CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA-WINA – While, Charlottesville, Albemarle, and the University of Virginia have all recently experienced the trauma of gun violence, one local leader has written a message to offer support and solutions for our community.  William Washington, the Founder and Executive Director of the Bridge Ministry Program and Training Facility, a residential behavioral health treatment center, has written an open letter to the community to address some of the gun violence Charlottesville and Albemarle have been experiencing.  An edited version of the letter by Mr. Washington was initially published by the Daily Progress on Sunday March 26th, and WINA has obtained a full version of the letter which is below:

My name is William Washington, and I am the Founder and Executive Director of the Bridge Ministry Program and Training Facility. I have been blessed to live and serve in Central Virginia for 43 years, and my love and gratitude for this community is one of the main reasons that I started the Bridge program.  After experiencing abuse and trauma early on in my life, I reached a point where I needed support.  There were so many members of our community who supported me and they became a “bridge” to help me overcome those challenges so my family and I could have a better life.  I am a firm believer that you can give to others what you have received, and because of the grace that I received from this community, I have been motivated to serve others in the same way for the last 31 years through the Bridge program.  The service we provide in our 18 month residential process empowers men who are dealing with the life-controlling issues of addiction and addictive behavior to become successful fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons who lead their families and contribute to our economy.  We help them overcome addiction, addictive behaviors, and low self-esteem through evidence-based behavioral health treatment, personal counseling sessions with licensed professionals, and workforce development training through our partnership with Piedmont Virginia Community College.  

I am writing this letter because recently I have been receiving a lot of calls and inquiries from the community expressing their concern about the violence we are experiencing with the younger generation in Charlottesville and Albemarle.  The increase in aggression and senseless violence has caused many in our community to wonder why this is happening and what can be done to change it.  I would like to briefly share what my team and I have seen through our service in the Bridge that can hopefully shed some light on why the majority of these things are happening not only in our community, but also across our country.  When I started the Bridge Ministry Program 31 years ago, seventy five percent of the individuals we served were over the age of thirty five, and they had acquired criminal charges based on their addiction and addictive behaviors.  Their crimes and their mistakes ultimately caused them to be incarcerated, which took them away from their families for a period of time but through the support, training, education, and empowerment that the Bridge Ministry program provided to them, eighty six percent of those men were successful and went on to return to their families, raise their children, and impact this community in a positive way.  Unfortunately, during that time, there were so many more who didn’t get the opportunity to enter a long-term treatment program, and they became stuck in a cycle of recidivism that kept them in the carceral system away from their families because we were more focused on punishing drug offenders rather than paying attention to the scientific data which revealed that addiction and chemical dependency was actually a disease and not just a series of poor behavioral choices.  The massive incarceration from the prosecution of drug offenses that occurred during the late eighties and early nineties caused generations of young people from impoverished communities to grow up without the leadership, support, and direction of a father.  We kept these fathers out of the home based on their addiction and addictive behavior without giving them the tools to successfully return to their families or to the community.  When we began to focus more on the crime than on treating the disease, it no longer became just the responsibility of the offender, it then became our responsibility as a community.  Now, we are experiencing the fourth generation of this phenomenon with their children and grandchildren, an ongoing cycle of sons and daughters growing up without the teaching and direction of a father.  The violence and aggression we are witnessing is a direct result of the destruction of these families that our criminal justice system played a significant role in over thirty years ago.  Today, there is a generation of young people who are no longer being led astray, they haven’t even been led at all.  They have no compassion or consideration for others and no respect for authority and law and order whatsoever.  These are the very same individuals who are now having children of their own at a very young age and the cycle of the dysfunctional family continues.  I want to be very clear, I believe jail is necessary for people who cannot abide by the law and put our community at risk.  I also believe in the law and those who uphold the law, especially our police officers and first responders.  They have shared their frustrations with us because they’re seeing this same destructive cycle play out everyday in our community; individuals who commit crimes based on their addiction returning to our community without addressing the true issues that are causing them to break the law.  They become a part of the same cycle of recidivism.  Each time they enter the jail system and return to our community, they commit even greater crimes and their criminal behavior often progresses to violence, which puts law enforcement and our entire community at risk.

I thought it would be important for our community, the taxpayers, and the voters to understand what is really happening in the criminal justice system because there is a lot that is not being shared with you that is putting our community at risk.  I have been working in this area every day and I see things that most people don’t get the opportunity to see.  Even though over thirty years ago we were locking people up for behaviors related to addiction, now in an effort to overcorrect it, we have gone too far in the opposite direction.  In our local criminal justice system, the majority of the cases surrounding addiction are plea bargains between the defense and the commonwealth in an effort to help individuals avoid jail time.  While I believe in finding alternatives to incarceration, the reality is that we are still not addressing the root causes of the behavior and people are being given short-term opportunities that allow them to return to the same environment, be around the same people, with the same economic depression when they need to leave their current environment and receive long-term treatment to heal the disease of addiction and addictive behaviors they are experiencing.  The judicial system is giving them opportunities that they want instead of the opportunities that they need.  There are many defense attorneys and prosecutors who truly want to see individuals enter back into our community and be successful, but they know that the opportunities that most defendants want are going to cause them to return to the system.  However, their response is typically, “it is not my responsibility to be their counselor; I am responsible to represent their interests.”  It is important to remember that they are suffering from a disease, and their judgement is impaired, so why would we let them lead the process on how to deal with their addiction?  We witness the impact of this dysfunctional cycle on a regular basis at the Bridge, because approximately 40% of the men who enter our program directly from the local jails are testing positive for illegal drugs, so even in jail their addiction never stops, and it causes their anger and aggression to intensify. That is what we are seeing play out in our community and our country.  If we look at it through the eyes of addiction, instead of just through the lens of the process of the law, then all of us become responsible to guide them in the right direction, which is in the best interest of the safety of our community.  For example, I can remember when I was facing challenges in the criminal justice system and even though I wanted the judge to be lenient, I knew that if he gave me another chance just to return to the community without the benefit of a long-term program, I would end up before him at some point again.  Each time I returned to the community without going through a process that allowed me to take time to look at the deeper issues in my life, I became desensitized to the destruction my behavior was causing in our community and that is happening to so many young men today in Charlottesville and Albemarle, especially those who are African American.  When they become incarcerated, some begin participating in recovery programs within the jail that teach them what to say to make those who support them believe that they know how to live but on the inside the practical approach to life hasn’t even started and that is one of the ways that individuals become institutionalized.  At the Bridge, what we have learned is not to respond to what they say, but to give them the practical tools to teach them how to live.  

As I shared with you, I respect those who uphold the law, and believe they are doing their best to protect our community, but because we haven’t addressed the root causes of the addictive behavior, the behavior has intensified.  Now our law enforcement is being put at a greater risk and innocent people are being impacted through breaking and entering, larcenies, and even in some cases murder, because we keep using strategies that have proven over and over again not to address the underlying issues that are causing the addictive behaviors.  These young men in our community who are fatherless and being directly impacted by these systemic issues and acting out in violence need to be in a long-term setting where they can see someone beyond their environment who they can relate to that can give them hope for a better life and that is what we do at the Bridge.  It is time for us to be honest about what is happening in our community because until we can look at the reality of the dysfunction in our system and hold our leaders accountable to change it, we are going to continue to experience these challenges.  I would like to take the model that we use at the Bridge and replicate it for other communities in our commonwealth and eventually build long-term Bridge treatment centers for women as well.  My team and I are here to provide the mental and behavioral health treatment, education, job training and employment opportunities to help end this ongoing cycle of generational poverty and violence and ultimately help our community, our commonwealth, and our country become the place of unity and safety that we know it can be.   

Your servant, 

William Washington

For more information on the Bridge Ministry Program please see below:

https://bridgeministry.info/

Follow this link to see a trailer for a new documentary about the Bridge program:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vO8DgTGyh8

The Bridge Ministry Program

P.O. Box 2402

Charlottesville, VA 22902

(434) 969-2991