The Donation

So classes are going on full bore. And, I stay busy. Right now, I’m the only college aide: 1. With a college degree, and 2. Not enrolled in classes. That means I’m the only T.A. available to assist. That isn’t a bad thing. Time is flying by right now. We’re already two full months into the year, only two weeks away from the end of our first eight-week semester.

            I enjoy working with the college teachers. It takes a unique outlook to willingly agree to come out here and teach. There is a screening process – to make sure the professor doesn’t have a prior criminal record – and then the pat down and search every time they come out for class. Everything they try and bring in – like plastic protractors for math – has to be pre-approved by “operations” before it’s admitted. And “operations,” like every other office here runs on “correction’s time,” which means it isn’t a priority.

            I respect those teachers who are willing to go through all that for guys in here to get a shot at an education. The easy response, the typical response usually is, “the hell with them. They broke the law, why do they deserve a college education?” That’s a tough attitude to fight. This past week the Wall Street Journal reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his plan to use state funds to finance college programs in ten New York prisons. The Governor pointed out that New York taxpayers spend more to house an inmate for one year than it costs to send a student to Harvard that same year (the State will spend $5,000 per inmate/college student for its prison degree program; it costs $60,000 per year to keep an inmate locked up in New York).

            More important to the Governor was the difference a college education means to a released offender. Bard College (the same school partnering with SVCC to operate our college program here) has funded college programs in six New York prisons since 1999. The results are astounding. Since 1999, graduates of the Bard prison college program have a 4% recidivism rate versus the New York State rate of 40%. College breaks the cycle of repeat offenses.

            These teachers, who don’t get much per class to come in here and teach, matter in the long run to these men. The guys – most of them anyway – get it and appreciate it. I do too. I try and do extra to help, take on more in – and outside – the classroom to make the instructor’s job a little easier. Part of that involves grading papers for “street classes.” The teacher gives me an answer key and off I go, knocking out loads of quizzes, tests, homework assignments for kids on the street who probably don’t realize how lucky they are getting the education they do.

            I was in Math class two weeks ago grading sets of pre-calculus exams from three “street classes.” I got to the last set of papers and discovered it was a set of questions on Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities.” Now, Charles Dickens is one of my favorite novelists, so I went through the papers and was really impressed with the range of questions asked. “This is a really good test on the book,” I told the teacher. “I’ll let the English teacher know,” she told me. Then it hit me; I was grading papers for someone else. “I told my friend my TA wouldn’t mind grading these,” she said. And I didn’t. It just struck me funny that a guy behind bars was doing so much for Profs on the outside. “Ask her if she’s teaching on “Bleak House” (a thousand page Dickens novel that is my favorite). If she is I’d love to grade those.”

            Fast forward to yesterday. The principal called me back to the office. There were two boxes of books up front that officers were bringing back to us, class sets of classics: The “Red Badge of Courage,” “Paradise Lost,” “War and Peace,” and others. “They’re a donation from an English professor to thank us for our help. We’ll use these for our college book club.” We now have all these books we can use, books the English teacher’s “street students” weren’t interested in.

            Next month, we’re starting a series of seminars in the dorm with the college guys. If they are successful, they’ll use them in the re-entry dorm. One seminar will focus on health and discuss meditation techniques. Another will focus on financial literacy. A third seminar will deal with time management and soft job skills. Then there will be a book club with both classic literature and contemporary nonfiction such as “Band of Brothers” and memoirs/biographies such as “Job.”

            Everything we’re working on right now is to give our guys exposure to life lessons and knowledge most of us from the “good” side of the street take for granted. “War and Peace” may not stop a guy from using crystal meth when he gets out, or maybe it just might. That’s why what goes on in here matters so much. That’s why a person like the English Professor who donated the books may make the difference for one of these men deciding not to risk coming back here.

School's in Session 2

Spring semester began the other day and we’re one week back into college. It’s funny really, how close we came to losing the whole program. And yet, out of the worst came a new feeling of excitement. Guys are generally excited about getting back in classes. There’s a new air in “4A,” our college-only dorm (or soon to be).

            There’s still fallout from December’s purge. Computers won’t return to the building until February. Another aide was let go. It’s simple really; you were either with the program or against it. If you were against it, you’re out. Four guys who ran their mouths and cut corners were axed. It was like the scene in “Godfather I” when the family convinces a young Michael Corleone to kill his father’s attacker. “It’ll lead to a bloodletting, but that’s good. You need one every five years or so,” Michael was told by one his father’s capos. And so it is in here.

            Change – even when traumatic – can be good. At MSRs all over the Commonwealth (medium security re-entry facilities) representatives of the community college are meeting with vets to get students for our GI Bill “IT” program. So far, over 50 such men have filed for their DD 214 (the Department of Defense form showing the vet had an honorable discharge and is GI Bill eligible). The first thirty approved will move here in late February; the remainder will be waiting listed until later this year.

            Think college doesn’t matter to guys in here? One of our grads recently won an award from Apple and the college he’s attending for designing a new app. In the press release it said he learned IT development in the “Campus within Walls” prison education program sponsored by SVCC.

            School’s back and it’s busy, and it’s challenging, and it’s making a difference. If only the rest of prison time was so successful.

 

College - Convict Style

Monday morning I participated in a meeting with representatives of DOC’s central office, the warden and his staff, and the local community college. Craig, DC, Saleem, and I – the four main college aides – were asked to speak about our prison college program. See, we have funding again (a big shout out to my cousin who sent the article about Bard College. I gave it to our principal who sent it to the community college. Within a week, Bard and the college were talking.). In January, two programs for liberal arts (under a partnership with Bard and SVCC) and a Veterans college IT program funded under the GI bill. Another school – Virginia State University – has offered to take our students at release and enroll them as degree candidates.

Things are looking up for college inside. Perhaps that is because people in power are starting to admit what those of us in here know: the only effective program to combat recidivism is education. I said that at the meeting. With the warden and the assistant department director sitting there I told them what I’d seen, namely that you can have a hundred re-entry programs, but none will match the results that a college education gives.

Afterward, Dr. Hayes, the community college’s “Coordinator for Prison Education Services” pulled me aside and thanked me for my impassioned remarks. Dr. Hayes earned her PHD last year with a dissertation analyzing African-American inmates and higher education behind bars. And I do feel passionate about educational opportunities for the incarcerated. Only 1.2% of all Virginia inmates have a college – or more advanced – degree. Over 70% have a high school diploma or less, with 42% not even having a high school diploma or GED.

The vast majority of men I’ve met in here have known nothing but failure in school. And that failure carried over into failure in employment. Earning potential and stable employment with an employer who provides benefits are significantly less for the under-educated. Financial success in America is quite literally determined by the extent of a person’s education.

All the problems the incarcerated faced “BP” (before prison) are compounded on release. Only a college degree has been shown to provide the released prisoner with the job skills and self-confidence necessary to avoid a return trip to the system.

The Commonwealth of Virginia spends more than $25,000 a year to keep an inmate behind bars. That same inmate can be educated at one-fifth of that cost, roughly $5,000 per year. As I told the assembled participants the other day, I teach reading to five men each afternoon. Not one of those men (ranging in age from 31 to 65) reads above a second grade level. To a man, they tell me I’m the first teacher they’ve ever had who has taken the time to teach them phonics, and to read to them. Yes, they make progress; but their road to success when they leave here is limited.

College is coming back here. For the lucky few who get in, it is the chance of a lifetime, a chance to put this behind them.

The Graduation Speech

This coming Friday, January 11^th, we will celebrate our second college graduation.  Thirty-seven men in caps and gowns will march into the prison gymnasium.  They will follow approximately twenty faculty members and administrators from the local community college.  This is a real graduation with real degrees and certificates conferred.  Nowhere is there any mention of “earned while in prison”. 

There will be three to four hundred guests present, mostly family and friends of the graduates.  There will also be the usual collection of “dignitaries”, a fancy term for politicians.  Members of the McDonnell administration including the Director of DOC, Harold Clarke, will listen politely as families applaud the men receiving their degrees.  And, members of the Virginia legislature will be here.  They will tell themselves and their constituents that the Commonwealth’s “tough on crime” policies combined with the Governor’s re-entry initiative made all this possible. But they know that is a lie.  These graduates received not one dollar in state aid.  And, the results recognized by this program are more significant than any state mandated re-entry program.  This program has succeeded in spite of the state.

It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I just finished working out.  Yesterday, one of our graduates was asked to deliver a brief speech at the ceremony.  As I have for every graduation – GED and college – the past three years, I agreed to write the speech.  I did what I usually do when I’m asked something like this.  I prayed.  And somewhere in that prayer it hit me.  I started thinking about Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables.  It’s the story of a man sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread.  It is his battle with the evil of prison set against the despair of early 19^th century France.  Ultimately, it is a story of redemption and hope.

“Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.”  Victor Hugo understood prison and the human condition.

Before my arrest I knew no one who had ever been convicted of a crime.  Sure there were the guys in college picked up for public drunkenness who’d spend one night in the drunk tank at jail.  And, in my prior life as a trial attorney in Tennessee, I handled cases for folks who had “a little too much to drink” and crossed the center line hitting another car.  But that was different.  There was “us” and “them”. 

And “them” included all sorts of people.  Adulterers, no good.  Depressed?  Shake it off.  Criminals?  Lock ‘em away.  There’s a reason the adage goes “a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.”  Until you walk in someone else’s shoes, you can’t fully appreciate their journey.

I had labels for everybody.  A funny thing about labels is you forget how little you really know.  I’ve discovered how little my labels mattered.  Good people make mistakes.  And, those mistakes can most often be redeemed.  That it took me to come to prison to understand that basic truth has taught me why God is so much smarter than I will ever be.

“Change your thinking and you can change your life.”  That was Dr. Norman Vincent Peale at his simplest and most profound.  No one’s destiny is defined by their past. Unfortunately for too many of us, what is said about us can influence our future.   That’s why graduation in here is so important.  These men can look beyond the scarlet letter “F” of felon.  They can look at their diploma and see something else, something that may be the difference to them returning here or leading wonderful, productive lives.

Does it matter?  I have to believe it does.  Until you come in here and actually experience the hopelessness of prison you can’t appreciate what a waste this “corrections” system is.  Broken, dysfunctional lives are not made whole by places such as this.  Prisons do not rehabilitate.  They tear at your soul, they waste your time, they destroy families.  And for the vast majority of inmates, from poor families with little education and even less opportunity for a better life, they do nothing but serve as revolving door.

I reached a conclusion about my own life sometime back.  I had gone off track for a lot of reasons – and forgotten who I was and what I believed.  And when the worst happened and everything was being lost, when I needed a break more than ever, I ended up in here.  I spent a long time trying to figure out why I deserved all this.  It hit me.  Sometimes what appears to be the worst is actually God starting you on the way to something better.

Graduation Day, thirty-seven men who have done something most people wouldn’t believe they could accomplish – or deserved.  Perhaps, just perhaps, this will redefine their destinies.  I pray it does.

And here is the speech the graduates and dignitaries and guests will hear.

The Speech

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Cavan, members of the faculty of SVCC, distinguished guests, family and friends.  It is an honor to be given a few moments to share some thoughts with you about this program in this place.  College graduation in a prison, who would have thought it possible.

On Christmas Day a new movie opened in theaters around the country.  Les Miserables, the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s great novel has received rave reviews and huge box office numbers.  The movie, however, cannot do justice to Hugo’s book.  Let’s not forget, his is a story of a man sentenced to prison for the theft of a loaf of bread and his quest to regain his life and his character.  I think if Victor Hugo were still alive he would applaud this program and the students who have regained their lives academic class by academic class.

“Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.”  Mr. Hugo knew something about the stigma of incarceration.

Yet, the men sitting here in caps and gowns and our academic aides who live and work with us in our “Campus Behind Walls” building, are proof positive that a conviction is not a destiny.  There can be something more.  Prison can be a defining moment in a man’s life, but not the definition of the man.

Dr. John Cavan believes that.  We have no greater friend, no greater advocate for giving us an opportunity at higher education than Dr. Cavan.  And Mrs. Cavan and her staff go above and beyond to make the dream of earning a college diploma in here a reality.

Then there are the faculty members – Ms. Tuck, Dr. Yarbrough, Mr. Walker, Dr. Watson and Mr. Lassahn, to name a few who came through metal detectors and pat downs to teach here.  And to a teacher they treat us with respect and encourage us and make us believe we are no different than any other students they have.

How do we say thank you?  By using this experience, this success, to leave this place behind.

It costs the Commonwealth of Virginia $25,000 per year to keep a man in prison.  It costs $5000 to put that same man through this college program.  The economics shouldn’t escape anyone’s attention.  Earning a college degree in prison does more to defeat recidivism than any re-entry program yet devised.  Put it another way, college graduates usually don’t return.

College graduation.  I have spent a great number of years behind bars.  As my release date approached, I wondered what was out there for me.  Would I be alright?  Could I find work?  What job skills did I have that would offset the stigma of my felony record?  These are the same questions every man in this room asks himself because no one wants to return here.

More than anything, this program helped me realize I can succeed on my release.  I am not just a DOC number; I am a man with an education and certification in a nationally recognized IT program.  I am a man with a future.  I have hope.

“Dum, spiro, spero.”  “While I breathe, I hope.”  That is a great Latin maxim.  I would change that if I could.  I would say, “Even in here, education gives me hope.”

In conclusion, let me thank Dr. and Mrs. Cavan and our wonderful faculty again.  Let me make a final plea for funding.  We need more money for higher education behind bars.  More money for college means less money the Commonwealth has to spend on corrections in the future.  And that should be the ultimate goal of corrections, to return as many as possible to society as productive, law abiding citizens.

Thank you.