Bard Prison Initiative college graduate tells his story to In These Times

“Marcelino Rodriguez had no debt when he was released from prison in 2019 — and no credit. A Bronx native, Rodriguez was arrested for manslaughter at 17 and served 17 years of a 20-year sentence. Upon release, he relied on cash and debit until he was able to qualify for a secured credit card with a $500 limit. He quickly took on debt in an attempt to build more credit.

“Now, five years later, Rodriguez is caught in a cycle, owing an estimated $30,000 that is ​‘spread around,’ meaning he has had to borrow from one place to pay back another.

Nothing [in prison] really prepares you for ultimate financial freedom and responsibility.

“By most measures, especially in the eyes of the legal system, Rodriguez is a success. In the years since he was released, he has been able to get his own apartment, engage in a long-term relationship and co-parent his son, who lives in upstate New York. He is also a director at a nonprofit that serves incarcerated youth, and for a time he operated his own vintage clothing company. While incarcerated, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Bard Prison Initiative college program. His senior thesis was titled, ​‘The Value of Breaking the Magic Spell: Teenagers, Suicide and the Emancipatory Potential of Young Adult Novels.’

“I agree that Rodriguez has a success story, but it depends how we define success — and whether we believe success means liberation in all of the different ways we need to be free, including financial stability. Rodriguez’s life is full of various kinds of debt, and his release does not absolve him of the realities and repercussions of the precarity of loss and other forms of social debt that folks who have served time must reconcile.

“One way Rodriguez thinks about his financial status is ​‘to never go shopping on an empty stomach.’ Being imprisoned for so long, he felt pressure to ​‘catch up’ to his peers and others, which meant spending money he did not have on food, vacations, clothing and material items. As Rodriguez explained, ​‘I wanted to experience it all, I felt like I needed to make up for lost time, I wasn’t thinking about down the line but the here and now.’

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“Further, the social debt of his actions as a teenager created strain in familial relationships, which he had to contend with as his financial debt loomed.

“‘Nothing [in prison] really prepares you for ultimate financial freedom and responsibility,’ Rodriguez said. Incarcerated at such a young age, Rodriguez stepped back into the world without the traditional experiences of using money. The little money he did receive from family while incarcerated often went toward food or low-stakes gambling; saving or investing money while incarcerated is nonexistent, which does not translate into financial planning post-incarceration.

“Scholarly research on debt and reentry is surprisingly limited. The evidence produced from what is available highlights the reality that those incarcerated come disproportionately from low-income communities that endure debt-related issues on multiple levels. An American Journal of Criminal Justice article published in 2020 found that there are three leading sources of debt for system-impacted individuals: One is pre-existing debt prior to incarceration. The second comes from various legal obligations. And the third is, just like Rodriguez’s experience, debt accrued in reentry.”

Read the full story at InTheseTimes.com.