Salvation Through a Pad and a Pen
Posted: January 27, 2013 Filed under: juvenile, writing | Tags: drugs, Eve Pearce, prison, social anxiety disorder, writing 1 Comment »By Eve Pearce
It is amazing how much writing can help somebody to unlock their potential and turn their life around. All some people need is an outlet for their creativity in order to get onto the right track. One of the best examples of this is a friend who I shall refer to as “Stevie.” When we were growing up, Stevie was a pleasant, happy kid. He was nice and polite to everyone and never put a foot out of place. Nobody would ever have expected that he would become a criminal in later life.
Stevie continued to be personable and affable into his late teens. When he was eighteen, he learned to drive and we would cruise about together, enjoying the excitement that was to be gained from having a set of wheels at our disposal. He was a typical adolescent driver, honking at girls and turning his speaker system up to full volume.
However, as is the case with many younger drivers, Stevie’s lack of experience soon led to an accident. He hit the back of a truck one day and went straight through the front windscreen, leaving him with significant scarring on his face.
Scarred for life
The injuries that Stevie sustained were not life threatening but damaged his self-confidence. He developed a condition known as social anxiety disorder, which is characterized by fear of social situations.
The Stevie that I once knew was now a thing of the past. He spent most of his time indoors and struggled even to talk to his closest friends, stuttering and stammering his words and obviously struggling. The accident had stripped him of his ability to socialize.
Descent into crime
Stevie’s condition left him feeling useless. He completed a university degree but felt that inability to muster up the courage to speak during job interviews would prevent him from ever finding meaningful employment—so he embarked upon a life of crime instead. He started off selling marijuana and soon progressed to cocaine, using his newfound edginess as a mask for his anxiety. Stevie was still just as scared of meeting people as ever but covered it up with fake aggression and attempted to be somebody that he was not. When he was twenty-three, Stevie sold drugs to an undercover police officer and received a prison sentence.
Discovering his talent
Stevie expected his time inside prison to be a living hell, but it was in there that he discovered that he had a talent. In order to pass the time behind his cell door, he would write about his experiences and soon realized that he had a gift.
Everybody he showed his writing to remarked upon how well he captured the details of prison. He soon had prisoners approaching him to help them put their lives into words.
A new beginning
Stevie left prison knowing exactly what he wanted to do with his life. He was still very socially phobic despite having been locked up with other people 24/7, but decided that it was not going to hold him back from making something of himself. He set out to become a writer. He sent articles to magazines and newspapers and soon had regular slots in several publications. Nowadays he makes a living from his work. Although he is yet to cure himself of his condition, he no longer needs to rely upon crime for his income. He is now a full-time freelance writer.
Although he committed immoral acts in the past, Stevie is by no means a bad person. He is somebody who made mistakes and allowed the trials and tribulations that cropped up in his life to drive him to partake in illegal activity.
Writing was his savior. It not only provided him with a living but also gave him an outlet to express his feelings so that he did not keep them bottled up and grow depressed about them. His story is a testament to the rehabilitative powers of putting pen to paper. By tapping into people’s talent for the written word, we can unleash their true potential and help then to become valuable members of society.
Eve Pearce is a full-time feature writer as well as an art and photography aficionado. She has written for numerous sites on various topics over the past few years.
Images provided by Eve Pearce.
Positive Social Implications of Reading
Posted: September 16, 2012 Filed under: CLTL, criminal justice, incarceration alternatives, literature, reading, Uncategorized | Tags: Brazil, inmates, literacy, prison, reading, recidivism, social skills 4 Comments »By Joshua John
Brazil’s prison system has come up with an innovative program to shorten the sentences of selected prisoners: Redemption Through Reading. The basic premise is that prisoners can take four days off their sentences for every book that they read, at a maximum of 12 books a year. They can choose from classic works of literature, philosophy and science, and must write a grammatically correct essay on each book. Lawyer Andre Kehdi praises the benefits of the program, as prisoners leave “more enlightened” and with an “enlarged vision of the world.” While prisons have long had libraries and educational programs, more prisons are recognizing the specific positive social effects that reading can have on inmates.
Breaking the Cycle
A major dilemma with prisons is recidivism. Once acclimated to a life of crime, many prisoners become repeat offenders. For example: Over 50 percent of Colorado inmates return to prison within only five years, according to the Colorado Department of Education. One way to break this cycle is to reduce the levels of low literacy among prisoners, giving them access to educational materials, current news, topics of interest and a more constructive way to “manage their leisure time.” Fast Facts – Recent Statistics from the Library Research Service indicates that 83 percent of released prisoners claim that the prison library helped them to acquire life skills needed in order to be successful in their communities.
The Need to Fund Literacy Programs
ProLiteracy America offers some sad statistics: Almost half of prisoners enter prison without a high school diploma, and the average reading level of prisoners is below the fifth grade level. Prisoners lack the reading skills needed to be successful members of society prior to entering the system. Quality literacy programs in prisons may be their last opportunities at leading normal lives upon their release.
Program Suggestions
ERIC Digests offers several suggestions for reading programs that will help prisoners build their literacy skills and, in turn, their ability to be successful in the community. As with all students, prisoners have different strengths and learning styles, so meaningful materials should be selected. Materials written by former prisoners can be very powerful. Special incentives and awards can also be motivating, and the low funding can sometimes be overcome with local volunteer tutors, who additionally provide inmates with connections to the outside world. Literacy building should not be dropped after a prisoner is released. Prisoners need transition plans, with skill-building programs that continue to follow and support them.
Some Final Thoughts
Stanford University conducted studies that show a strong connection between reading and social skills in children. Poor readers tend to show increased aggression that they carry with them through the end of their formal schooling, necessitating interventions that focus on closing the gaps early on. The good news is that it is never too late to gain literacy skills and develop a love for reading. An example of this is Jim Henry, a fisherman who learned to read at 92 and went on to become an author at 98. People can turn their lives around with enough will power; books may just unlock that hidden potential.
Joshua John works in community relations for the University of Southern California’s Virtual Master of Social Work program, which provides social workers the opportunity to earn online social work degrees and apply for social work licenses.
Image: Robert Couse-Baker, flickr.com
Illness in the System
Posted: July 15, 2009 Filed under: criminal justice, ethics | Tags: health care, illness, incarceration, jail, prison, prisoners, sickness 8 Comments »
Benjamin Fleury-Steiner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His most recent book is Dying Inside: The HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison.
The overwhelming majority of two-million plus offenders locked away in the nation’s jails and prisons are poor, non-violent drug offenders. Indeed, only a fraction represents America’s so called “worst of the worst” violent offenders. This observation is not controversial and has been well documented in an imposing empirical literature.
Another observation, however, of what exactly locking up so many human beings means is rarely addressed by academics and the public alike: Most of the people swept up in the prison boom of the last three-plus decades lack health insurance and disproportionately suffer from a host of serious-if-untreated illnesses such as Diabetes, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.
When we consider gross carceral overcrowding and dwindling budgets for medical resources, it is not surprising that the federal government and the states have been forced to contract out health services with a focus on cost-cutting. In this way, even the most well intentioned health care workers and wardens simply cannot address and therefore must learn to live with increasing numbers of sick prisoners that needlessly die in their midst.
It is very easy place blame on politicians, prison officials, or doctors for this disturbing state of affairs. But playing such a blame game is counter-productive. The bottom line is this: Nearly four decades of locking up an unprecedented number of the chronically ill uninsured poor is institutionally unsustainable and, most importantly, inhumane and immoral.
Lost Souls Gaining the World
Posted: May 30, 2009 Filed under: CLTL, criminal justice, incarceration alternatives, literature | Tags: changing lives through literature, CLTL, criminal justice, identity, jail, prison 3 Comments »
While studying for the ministry, David G. Sarles began substitute teaching in the New Haven public schools and have been teaching since. He began running also then, up and down East Rock, and has been running more or less since then. But his running pales in comparison to those inmates who circle prison yards thousands of times to compete in marathons.
Last December, the high school writing class I teach read the CLTL post on “The Real Cost of Prisons.” One of these graphic stories was about a 15 year-old busted on a drug charge. It moved the students; however, they were anything but shocked. “Oh, yeah,” said Jermania, “That is just like my sister’s friend who got caught just talking to a friend who turned out to be a lookout. She’s in a juvenile home.” Delphine remarked, “Kids on my block are always offering me stuff.” Others replied with stories of crack houses, dealers, and runners they know from their exurban Long Island towns, most of them middle class communities.
They see some of their acquaintances getting sent up but can’t know what life behind bars is like. How much can those behind bars relate to prison life when they are back on the outside? The writing class can tap into the CLTL site and read and relate to the stories posted. Reading and discussing one of CLTL’s stories, Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” offers Delphine and her writing classmates an impression of what it’s like to fail to resist tempters. CLTL blogs provide a glimpse of writers who work with those who walk the line between the streets and prisons.
It’s all but impossible, it seems, for the bars to disappear for prisoners. One of our role models, the photojournalist Taryn Simon, documented lives of exonerated prisoners in her book The Innocents. Simon’s eye into the lives of former prisoners, many from maximum security prisons, piqued the interest of my writing class. How can those returned to society after years of time served for crimes they did not commit know what to do in life on the outside?
Juvenile vs. Adult Corrections: How Do They Stack Up?
Posted: April 18, 2009 Filed under: criminal justice, juvenile | Tags: adult, corrections, incarceration, jail, juvenile, prison 11 Comments »
Radek M. Gadek is a graduate of the Boston University’s Master in Criminal Justice program. He is the founder of Criminal Justice Online, an interactive blog dedicated to criminal justice academia and law enforcement careers.
Since its inception, the correctional system in the U.S. aimed to keep crime out of the streets. There are notable differences, however, when it comes to the way juveniles and adults are ultimately being helped while within the “system.” One must consider the age of an adult person in the United States is eighteen, and often, this is where the line gets drawn between being convicted of a crime as a juvenile and as an adult.
As long as a juvenile is being tried in a juvenile court and is convicted of a crime there, they will not enter the adult facilities until they turn the legal age of adulthood (exceptions apply). This makes a huge difference when it comes to rehabilitation, suppression of future crimes, and length of sentence.
It’s widely known that each correction system uses incarceration to punish offenders. However, rehabilitation is often the key concept of juvenile corrections, and not adult corrections. There are more incentive programs offered for adolescent criminals. For example, American Youth Prevention Forum states that
Services found to be effective in juvenile justice include: smaller, 15-25 bed, programs that reduce violent incidents; low staff/student ratios that lead to higher academic achievement; five hours of academic instruction per day (usually required by law); cognitive restructuring programs that, among other things, help young people understand thinking errors which get them into trouble; and gradual returns to the community from secure facilities through day treatment which reduces recidivism, results in higher levels of academic achievement and provides more connections to employers.
This kind of care is not fully available in the adult correctional system-it focuses stringently on punishment and offers only a handful of rehabilitation initiatives when compared to its juvenile counterpart. It’s a shame. Even though many first time offenders commit crimes before their 21st birthday, society contends such services would not work well with adult prisoners and would be a waste of taxpayer money at the benefit of “hardened” criminals.
The Prison Diary of Arthur Longworth #299180
Posted: April 11, 2009 Filed under: criminal justice, literature, reading | Tags: arthur longworth, diary, leonard cirino, prison, pygmy forest press, writing 6 Comments »
The Prison Diary of Arthur Longworth #299180
ISBN: 978-0944550-07-6
Pygmy Forest Press
$7.00
From Pygmy Forest Press publisher Leonard J. Cirino:
Arthur Longworth, 43, has been incarcerated since age 18. His youth was spent in a variety of foster homes–usually for only two or three months at a time. He was separated from his sister at an early age and, in his teens, he lived in a series of youth facilities. At sixteen he was released to the streets with no means of support. he had only a seventh grade education and began life in Seattle breaking into cars and doing petty criminal activity. At age 18 he escalated into armed robbery and in one holdup a victim was killed. Arthur was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
***
After he arrived in prison he asked to go to school to get an education. He was told that as a “lifer” he wouldn’t need an education. Eventually he visited the library and educated himself. He is a PEN prisoner writing award winner and has published one of his Prison Diary at the Anne Frank Center in New York City. Longworth’s writing have also recently appeared in Iconoclast, a New York literary magazine.
The diary itself is a collection of eleven short entries reflecting on Longworth’s experiences in the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington. The following are short excerpts from the eighth essay, “About Education” and reflect on the power of literature to touch the lives of offenders.
My favorite is a small book entitled One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich–the story of a day in the life of a prisoner in the Soviet Union. I love that book, not only because it reflects the strength and perseverance of the human spirit in the face of seeming hopelessness but, because it could have only been written by a prisoner…only a prisoner can know of so many of the things he wrote.In fact the book startled me when I read it because I knew it was written about prisoners in another country, during a different time, under different circumstances, yet I felt as if I was reading about prisoners and guards I know, what goes on here, and what goes through many of our minds while we’re experiencing it. There were so many parallels, I couldn’t help but feel close to them. Of course, I am conscious that Ivan and many of those in prison around him were political prisoners, and I am those around me are criminals, but there is still a connection…and that connection is that we are human beings.
***
Maybe I am deluding myself, but I have always felt that Mr. Solzhenitsyn would be able to relate to what is going on here with many prisoners…feel as close to us as I have always felt to him. Getting a sentence of Life without Parole when you are young is hopelessness. Continuing on after that, learning to survive in an American prison and proceed forward as decades stack one atop another, and you have long since forgotten what is on the other side of these walls, is perseverance of human spirit.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s writing inspired me as a young prisoner to continue my efforts to educate myself and, eventually, led me to write a book modeled after his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It’s a manuscript that is passed from convict to convict; the story of one day in the life of a prisoner inside the prison in which I grew into adulthood and have spent most of my life–the prison in Walla Walla. When officials there discovered a copy and read it, they threw me in the hole and revoked my medium-custody classification. But the manuscript still makes it rounds. Prisoners read it because it puts words to what they are unable to, relates the truth about prison, and what it does to those who are in it. I have always felt that Mr. Solzhenitsyn is as responsible for the existence of this convict manuscript as I am.
To purchase a copy of The Prison Diary of Arthur Longworth #299180 (for $7), contact editor Leonard J. Cirino at cirino7715(at)comcast.net
No Exit?
Posted: March 28, 2009 Filed under: CLTL, criminal justice, incarceration alternatives, reading | Tags: CLTL, criminal justice, incarceration alternatives, jail, prison, race, schools 8 Comments »
Anthony Farley is Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. Anthony Paul Farley is an expert on Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Legal Theory. Farley is also an affiliated professor with the Graduate Department of Sociology and African & African Diaspora Studies at Boston College.
Over two million people are imprisoned in the United States. Most of them are black. This is slavery in a new form, as is the scandalous quality of the educational resources meted out to the heirs of Brown v. Board of Education. The attack on freedom and the attack on literacy are, of course, related. Among the many thousands gone the way of incarceration are few, very few, who ever had the experience of a decent school.
Many, far too many, of our urban schools resemble prisons. Visit one of these schools and you will see how dreams are killed at an early age. Dreams are killed by educators who do not love the children they have promised to educate. Dreams are killed by an educational-industrial complex that creates conditions that make such love impossible to imagine. Dreams are killed as an ever-greater color-lined nation abandons the twin dreams of education and emancipation altogether.
Failing schools produce illiteracy just as surely as failing prisons produce recidivism. The failure of these two institutions seems always to escape serious examination. In the Antebellum South, the dream of the literate slave was always emancipation, just as the dream of the emancipated slave was always literacy. Reading and freedom have always been connected in the minds of former slaves and former slave masters in the United States. Witness the trials and tribulations of Frederick Douglass in his struggle for both mental and physical liberation, for freedom from both illiteracy and the plantation.
Our schools fail. Our prisons fail. The former produce illiteracy, while the latter produce recidivism, and both kill dreams of an emancipated future in the United States. When institutions fail year after year, we must re-examine what we mean by failure. When the reformers respond to this year’s failure with last year’s failed solutions, we must examine what we mean by reform. These failed prisons, these failed schools, and all these failed and endlessly recycled reforms actually succeed in continuing the color line’s division of the United States into two nations: black and white, separate and unequal. And there seems to be no exit from this cycle of failure.
What is to be done?
We should turn the prisons into schools.
Books Behind Bars : The War on Prison Law Libraries
Posted: March 18, 2009 Filed under: criminal justice, ethics, literature, reading | Tags: court, criminal justice, law, library, prison, reading 7 Comments »
Mona Lynch is an associate professor in the Criminology, Law and Society department at UC Irvine. Her research and writing focuses on the social, psychological, and cultural dynamics of contemporary punishment processes, and has been published in a wide range of journals and law reviews. Her new book, Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment is due out this fall with Stanford University Press.
I am just coming off of a ten-year obsession with Arizona’s punishment practices. There is an aspect to the multiple assaults on prisoners’ rights and dignity that I have yet to articulate until now–the “tough” punishment policies instituted in this state that directly assault the autonomy of the prisoner’s soul. This guest post is my attempt to make sense of these policies by sharing just one such episode in Arizona’s recent penal past: the war on prison law libraries.
The legal battle began in 1984, when a class action suit brought by inmates at the central prison unit alleged that prisoners were denied meaningful access to courts due to inadequate law library facilities. Under order from the Court, the state agreed early on to improve the access, but the plaintiffs soon returned to court, alleging continued violations of prisoners’ rights.
Federal District Court Judge Carl Muecke ordered the Department of Corrections to supply trained legal assistants to help prisoners who were denied physical access to the library with their cases. The department, however, simply assigned prisoners–many with no legal skills whatsoever–to the job of “legal assistant.” The prison only allowed inmates to use the library on a very limited and arbitrary schedule and forced many prisoners to pay for basic supplies for filing cases, such as paper and stamps, even if it meant that they had to forego other necessities to do so.
Read more after the jump.
Lessons in the Real Cost of Prisons
Posted: December 17, 2008 Filed under: criminal justice, literature | Tags: berkeley, book review, comic, comics, criminal justice, jail, prison 11 Comments »by Jordan Beltran Gonzales
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix. Edited by Lois Ahrens, with comic art by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones, and Susan Willmarth. Oakland: PM Press, 96pp, paperback, $12.95.
This anthology combines three engaging and educational comics with dozens of letters and testimonials from readers. These 100 pages yield a thorough breakdown of how America’s economic and social addiction to imprisoning Black, Brown, and poor people for particular behaviors has spiraled into an epidemic of mass incarceration. Through vivid black-and-white images, well-researched background information, and case studies of women and men in context, readers gain vital knowledge and access to progressive networks that will transform this crisis.
The task of critical storytelling and teaching about life-and-death issues is a careful balance, which the writers and artists achieve well. In each comic, readers find alternative solutions to prisons as we currently know them, learn about organizing successes, and gain feedback of how to teach teachers and how to train trainers.
Editor Lois Ahrens is also the founder and director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, which creates popular educational materials by justice policy researchers, artists, and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration. Potential readers span elementary schools through colleges, community-based organizations, medical and mental healthcare providers, legislators and voters, and people directly surviving inside.
Chicken Soup for the CLTL Soul
Posted: December 10, 2008 Filed under: CLTL, incarceration alternatives | Tags: CLTL, inmate, inspiring stories, jail, music, prison, prisoner, PTSD, song, stories 4 Comments »by Wayne St. Pierre
Those of us who change lives with literature operate on the premise that reading and sharing stories can open the gateways of self-reflection and healing. As a participant in Changing Lives Through Literature for 17 years and a facilitator of a spinoff program for the past 18 months, I have dozens of stories of my own. I will offer two and invite others to grace us with their stories about telling stories.
About 18 months ago I used this notion to create a musical version of Changing Lives Through Literature, called Inspiring Stories. I go into drug/alcohol rehabilitation facilities and the local prison with my program, armed with my guitar and harmonica and copies of lyrics to my songs. After performing a song, we have a discussion, much like we do with a short story in CLTL. Music is just a hook.
In CLTL sessions, I participate alongside one or two probation officers, judges, attorneys, guests, a professor. In my Inspiring Stories program, I am alone with the class. Further, while the CLTL groups I attend have 8 to 12 students, my Inspiring Stories groups usually range from 25 to 40 people. Another difference is that I am on their turf. Usually, at the University, it is the participants who are off balance. The first time I was in a room alone with 40 inmates at the prison, however, I recognized how they felt. Teachers and performers both know an audience smells and reacts to fear.
On that first night at the prison, I had passed out lyrics about a young man, who had been raised in dysfunction. He had used commercial fishing to get away from the noise of his life on land. While passing out copies of the lyric, I asked if there were any commercial fishermen in the room. Several nodded or raised their hands to acknowledge spending time at sea.
During the discussion part, I asked a man who had raised his hand, but had not yet spoken, if he could relate to the geographic cure being talked about. He said, “Look, I was late from fishing and you were the PO who violated me on my probation. I am now serving a two-year jail sentence, because I was late from fishing and didn’t report to you. I don’t want to talk about fishing.” The room was silent for about three seconds and then erupted in a thunder of deep belly laughs. The date was December 20, 2007, just five days before Christmas. With all those men who were to spend the holidays in jail, I couldn’t bring myself to darken the moment. Though the man was two years late and I had had a warrant for his arrest the whole time, I let the group laugh and took the brunt, as it were, myself. It was magical to see all those men, dressed in their prison issued “tans,” having a good laugh right before the holidays
