked on the number of people complaining about Securus, expressing nothing but scorn for people with loved ones inside.

Near to the situation

A few years ago, a US study explored the percentage of the US population with a family member who has been incarcerated. The full 2019 study is, unlike some, freely available in full — What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated?: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS) — as well as in summary. Reporting at the time of its release went into varying depths, but headlines consistently quoted one statistic: “Nearly half of Americans** have had an incarcerated family member.”

**Note that the study itself and all the headlines use the expression “Americans” as shorthand for “US population.

That “nearly half” (45%) gives the impression that incarceration of a family member is a common experience in the U.S. — and not necessarily specific to any one group. Incarceration is, of course, far too common. In reality, however, the experience is uneven: with 63% of Black families reporting incarceration and 48% of Hispanic families but only 42% of white families and 34% of “other” (mostly Asian or mixed race); Native American families also reported higher rates, at 63% (but the study cautions that the sample size is low). More importantly, for considering who has “locked up loved ones,” this widely reported statistic counts people who spent a single night in jail as “incarcerated.”

Even a few days, and certainly a few months, of incarceration has an effect on individuals and families — and families of people with relatively short-term sentences are also among those who use, and are abused by, Securus. But it’s important to note that the “nearly half” figure includes many whose loved ones never had to engage with on-going challenges of communicating with across bars.

The group distressed at the Securus outage is probably better represented by the study segment whose loved ones were incarcerated for one year or more: among Black adults, 31%; among white adults, 10%.

Equalizing and Approach

The 2019 study was not focused on communications, and these figures do not include the many loved ones who are not immediate family members of an incarcerated person. Still, this study does suggest some perspective and a few questions:

Do the 90% of white families and 70% of Black families who “don’t have locked up loved ones,” understand what is involved in com

Are any of the less affected communities willing to hear from those with direct experience?

If more than half the US population has no family member who was locked up for even one night, what might help them understand the challenges involved for the other half?

Return for a moment to “Judah approached him” (Gen 44:18), cited above. The 14th Century German-Spanish scholar, known as Ba’al HaTurim, found special meaning in the Hebrew spelling. The final letters of these three words — vayigaSH eilaV yehudaH, shin-vav-hey — spell “shaveh, שָׁוֶה [equal].” This means, Ba’al HaTurim taught, that Judah’s step forward changes the dynamic and allows the brothers to speak directly, as equals. (See also the Panim el Panim guiding principle at Matir Asurim.)

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