I asked my Juvenile Delinquency students to write short essays reflecting on the labels that had been applied to them as they were growing up.  As I read the essays, I took note of the words they used to explain how other people saw and described them, and I created the word cloud above (worditout.com) .

It should come as no surprise that senior level college students were generally viewed as “good kids” – they are the success stories of their junior high and high schools.  The phrase “good kid” came up repeatedly, as did variations such as “good girl”, “goody-two-shoes”, “teacher’s pet”, etc.  A number of students described themselves as “athletes” or “jocks”, and a few students felt like “outcasts” or “outsiders”.  Several felt like their teachers and other adults viewed them as “troublemakers” which often brought more scrutiny and limited their conventional opportunities.  Most problematic were the labels “slut”, “retarded”, and “whore” – all characterizations which are hurtful just to write, let alone be weighed down by.

For the second half of their essay, I asked the students to imagine what their lives would have been like if they had been processed through the juvenile justice system and formally labeled delinquent (or, conversely, to imagine the opposite for those who lived the experience of formal labeling).  It is a good chance for them to look back on their lives and think about their statuses, relationships and opportunities.  And it reminds us all of the power of labels.  Please, choose your words wisely.

Inspired by the Occupy movement, my Fall 2011 Inside-Out students started a tumblr site – We are the 1 in 100 – representing the 1 out of every 100 American citizens who are behind bars.  Each of the students – both inside (from the Oregon State Penitentiary) and outside (from Oregon State University) – wrote a statement or fact of their own choosing.  Not quite all of those pieces have made it online yet, but little by little we are working to grow this site into a place where the voices of those inside and those who care about people inside can be represented.

We made the site open submission and we invite each of you who has been affected in some way by prisons and incarceration to submit a statement, fact, or feeling of your own.  Friends of public criminology, please share widely.

And, thanks Chris, for posting about our time on the “Think Out Loud” radio show on Oregon Public Broadcasting.  We had a great time practicing the art of public criminology and sharing our experiences over the airwaves.  Here is a photo of our Inside-Out students, alumni, and friends and the very helpful “Think Out Loud” crew.  Please do listen to the podcast of the show if you get a chance!

I’m teaching something like my 10th Inside-Out class in the Oregon State Penitentiary, and I am inspired anew by my students’ compassion and commitment to learning with and from each other.  Even more impressive, they are already taking the learning outside of the classroom and passing their knowledge on as widely as possible.  This quarter we are focused on issues concerning crime, prisons, communities, and prevention.  We are only three weeks into the quarter; we have shared just three classes within the prison.

I am writing this post to share an informative editorial written by Molly, one of the current outside students, and published in Oregon State University’s student newspaper, The Daily Barometer.  Molly does a great job of discussing difficult issues surrounding incarceration, punishment and communities clearly and convincingly.  Molly is a columnist for the paper, so I may be sharing more of her work throughout the quarter as the class continues.

There are more exciting projects in the works, including: a plan to visit our state representatives to talk about prisons and mandatory minimum sentencing, participation in a campus diversity summit representing the voices of incarcerated or formerly incarcerated students, and negotiations about a possible discussion of the class and the issues on public radio.

This is an extremely motivated group of students and they are already providing an important service as public criminologists.  It will be fun to see just how much we can accomplish this quarter.  Stay tuned.

I read this story in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago; it has stayed on my mind even through the busy first weeks of classes in our fall quarter.  Thomas Haynesworth was mistakenly identified by a rape victim as her assailant, and – with no criminal history whatsoever – was arrested at age 18.  He was tried for committing four related rapes and assaults in the neighborhood.  He was convicted for three of those attacks and sentenced to 84 years in prison.  84 years.  Let’s just call it life.

Fast forward 27 years.  DNA evidence has now proved decisively that Haynesworth did NOT commit the rapes in two of the cases for which he was tried.  DNA in the other cases is not available.  With help from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the Innocence Project of New York, Haynesworth was released from prison on his 46th birthday.  He is, however, classified as a paroled sex offender and subject to the accompanying regulations – public registries, restricted movement, monitored telephone and email accounts.  Haynesworth is now fighting for exoneration.  While he is physically free of prison, a dark cloud still hangs over his name and his life.

It’s extraordinary enough to think of an innocent man serving 27 years in prison: imagine entering prison as a teenager and spending all of your twenties, all of your thirties, and half of your forties in a cage – the healthiest, most dynamic years of his life were stolen from him.  And the punishment continues with his classification as a sex offender and the public fear and revulsion that is attached to such labels.

Where the story gets even more interesting, in my opinion, is with the actions of the attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli.  Last year, local prosecutors came to Cuccinelli and told him they thought Haynesworth was innocent.  Cuccinelli conducted his own investigation into the 27-year old case and became convinced that the wrong man was in prison.  He then set out to make it right.

As the New York Times reports:

Now Mr. Haynesworth, 46, is asking for full exoneration on all of the rape convictions, although DNA from the other two cases is not available. But the circumstantial evidence supporting Mr. Haynesworth’s claims of innocence is so powerful that along with his own lawyers, the prosecutors from both jurisdictions where the rapes occurred support his efforts, as well as the attorney general for the commonwealth, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli…

Mr. Cuccinelli said in an interview that he and his staff reviewed the evidence in the Haynesworth case in great detail. “It was a complex decision,” he said, “but it wasn’t a hard decision.” The thought of the wrongful conviction haunted him. “It’s hard to describe how painful it is to me that somebody would suffer what he has.”

Cuccinelli has a reputation as a conservative figure, so his support for Haynesworth is perhaps even more surprising.  He argued in a Virginia appeals court that Haynesworth’s name should be cleared, and he went a significant step further by hiring Haynesworth to work in his office.  As reported in the Washington Post:  “Cuccinelli said he knew it would be tough for Haynesworth to get a job as a convicted felon. So the month after Haynesworth left prison, he put him on the state payroll.”

I’m really impressed with Cuccinelli’s actions in this case; he is a great example of “walking the talk” – truly examining the evidence and acting on what he believes is right.  Arguing for Haynesworth’s exoneration is already quite extraordinary; hiring Haynesworth to work in his office takes it to a whole new level.  Kudos, Mr. Cuccinelli.

I spent the last several days in Washington, DC attending the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching and spending some time with best friend and fellow criminologist Charis Kubrin.  I took the Metro from Reagan National Airport, and I was struck by these signs:

These posters, sponsored by the NAACP and carrying the tagline: “Let’s build a better America together,” were plastered on virtually all available surfaces.  I found it a particularly powerful campaign, and I hope politicians – as well as voters – take the Metro to the airport and get the message.

How to incite public panic: the Oregonian newspaper offers an example in an article entitled “Oregon Court Ruling Could Shave Years from Killers’ Sentences”. The first lines read:

Thirty killers in Oregon could get out of prison up to a decade early following a court ruling that parole officials haven’t followed the law.

The pool of killers eligible for such release could be up to 250 over the next 15 years, state authorities said.

The convicts are serving life terms for aggravated murder with minimum 30-year sentences. The state Supreme Court recently declared those convicts are eligible for freedom after 20 years.

The article goes on to detail the graphic nature of the crimes of several men in question, naming names while reminding the public that each of those men is a convicted killer and may soon be living amongst them.  At the point, the fear apparently takes over for the vast majority of people who took the time to comment on the newspaper’s website.  A careful reading of the article, however, makes clear that the only real change in the law is  that a relatively small percentage of individuals whom the Parole board has deemed “rehabilitatable” after spending more than 20 years in prison will have a chance to go before the Board again this summer with the possibility of release by the end of the year.  Nothing is guaranteed.  Convicted killers will not be flooding the streets.

Last summer I blogged about the day I spent with the parole board listening to them conduct two “murder review” hearings, where they decided if the persons in question were “rehabilitatable” and might have earned the chance to one day return to the community.  I was impressed with the Parole Board members’ attention and thoughtfulness.  The case I primarily went to view was “flopped;” that individual will continue to work on his issues and will see the Parole Board in 2 more years to again plead his case.

The newspaper printed a sidebar with the names of 30 convicted killers and the dates they will see the Parole Board this summer.  It was particularly interesting to me because I know at least six of those 30 men quite well; they have been students in my college courses in the prisons and several of them are leaders in inmate clubs.  They seem to have worked hard to redeem what is left of their lives and to – perhaps against the odds – become decent men while growing up and maturing in prison.

Do they deserve another chance?  The Parole Board has already found this select group rehabilitatable, which suggests that they might.  Does justice require a minimum of 30 years in prison rather than a minimum of 20?  I’m not sure how to judge that.  How much are those extra 10 years worth, both in terms of what the citizens will pay for incarceration and what the convicted will pay as they try to rebuild lives?  How much will those extra 10 years change the odds for the “convicted killers” who are likely to reenter the community one day in the future?

I don’t know.  The Parole Board has a thankless job in any case, but sensationalistic news articles and headlines seem particularly destructive when they incite moral panic without revealing the true issues and questions behind the story.

Nice story from the sports page: high school basketball coach, Bob Hurley Sr., is likely to earn his 1,000th victory in the next week.  He is one of only three high school coaches to make it into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

But, when Hurley measures his own success, he thinks of the young men that he has worked with over the years, helping to teach them discipline, trust, and teamwork.  He can point to the college graduates and successful adults who have come out of his program at St. Anthony, a tiny Catholic high school in Jersey City, New Jersey.  As the article explains:

But his true legacy is much deeper than the lights on the scoreboard. Hurley said he would trade in those wins — every last one of them — for a chance to help more inner-city kids.

“You know what? I would give them up for one more chance with some of the kids I didn’t reach over the years,” Hurley said. “If I could have a second chance with some of those, it would be worth all the adulation.”

Hurley can certainly be proud of his victories both on and off the court.  The article provides some testimony from former players and offers this overview:

Still, even with 25 state parochial titles, the victories are a small part of what he has accomplished. Hurley, 63, has been a father figure for hundreds of inner-city teenagers over the past four decades. He has placed nearly all of them in four-year colleges, most on scholarships.

Some are doctors and businessmen now. Others are lawyers and police captains. One owns a popular restaurant in Jersey City and once held a seat on the city’s board of education.

Maybe there should be a mentoring hall of fame, as well; I think Hurley would make it in on the first ballot.

In our paper on public criminologies, Chris and I wrote about some of the perils of making your research accessible to a wide audience:

We also should acknowledge the potential costs of practicing public criminology. Making one’s work and perspective visible in the media opens the possibilities for threats and hate mail, loss of credibility, or worse from detractors. It can lead to close identification with the populations one studies; for example, attempts to discuss the low recidivism rates of sex offenders can be derailed by venomous attacks from a fearful public. (Uggen & Inderbitzin, 2010: 743)

The latest – and perhaps scariest – example of vitriolic threats and electronic hate mail is the targeted attack against sociologist Frances Fox Piven.  Based largely on a piece of work that was published 45 years ago, Glenn Beck has suggested that Frances Fox Piven is an enemy of the Constitution. Examples of the threats made against Dr. Piven can be found in this article; the author then points out:  “One thing that I think has not been adequately highlighted amid this fiasco is Piven’s own response: the professor has been calm, fearless, and articulate, providing a model of how a public intellectual should behave in such a situation.”

Officers of the American Sociological Association issued a public statement, ending with these words:

Thus, the right to free speech does not ever include rhetoric that encourages violence against one’s opponents, especially in the current atmosphere of heated political mobilization. We call on Fox News and other responsible media to set the appropriate standards of accurate and honest debate.

Frances Fox Piven, herself, has been graceful under pressure, and as a true public intellectual, she is using this unwanted publicity to point attention back to the larger structural issues.  She offered this comment:

It’s hard for people to understand what’s going on in a complicated society. Democracy requires that people have some understanding of what’s going on, of what their own interests are, who their enemies are. But it’s a very complicated society. And moneyed propagandists have taken advantage of that to create a demonology in which it is the left, the Democratic left, that is the source of many of our troubles.

And, one more thing, in case you haven’t heard much about this case or followed any of the links in this post, Frances Fox Piven is 78 years old…and apparently more relevant than ever.  With her her courage and continuing efforts to educate the public, Dr. Piven offers a positive model for public sociologists/public criminologists to learn from and emulate.  It is appreciated.

Two different stories hit the news (features) this week, and I was struck by the similar themes in these bad-boy-grows-up-in-prison-and-tries-to-go-straight-on-the-outside stories.  The first, published in The Oregonian, focuses on LaMarcus Branch, an ex-Crip who was recently released from prison and is now making visible efforts to reach young gang members in Portland.  He and friends wear matching t-shirts branding them the new, self-imposed label of BRO (Brothers Reaching Out), and they “show up at gang funerals and high school football games to ease tensions, they mentor young men on parole, and they try to intervene in gang scuffles before things turn violent.”

Branch claims that his time in prison saved his life.  While that itself is perhaps not that unusual, what is unique about Branch is that he is particularly grateful for his lengthy sentence.  The article explains:

Branch, at 24, was sent to prison for 13 years, four months, a rare consecutive sentence for first-degree robbery and second-degree assault, his first Measure 11 offenses. During his first decade behind bars, he was angry and bitter, often in trouble for fights or gang beefs. But the last few years of his sentence brought a change of heart.

“I’d say those extra three or four years was the most important part,” he said. “They gave me time to realize the life that I lived wasn’t a life.”

Measure 11 is our version of mandatory minimum sentencing in Oregon, and I generally hear complaints about the harshness and inflexibility of such sentences.  This is one of the only times I can remember hearing a former inmate say he appreciated the extra years he served.  Branch even sent a letter to the prosecutor – now a judge – who won the case against him, saying if he had done only 70 or 90 months in prison, he probably would have returned home bitter and angry and jumped right back into gang life. “So I’m not just thanking you for winning the case, but also for getting me this 160 months, because now I see and realize with understanding that there’s more to life than gangs and crime.”

Branch has only been out of prison since March, and he still does not have a driver’s license or a job.  He will face significant hurdles in building a new life and following his dream to mentor youth.  But the choices are his.

The second story, published in the New York Times, focuses on 26-year-old Raheem Watson, who spent nearly ten years of his life in juvenile corrections and prison.  As difficult as his time in prison was, Watson, too, believes he underwent a transformation during his incarceration and he claims he came out of prison this February as “a mature adult.”  Watson doesn’t have a driver’s license or a job yet, either, but he is working toward both and he shares Branch’s passion to mentor young people.

Watson had a difficult childhood, abandoned by his father at age 4 and raised by a drug-dealing mother who died after ingesting cocaine laced with rat poison when he was 12.  The piece of Watson’s story that I most appreciated was the moment when social context met individual responsibility head-on.  The article explains:

Mr. Watson said he sometimes felt the troubles he had faced were a product of fate — a notion that seemed at odds with his stated desire to steer others away from the path he took.

So, the question again: Did he have a choice? He rolled it around in his head, struggling with its implications.

“Yeah,” Mr. Watson said. “I had a choice.”

Yes, Branch and Watson both had choices.  They may not have had great options, but they made the choices that sent them each to prison.  And now they face hard choices again every day.  Criminologists know all too well the difficulty ex-felons have reintegrating into the community, finding jobs, and creating new lives for themselves.  The struggle and the stigma are real and can be overwhelming.  But making the hard choices and “doing good” is truly the best way these men can fulfill their goals of mentoring young people.  In leading by example, they may be able to help influence the next generation to make better choices.

I’m feeling especially proud today of my current Inside-Out class at the Oregon State Penitentiary.  This is a class where students get deeply invested in the material.  To help facilitate their investment and involvement, one of their assignments is to write a letter to the editor or an op-ed piece to a local newspaper.  They can choose to send it individually or just turn it in to me; I had success one quarter getting a batch of them published together.  This quarter, the students did the work all on their own.

Two separate pieces were published in different local newspapers today.  First, here is the content of an op-ed written by Shelby, an outside (OSU) student, and published in the state’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian:

I recently attended a community breakfast hosted by the Marion County Reentry Initiative in Salem. According to its website, MCRI is dedicated to “rebuild lives, promote community safety and save taxpayer money by breaking the cycle of criminal activity.” I heard about the event through a brief article in the Salem Statesman Journal. The breakfast was meant to provide information for community members on how to help released Oregon prisoners reintegrate into Marion County society. Although I don’t live in Marion County, the opportunity was appealing to me because I’m currently taking a class called Inside Out.

Every Monday, my fellow Oregon State University classmates and I drive from Corvallis to the Oregon State Penitentiary. This unique class is held inside the maximum-security prison and it consists of 30 students — 15 of them from OSU and 15 of them OSP inmates. We come together once a week to discuss crime, communities, prisons and prevention. Through this exclusive opportunity, I’ve viewed all four topics in ways I never have before. The Inside Out program is one small way of helping a select few inmates prepare to re-enter mainstream society. Through our class they are able to feel tied to the community again. But we must be prepared to help all inmates.

The damaging stigma attached to prisoners by our society is clear for all to see. Even after serving their time, they forever bear the label of ex-convict. We often hear, “You do the crime, you do the time,” yet we continue to punish these individuals long after they’ve served their sentence. After being released, many face difficulties finding jobs, obtaining student loans, securing housing and readjusting to mainstream society. Unfortunately, many fall back into criminal ways and re-enter the prison system.

At the community breakfast state prision chief Max Williams said, “Ninty-three percent of prison populations will eventually be returned to communities. Therefore we must have a strategy to help them readjust.” He also pointed out that it’s a community problem that needs a community solution. This concept is something we’ve discussed in great detail in our Inside Out class. If community members could actively help ex-inmates transition rather than shun them from our communities, the likelihood of them recidivating is much lower, making our communities safer. MCRI is one organization that’s helping ex-inmates have a successful re-entry, but without community support, those individuals will forever be locked into the stigma.

This isn’t an easy concept for most to gladly accept, but Marion County is up for the challenge.

And here is the content of a letter to the editor written by an inside student, Jeremy, and published in the Salem Statesman-Journal: