Kevin Drexel ran through a brief bio as he spoke at the Harrisonburg Rotary meeting Monday afternoon.
Drexel has more than 30 years of experience managing the financing and development of affordable housing projects serving communities across the United States and has served as an adjunct professor at Rutgers Univesity. He holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning and studied construction management and engineering science at Western Carolina University. Drexel is semi-retired at age 56.
Oh, and he got out of jail in November, he told the audience.
“I developed an addiction, and I’m embarrassed and ashamed to say, I got arrested twice for DUI. And the second time put me in jail. Rockbridge County Regional Jail,” he said.
The last time Drexel ever had trouble with the law was for speeding when he was 18, he said.
He had to go to jail for the DUI due to state mandatory minimums. The huge body of work he had amassed over three decades didn’t count for anything.
Later, he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which resulted years before from him being hit, as a pedestrian, in a parking lot. He’d had two other concussions as well.
“With PTSD comes things like substance abuse disorder,” he said. “Doctors are still learning about it.”
But before that happened, Drexel was alarmed at the inhumane conditions in the jail. The building are more than 40 years old and are at three times the capacity they were designed for.
“No chaplain. No Bible study classes. No peer study classes. No windows. The lights are on 24/7 — fluorescent lights. No soft surfaces, no curtains, no rugs. The noise, the cacopahny is deafening.”
The most terrifying thing for him was the electronic doors wouldn’t open, and the guards would have to open them manually.
“I just kept thinking, ‘If there’s a fire, some guy’s gotta run and go out to the doors and unlock us individually. Or we’re going to burn to death.’ It was terrifying, actually,” he said.
Jails and prisons are not designed to heal people, Drexel said.
“It’s diabolically designed to make you mentally ill and insane. It really is,” he said.
That motivated Drexel to create his own prison ministry, Stand4Count. Unlike other prison ministries, he does not lead with the cross.
“ ‘Stand for count’ is what they do at 6 a.m. in the morning. You have to stand up and make inventory. Make sure you didn’t escape, O.D., or get killed.”
He began designing the Web site while he was still in prison, and set it up once he got out.
The Website, https://www.stand4count.com/, provides some highly troubling statistics on U.S. prisons. One in five prisoners in the world is incarcerated in the U.S. The United States shares 5 percent of the world’s population but contains 20 percent of people known to be imprisoned in the world. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world — ahead of El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Rwanda, and Cuba. Also, 40 percent of those behind bars are African American; they make up less than 14 percent of the U.S. population.
The more he saw, and the more he learned, the more he felt driven to act.
“I said, ‘Kevin, you’ve got high levels of education. You’ve got money. You have a strong social network — professional network. What are you going to do about this?’ And I couldn’t look away.”
Drexel described Stand4Count as a community working to support the needs of individuals, families, and marginalized groups affected by incarceration. The community has the assets and resources to respond, to innovate, and to be engaged beyond charitable giving.
His agency works to help churches, organizations, and individuals widen their circle to include those on the margins. He’s looking to transforms the lives of others who have been behind bars — both when they’re inside and once they get out.
It isn’t just a matter of criminals getting “what they deserved.” This affects the children, too. One out of 28 children have an incarcerated parent, and one in three will have experienced the incarceration of a parent by age 9, Drexel said.
And the effects of prison last long after the person gets out.
“No matter what your religious beliefs are, no matter what your political affiliation is, you should care. Because that person might be your neighbor. They might live next to you. Do you want them to be traumatized? It’s trauma on top of trauma. Almost everyone there is in trauma,” he said.
And it isn’t exactly a question of choices. Some of the people he talked with personally said the cocaine use began when the boy got it from his father at age 11. Or methamphetamine from his mother at the age of 13. At that young age, the concept of making the “right” choice is wishful thinking.
Drexel wants to break that cycle.
“Those kids are going to become parents again, and it will happen again, and again, and again.”
