Complacency is a killer attitude that sends offenders back to prison or jail. It can also destroy a substance abusers chance of achieving permanent recovery. It’s a sneaky little mindset that most of us are completely unaware that we possess. Unless it is recognized and confronted, complacency can even kill.

Complacency is a form of blindness; an ignorance of one’s true condition. Since complacent people cannot see the land mines in their path, they will step on them and self-destruct with an almost boring predictability.

Complacency is a form of pride and arrogance, a dangerous kind of self-satisfaction. It is one thing to be proud of one’s accomplishments; it is altogether different to be complacent. Complacency says, “I know what I’m doing ... I don’t need anyone else’s help.” In this life, everyone needs help.

Offenders have many opportunities to practice complacency. Most do not have to practice it at all ... they are already very good at it. The “I’m a rebel without a cause, and born to lose” attitude held by many offenders helps them avoid getting the help they need.

Unfortunately for all of us, complacency is another of the “values” that our culture teaches and our society encourages. By the time someone commits their first crime, complacency has been woven into their character so deeply that it is barely visible to a casual observer. But to those who deal with complacent people frequently, their true condition is as obvious as a giant neon sign on a dark street at midnight.

Since complacent people don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with their thinking or their heart attitudes, they will not do anything to change them. Breaking through that thick crust of pride and self-deception is necessary if a complacent person is going to change.

People will not change unless they want to change, and are ready to do whatever it takes to change. For many, it takes a spiritual “aha moment” to face the truth, repent, and become willing to change. A.A. calls this hitting bottom. I call it a gift from God.

Many offenders talk a good game, but few are ready to do what it takes to leave the street/drug/criminal life behind. They do not realize how much help they actually need, or understand what form that help must take if they are to leave their old life behind and begin to live like free men and women.

Part of the challenge of change is that many offenders lack a work ethic; they prefer an obligation-free lifestyle where they don’t have to follow a schedule or work hard. Many will complain about the relatively minor hassle of having to report to their probation officer once a week or a month; getting a job and showing up for work every day is a foreign concept to someone who has been dealing drugs, stealing, or otherwise living off other people for most of his life.

They also want what they want when they want it. Deferred gratification doesn’t exist in their world. Anyone who works or waits for something they want is a fool in their eyes. In the criminal world, you just take what you want when you want it.

Offenders have numerous opportunities to give in to complacency, even before they are released from custody. For example, instead of sitting around the cell block doing nothing, they could use the time to make a plan for their life after release. Most do not, preferring to do nothing, and hoping that someone else ... often a mother or a baby mama ... will take care of them after they are released.

For those who make a real plan, that plan will rarely include getting the kind of help they need. Often, that is because there is no help available to them. Teaching offenders how to stop offending is one of the most effective and least expensive ways to reduce crime; it is also one of society’s lowest priorities.

On the day of an offender’s release, a common attitude is “I’m out ... I’m better now.” This attitude is just plain wrong. A newly-released offender may be better off in the sense that he is no longer incarcerated, but he is not better. He’s facing at least three more years of working hard, maintaining a vigilant attitude, and staying away from drugs, alcohol, his old friends, and possibly most of his family before he can say he’s better. Complacency blinds him to the certainty that without the right kind of help, he has a 65 to 80 percent chance of returning to prison or jail.

We show the men and women in our program as much love as we can. Genuine love can heal any hurt and change any life. But genuine love is neither soft nor wishy-washy; it speaks the truth, and sometimes the truth is painful. But if complacency is to be conquered; if an offender is going to permanently break the patterns of thinking, believing, and behaving that keep sending him back to prison, then he must be confronted with the truth about himself.

No one likes to have their good opinion of themselves challenged; I certainly didn’t like it when almost thirty years ago, my sponsor repeatedly put our friendship on the line and risked offending me, in order to tell me a truth about myself that I needed to hear. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of and thank that man, long home with the Lord, who spoke the truth in love to me, and brought complacency crashing down.

Truth and love saves and changes lives; truth and love saved and changed mine.