the chronicle of higher education offers a fine article on some of the difficulties facing prison researchers. the minnesota department of corrections and the university’s internal review board have been very supportive of my research, so i’m counting my blessings.
prison
is it possible to make a difference in a student’s education in just one day? i guess it depends on the day.
having taught three inside-out classes in the oregon state penitentiary, i can say with absolute certainty that spending a quarter learning inside a maximum-security prison can change a life. i’ve seen it happen with my students, both inside (inmates) and outside (osu students). they learn about each other and from each other in ways that forever change their perspectives about crime, conformity, punishment, and prisons.
the challenge for me lately is to figure out if i can extend that kind of learning opportunity to more students in my larger on-campus classes. the first experiment took place this week when i took a dozen osu students into the penitentiary to meet with the lifer’s club. for me, the main goal was to humanize the other — to let the two groups interact and ask each other questions in a relatively informal setting (there were ground rules, of course, including strict limits as to the personal information exchanged. i was in no way bringing a dating pool into the prison). i wasn’t sure how much would be accomplished in one 2-hour session, but the students and the lifers were eager for the opportunity to meet. after getting through all the red tape, i was happy to facilitate the meeting between the two groups.
so what was the result? i asked the osu students for feedback and here are excerpts from some of their comments:
Thank you so much for giving me and the other students the opportunity to have an experience such as this one. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my college career. I appreciate it. I thought the lifers were great. I think it’s only natural for everyone to be a little nervous at first so I don’t know how to get around that, but they were all very open and respectful, and most were very eager to have discussion after a little warming up. I got so many different perspectives and insights from them, it was very beneficial.
The time we spent with the lifers was really life changing on how I now view prisons and inmates. I had never been to a prison before and definitely have never spoken to a big room of convicts. Every single inmate that I was able to talk with was very respectful of me and the other students in my group. I was surprised that so many had a positive outlook on life, even after being locked up for years and having many years to go until they had a chance of parole and some not even having that chance.
I went into this thinking these are all going to be bad guys with no personality, very mean, no remorse. I was really nervous when they all walked out. But after talking to a lot of them you realize they are humans too.
I would just really encourage those who participated to share with others what you saw, what you experienced, and encourage people to open their eyes and hearts to the idea that these men are PEOPLE, people who have paid a huge debt for their crimes and should be forgiven and given a chance to succeed in life.
so, i guess you can make a significant difference and push the limits of education in one day. it’s good to know. tomorrow morning i have a meeting at a correctional facility for girls and young women to discuss ways that my delinquency and sociology of education students might work with them in service-learning projects spring quarter (as in later this month). it will be an enormous amount of work to set it up, but it just may be worth it.
on another note, this blog will be moving to a new address shortly and it looks like we may be gaining new friends and readers in the process. stay tuned…
via the sentencing project:
The Senate passed the Second Chance Act of 2007 late Tuesday, which will ease the re-entry process for individuals leaving prison by providing funding for prisoner mentoring programs, job training and rehabilitative treatment. The legislation, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-DE), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), now awaits approval by President Bush – who in his 2004 State of the Union address advocated for a $300 million Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.
The legislation was passed by a voice vote after the Senate adopted a concurrent resolution, H Con Res 270, which included minor changes to the measure. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 347 to 62 to pass the Second Chance Act of 2007 in November.
The Second Chance Act will help provide necessary services to the nearly 700,000 people leaving prison each year by increasing funding designed to protect public safety and reduce recidivism rates. The bill’s provisions authorize $362 million to expand assistance for people currently incarcerated, those returning to their communities after incarceration, and children with parents in prison. The services to be funded under the bill include:
*mentoring programs for adults and juveniles leaving prison;
*drug treatment during and after incarceration, including family-based treatment for incarcerated parents;
*education and job training in prison;
*alternatives to incarceration for parents convicted of non-violent drug offenses;
*supportive programming for children of incarcerated parents; and early release for certain elderly prisoners convicted of non-violent offenses.
The reform bill was widely supported by civil rights, criminal Justice, law enforcement and religious organizations and had broad bipartisan support in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
i’m perplexed at the attention to the pew foundation’s recent 1-in-100 study, since i figured that by now most of us had at least a dim sense of the social distribution of criminal punishment. the risk is far greater than 1 percent for many segments of the population and far lower than 1 percent for many other segments.
the 1 percent figure is misleading because it aggregates a bunch of zeros with a bunch of 50 percents. c’mon, just think about the denominator for a second. if we exclude those at essentially zero risk of prison, the percentage quickly rises. do you really think that your great grandmother in the birchwood convalescent center is at any risk for incarceration in a state penitentiary? the likelihood of incarceration is far greater for the working-age population, and far, far greater for the working-age male population, and far, far, far greater for the working-age african american male population.
and that’s just the denominator. now think about the numerator. we’re talking about people sleeping in a cell tonight, and not talking about anyone who slept in a cell last night (but not tonight) and who will sleep in a cell tomorrow night (but not tonight). when you add in the formerly or recently incarcerated, and those who’ve served lengthy probation sentences, the risk of imprisonment far exceeds 1-in-100. in 2006, melissa, jeff, and i estimated the felon and ex-felon population at 7.5 percent of the adult population, 22 percent of the black adult population, and 33 percent of the black adult male population.
another way to think of such risks concerns the election. according to paul campos:
During football games, the University of Michigan’s stadium hosts about 111,000 people. If you filled the place with randomly selected 60-year-old white women, around 10 of them would turn out to be prison inmates. If you did the same with 46-year-old black men, about 5,500 would be current residents of our prisons and jails. In other words, if we took into account only race, gender and age, Obama’s chances of being in prison would be 550 times higher than Clinton’s. Here’s a good question for a presidential debate: “Do you think 46-year-old black men are 550 times more likely to deserve to be in prison than 60-year-old white women?”
it seems everyone is writing about the story that the U.S. currently imprisons 1 in 100 adults. i’m glad the story is making news and getting attention, but ultimately ashamed of the statistic. rather than write about the general trends, i thought i would point out a few facts about oregon and imprisonment. with my involvement teaching inside-out classes and teaching introductory sociology in the oregon state penitentiary, i spend a lot of time in prison these days and this all hits close to home for me.
it turns out that oregon earned a dubious distinction in this study: according to the oregonian newspaper, oregon spends a bigger percentage of its state budget to lock up criminals and supervise those on parole than any other state. we’re number one. and unfortunately, still growing. oregon’s mandatory minimum sentences already deeply affect state prison populations, and in november we will vote on two alternatives to create mandatory minimums for drug offenses and property offenses. projected growth for the prison population is 12% to 44%, which would put oregon at the top of the list for prison growth as well as spending.
this affects us all, of course, in big and small ways. where are the priorities for our state? as an oregonian editorial reports: we’re one of five states that spends more on imprisoning people than on sending them to college. as a professor at a state university, i can attest that we have faced budget cuts and crises nearly every year for the past six years. as a frequent volunteer/teacher in the state’s maximum-security prison, i can also attest that mandatory minimums–with few options for treatment or rehabilitation for the offenders who will someday return to our communities–are absolutely not the best use of our collective resources.
i hope we join texas (texas!!) and other states in focusing on getting smart on crime rather than spending so much of our budget trying to be the toughest.
via the urban institute’s Justice policy center:
Broken Bonds: Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with Incarcerated Mothers
Thursday, February 14
9 am ET / 8 am CT / 7 am MT / 6 am PT
Program length: 1.5 hours
Register Now
Description
As the population of incarcerated women grows, so does the number of children whose mothers are absent from their lives. Current estimates indicate that on any given day, more than 150,000 children have a mother in prison, yet far too little is known about these children and their needs and experiences. What are their home environments like before, during, and after incarceration? If they are in foster care, when did they enter the system, and what are their prospects for family stability? What are the barriers to healthy mother-child relationships? What emotional and behavioral challenges do these children face? What can charitable organizations, service providers, and policymakers do to address those challenges?
With these questions in mind, this panel seeks to cast a bright light on this often invisible population of children. The discussion will illustrate the scope of the problem; explore the challenges these children will likely encounter as they negotiate new living arrangements, family relationships, and financial circumstances; and highlight programs and policies that hold promise for better serving this vulnerable population.
Speakers:
Sandra Barnhill, executive director and CEO, Foreverfamily
Amy Dworsky, senior researcher, Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago
Thomasina Hiers, director of programs and services, Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
Nancy La Vigne, senior research associate, Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute
Moderator: Laura Sullivan, correspondent, National Public Radio
Register for the Webcast Today!
The audio recording of the webcast will be available online at http://www.urban.org/Pressroom/events/index.cfm by February 19.
The webcast is free. To join the webcast, you need a computer with a high-speed Internet connection. The audio for the webcast is available over the Internet only (no telephone connections).
Resources
Families Left Behind: The Hidden Costs of Incarceration and Reentry (pdf)
Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities
Audio recording – Racial Disparity in the Child Welfare System
via nij: the national institute of Justice is hosting an online discussion forum this week on research bearing on the prison rape elimination act. even basic questions about the prevalence of prison sexual assault are fiercely contested, so i’d expect a lively discussion.
Sexual Victimization in Prisons: Moving Toward Elimination
February 7, 2008: 2pm–4pm ESTFree online event. Registration required.
One of every 22 men and women sentenced to imprisonment in the United States reported that they were assaulted sexually while incarcerated.
Sexual victimization in prisons is the issue, elimination is the goal. Join a group of experts to discuss the state of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) research—what data is available and what’s yet to come. The experts will examine ways to move from better understanding to reliable prevention and eventual elimination. View a detailed description of the event and register today.
it’s been almost a year since my first inside-out class. i taught three inside-out classes at the oregon state penitentiary in 2007, and each has been a wonderful experience. it is transformative education at its very best, bringing together university students and inmates in a collaborative, productive, honest, and fun learning environment. i’ve become an ambassador for the program, promoting it enthusiastically to friends and colleagues at the last criminology meetings, and i’m excited to be a member of inside-out’s newly formed national research committee.
i won’t be teaching an inside-out class this quarter, but starting tomorrow i will be teaching an introduction to sociology course (in a pilot program with private funding for most of the students’ tuition) for 28 inmates in the penitentiary. at least eight of them are former inside students of mine, some of whom are paying full tuition for the opportunity to continue their educations. i’m proud of them; it will be great to have them in class again.
when i returned to campus today, i found a christmas card from inside students from my first inside-out class a year ago. seven of the fifteen inside guys wrote warm messages to me and their former classmates, sharing their gratitude and lasting friendship. i’m especially touched by this since they were not allowed to continue direct contact with their outside classmates after the course ended in march. a year after our first class, they remember us and care enough to take the time and effort to send us greetings and kind thoughts. these classes are making a real difference in the lives of students on both sides of the prison’s walls. and in my life, too, of course. i’ve spent a lot of the last year in prison, and it’s been great. i’m grateful to all of the individuals who participated and were brave enough to take the journey with me.
i’ve been thinking about this story from the dallas morning news for a couple of days. after serving 27 years in prison for aggravated rape, charles allen chatman was exonerated and set free. chatman always proclaimed his innocence, and recent genetic tests showed that he could not have committed the crime.
in some ways, this case is extraordinary. the judge and the current district attorney seemed to take a special interest in chatman and went beyond official duties to try to help. the article explains:
Judge Creuzot pushed for the specialized DNA test that cleared Mr. Chatman after becoming concerned that he might be innocent. At the hearing, the judge introduced Mr. Chatman to a dentist who has agreed to repair his teeth and to prisoner advocate Joyce Ann Brown, who herself was wrongly imprisoned for almost a decade. ‘I’ll do anything and everything I can to help you,’ the judge said…
District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has made DNA-based exonerations a hallmark of his first year in office, apologized to Mr. Chatman, shook his hand and praised his long effort to clear himself. ‘You are an example of how Justice is supposed to work,’ Mr. Watkins told him.
i think this case shows the potential good of individuals working in the system, but it seems to me a long way from being how Justice is supposed to work. chatman spent 27 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. 27 years. he was 20 when he was first incarcerated in 1981. he is 47 now and is going to have to try to adjust to a whole new world and culture full of technological wonders he couldn’t possibly have imagined as a young, free man. his only specific plan at his release was to “get something good to eat.”
it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be wrongly imprisoned for 27 years and to finally be given a second chance. i hope the world is kind to mr. chatman and others like him in their remaining years.
we finally had a relatively healthy group and all 30 students made it to our inside-out class on wednesday night. the oregon department of corrections is currently in the news as the food buyer for all oregon prisons is accused shady dealings and of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks. the story broke earlier in the week and i thought it might be useful to give our inside students a chance to comment.
they seemed to believe that the DOC is guilty of nepotism on a large scale, and they were very well-informed as to the details of the current case. as the oregonian reports, fred monem appeared to have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars, reducing the system’s daily meal costs by 40 percent: “Under special procurement rules, Monem aggressively pursued distressed and bulk foods on the spot market. The savings have helped Oregon regularly rank among the lowest in the nation for per-inmate food costs.” monem also apparently thought quite well of himself. in his 2005 performance review, he gave himself very high marks: “Continually striving to exceed professional and ethical standards,” he wrote of his work, “as well as setting the highest measurement as a role model for fellow staff members.”
hmm. unfortunately, it seems that while buying distressed and expiring food for inmate consumption, monem collected more than $600,000 in kickbacks over the last 5 years. while his state salary was around $75,000, monem was driving a $77,000 BMW; when federal agents searched monem’s home and safe deposit box, they found more than $530,000 in cash.
so, i thought it important to give our inside students a chance to talk about prison food and air their indignation. they took the opportunity and shared many stories about the food and problems with the system with the outside students. a piece that i have heard now from three different sources (including the oregonian story) is that inmates were repeatedly fed bait fish from boxes clearly marked “not fit for human consumption.”
the monem case led into the question of why individuals commit crime and we discussed in small groups some of the theories/explanations (social learning, social control, etc.) for such behavior. i’m pleased to say that the inside students — most of whom have no background in sociology or criminology at all — are struggling through the academic readings and doing a very good job of making connections between the theories and their own evidence and understanding of causes of crime. in fact, one of my inside students wrote a sophisticated essay discussing four different theories — above and beyond what was required in the assignment and by far the best paper of the week. they are making the most of this opportunity.
finally, for now, because the prison water is a bit suspect, the administration arranged for us to share bottled water during class. the first 2 weeks we had a couple of gallon jugs waiting for us; this week, there were 31 individual bottles along with a note saying that i needed to make sure we got back all 31 bottles before anyone left. apparently, they can be used to make “pruno” in the cells, so the administation wanted to make sure none of our inside students left with contraband.
in our closing circle, one of the men made the week’s most memorable statement when he said: “i knew about bottled water, but i’ve been in since 1983 and this is my first ever bottle of water.”
small privileges and a lot to think about. wednesdays have become nearly all of the oregon inside-outers’ favorite night. i’ll say it again: i can’t wait for next week!
is it possible to make a difference in a student’s education in just one day? i guess it depends on the day.
having taught three inside-out classes in the oregon state penitentiary, i can say with absolute certainty that spending a quarter learning inside a maximum-security prison can change a life. i’ve seen it happen with my students, both inside (inmates) and outside (osu students). they learn about each other and from each other in ways that forever change their perspectives about crime, conformity, punishment, and prisons.
the challenge for me lately is to figure out if i can extend that kind of learning opportunity to more students in my larger on-campus classes. the first experiment took place this week when i took a dozen osu students into the penitentiary to meet with the lifer’s club. for me, the main goal was to humanize the other — to let the two groups interact and ask each other questions in a relatively informal setting (there were ground rules, of course, including strict limits as to the personal information exchanged. i was in no way bringing a dating pool into the prison). i wasn’t sure how much would be accomplished in one 2-hour session, but the students and the lifers were eager for the opportunity to meet. after getting through all the red tape, i was happy to facilitate the meeting between the two groups.
so what was the result? i asked the osu students for feedback and here are excerpts from some of their comments:
Thank you so much for giving me and the other students the opportunity to have an experience such as this one. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my college career. I appreciate it. I thought the lifers were great. I think it’s only natural for everyone to be a little nervous at first so I don’t know how to get around that, but they were all very open and respectful, and most were very eager to have discussion after a little warming up. I got so many different perspectives and insights from them, it was very beneficial.
The time we spent with the lifers was really life changing on how I now view prisons and inmates. I had never been to a prison before and definitely have never spoken to a big room of convicts. Every single inmate that I was able to talk with was very respectful of me and the other students in my group. I was surprised that so many had a positive outlook on life, even after being locked up for years and having many years to go until they had a chance of parole and some not even having that chance.
I went into this thinking these are all going to be bad guys with no personality, very mean, no remorse. I was really nervous when they all walked out. But after talking to a lot of them you realize they are humans too.
I would just really encourage those who participated to share with others what you saw, what you experienced, and encourage people to open their eyes and hearts to the idea that these men are PEOPLE, people who have paid a huge debt for their crimes and should be forgiven and given a chance to succeed in life.
so, i guess you can make a significant difference and push the limits of education in one day. it’s good to know. tomorrow morning i have a meeting at a correctional facility for girls and young women to discuss ways that my delinquency and sociology of education students might work with them in service-learning projects spring quarter (as in later this month). it will be an enormous amount of work to set it up, but it just may be worth it.
on another note, this blog will be moving to a new address shortly and it looks like we may be gaining new friends and readers in the process. stay tuned…
via the sentencing project:
The Senate passed the Second Chance Act of 2007 late Tuesday, which will ease the re-entry process for individuals leaving prison by providing funding for prisoner mentoring programs, job training and rehabilitative treatment. The legislation, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-DE), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), now awaits approval by President Bush – who in his 2004 State of the Union address advocated for a $300 million Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.
The legislation was passed by a voice vote after the Senate adopted a concurrent resolution, H Con Res 270, which included minor changes to the measure. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 347 to 62 to pass the Second Chance Act of 2007 in November.
The Second Chance Act will help provide necessary services to the nearly 700,000 people leaving prison each year by increasing funding designed to protect public safety and reduce recidivism rates. The bill’s provisions authorize $362 million to expand assistance for people currently incarcerated, those returning to their communities after incarceration, and children with parents in prison. The services to be funded under the bill include:
*mentoring programs for adults and juveniles leaving prison;
*drug treatment during and after incarceration, including family-based treatment for incarcerated parents;
*education and job training in prison;
*alternatives to incarceration for parents convicted of non-violent drug offenses;
*supportive programming for children of incarcerated parents; and early release for certain elderly prisoners convicted of non-violent offenses.
The reform bill was widely supported by civil rights, criminal Justice, law enforcement and religious organizations and had broad bipartisan support in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
i’m perplexed at the attention to the pew foundation’s recent 1-in-100 study, since i figured that by now most of us had at least a dim sense of the social distribution of criminal punishment. the risk is far greater than 1 percent for many segments of the population and far lower than 1 percent for many other segments.
the 1 percent figure is misleading because it aggregates a bunch of zeros with a bunch of 50 percents. c’mon, just think about the denominator for a second. if we exclude those at essentially zero risk of prison, the percentage quickly rises. do you really think that your great grandmother in the birchwood convalescent center is at any risk for incarceration in a state penitentiary? the likelihood of incarceration is far greater for the working-age population, and far, far greater for the working-age male population, and far, far, far greater for the working-age african american male population.
and that’s just the denominator. now think about the numerator. we’re talking about people sleeping in a cell tonight, and not talking about anyone who slept in a cell last night (but not tonight) and who will sleep in a cell tomorrow night (but not tonight). when you add in the formerly or recently incarcerated, and those who’ve served lengthy probation sentences, the risk of imprisonment far exceeds 1-in-100. in 2006, melissa, jeff, and i estimated the felon and ex-felon population at 7.5 percent of the adult population, 22 percent of the black adult population, and 33 percent of the black adult male population.
another way to think of such risks concerns the election. according to paul campos:
During football games, the University of Michigan’s stadium hosts about 111,000 people. If you filled the place with randomly selected 60-year-old white women, around 10 of them would turn out to be prison inmates. If you did the same with 46-year-old black men, about 5,500 would be current residents of our prisons and jails. In other words, if we took into account only race, gender and age, Obama’s chances of being in prison would be 550 times higher than Clinton’s. Here’s a good question for a presidential debate: “Do you think 46-year-old black men are 550 times more likely to deserve to be in prison than 60-year-old white women?”
it seems everyone is writing about the story that the U.S. currently imprisons 1 in 100 adults. i’m glad the story is making news and getting attention, but ultimately ashamed of the statistic. rather than write about the general trends, i thought i would point out a few facts about oregon and imprisonment. with my involvement teaching inside-out classes and teaching introductory sociology in the oregon state penitentiary, i spend a lot of time in prison these days and this all hits close to home for me.
it turns out that oregon earned a dubious distinction in this study: according to the oregonian newspaper, oregon spends a bigger percentage of its state budget to lock up criminals and supervise those on parole than any other state. we’re number one. and unfortunately, still growing. oregon’s mandatory minimum sentences already deeply affect state prison populations, and in november we will vote on two alternatives to create mandatory minimums for drug offenses and property offenses. projected growth for the prison population is 12% to 44%, which would put oregon at the top of the list for prison growth as well as spending.
this affects us all, of course, in big and small ways. where are the priorities for our state? as an oregonian editorial reports: we’re one of five states that spends more on imprisoning people than on sending them to college. as a professor at a state university, i can attest that we have faced budget cuts and crises nearly every year for the past six years. as a frequent volunteer/teacher in the state’s maximum-security prison, i can also attest that mandatory minimums–with few options for treatment or rehabilitation for the offenders who will someday return to our communities–are absolutely not the best use of our collective resources.
i hope we join texas (texas!!) and other states in focusing on getting smart on crime rather than spending so much of our budget trying to be the toughest.
via the urban institute’s Justice policy center:
Broken Bonds: Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with Incarcerated Mothers
Thursday, February 14
9 am ET / 8 am CT / 7 am MT / 6 am PT
Program length: 1.5 hours
Register Now
Description
As the population of incarcerated women grows, so does the number of children whose mothers are absent from their lives. Current estimates indicate that on any given day, more than 150,000 children have a mother in prison, yet far too little is known about these children and their needs and experiences. What are their home environments like before, during, and after incarceration? If they are in foster care, when did they enter the system, and what are their prospects for family stability? What are the barriers to healthy mother-child relationships? What emotional and behavioral challenges do these children face? What can charitable organizations, service providers, and policymakers do to address those challenges?
With these questions in mind, this panel seeks to cast a bright light on this often invisible population of children. The discussion will illustrate the scope of the problem; explore the challenges these children will likely encounter as they negotiate new living arrangements, family relationships, and financial circumstances; and highlight programs and policies that hold promise for better serving this vulnerable population.
Speakers:
Sandra Barnhill, executive director and CEO, Foreverfamily
Amy Dworsky, senior researcher, Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago
Thomasina Hiers, director of programs and services, Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
Nancy La Vigne, senior research associate, Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute
Moderator: Laura Sullivan, correspondent, National Public Radio
Register for the Webcast Today!
The audio recording of the webcast will be available online at http://www.urban.org/Pressroom/events/index.cfm by February 19.
The webcast is free. To join the webcast, you need a computer with a high-speed Internet connection. The audio for the webcast is available over the Internet only (no telephone connections).
Resources
Families Left Behind: The Hidden Costs of Incarceration and Reentry (pdf)
Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities
Audio recording – Racial Disparity in the Child Welfare System
via nij: the national institute of Justice is hosting an online discussion forum this week on research bearing on the prison rape elimination act. even basic questions about the prevalence of prison sexual assault are fiercely contested, so i’d expect a lively discussion.
Sexual Victimization in Prisons: Moving Toward Elimination
February 7, 2008: 2pm–4pm ESTFree online event. Registration required.
One of every 22 men and women sentenced to imprisonment in the United States reported that they were assaulted sexually while incarcerated.
Sexual victimization in prisons is the issue, elimination is the goal. Join a group of experts to discuss the state of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) research—what data is available and what’s yet to come. The experts will examine ways to move from better understanding to reliable prevention and eventual elimination. View a detailed description of the event and register today.
it’s been almost a year since my first inside-out class. i taught three inside-out classes at the oregon state penitentiary in 2007, and each has been a wonderful experience. it is transformative education at its very best, bringing together university students and inmates in a collaborative, productive, honest, and fun learning environment. i’ve become an ambassador for the program, promoting it enthusiastically to friends and colleagues at the last criminology meetings, and i’m excited to be a member of inside-out’s newly formed national research committee.
i won’t be teaching an inside-out class this quarter, but starting tomorrow i will be teaching an introduction to sociology course (in a pilot program with private funding for most of the students’ tuition) for 28 inmates in the penitentiary. at least eight of them are former inside students of mine, some of whom are paying full tuition for the opportunity to continue their educations. i’m proud of them; it will be great to have them in class again.
when i returned to campus today, i found a christmas card from inside students from my first inside-out class a year ago. seven of the fifteen inside guys wrote warm messages to me and their former classmates, sharing their gratitude and lasting friendship. i’m especially touched by this since they were not allowed to continue direct contact with their outside classmates after the course ended in march. a year after our first class, they remember us and care enough to take the time and effort to send us greetings and kind thoughts. these classes are making a real difference in the lives of students on both sides of the prison’s walls. and in my life, too, of course. i’ve spent a lot of the last year in prison, and it’s been great. i’m grateful to all of the individuals who participated and were brave enough to take the journey with me.
i’ve been thinking about this story from the dallas morning news for a couple of days. after serving 27 years in prison for aggravated rape, charles allen chatman was exonerated and set free. chatman always proclaimed his innocence, and recent genetic tests showed that he could not have committed the crime.
in some ways, this case is extraordinary. the judge and the current district attorney seemed to take a special interest in chatman and went beyond official duties to try to help. the article explains:
Judge Creuzot pushed for the specialized DNA test that cleared Mr. Chatman after becoming concerned that he might be innocent. At the hearing, the judge introduced Mr. Chatman to a dentist who has agreed to repair his teeth and to prisoner advocate Joyce Ann Brown, who herself was wrongly imprisoned for almost a decade. ‘I’ll do anything and everything I can to help you,’ the judge said…
District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has made DNA-based exonerations a hallmark of his first year in office, apologized to Mr. Chatman, shook his hand and praised his long effort to clear himself. ‘You are an example of how Justice is supposed to work,’ Mr. Watkins told him.
i think this case shows the potential good of individuals working in the system, but it seems to me a long way from being how Justice is supposed to work. chatman spent 27 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. 27 years. he was 20 when he was first incarcerated in 1981. he is 47 now and is going to have to try to adjust to a whole new world and culture full of technological wonders he couldn’t possibly have imagined as a young, free man. his only specific plan at his release was to “get something good to eat.”
it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be wrongly imprisoned for 27 years and to finally be given a second chance. i hope the world is kind to mr. chatman and others like him in their remaining years.
we finally had a relatively healthy group and all 30 students made it to our inside-out class on wednesday night. the oregon department of corrections is currently in the news as the food buyer for all oregon prisons is accused shady dealings and of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks. the story broke earlier in the week and i thought it might be useful to give our inside students a chance to comment.
they seemed to believe that the DOC is guilty of nepotism on a large scale, and they were very well-informed as to the details of the current case. as the oregonian reports, fred monem appeared to have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars, reducing the system’s daily meal costs by 40 percent: “Under special procurement rules, Monem aggressively pursued distressed and bulk foods on the spot market. The savings have helped Oregon regularly rank among the lowest in the nation for per-inmate food costs.” monem also apparently thought quite well of himself. in his 2005 performance review, he gave himself very high marks: “Continually striving to exceed professional and ethical standards,” he wrote of his work, “as well as setting the highest measurement as a role model for fellow staff members.”
hmm. unfortunately, it seems that while buying distressed and expiring food for inmate consumption, monem collected more than $600,000 in kickbacks over the last 5 years. while his state salary was around $75,000, monem was driving a $77,000 BMW; when federal agents searched monem’s home and safe deposit box, they found more than $530,000 in cash.
so, i thought it important to give our inside students a chance to talk about prison food and air their indignation. they took the opportunity and shared many stories about the food and problems with the system with the outside students. a piece that i have heard now from three different sources (including the oregonian story) is that inmates were repeatedly fed bait fish from boxes clearly marked “not fit for human consumption.”
the monem case led into the question of why individuals commit crime and we discussed in small groups some of the theories/explanations (social learning, social control, etc.) for such behavior. i’m pleased to say that the inside students — most of whom have no background in sociology or criminology at all — are struggling through the academic readings and doing a very good job of making connections between the theories and their own evidence and understanding of causes of crime. in fact, one of my inside students wrote a sophisticated essay discussing four different theories — above and beyond what was required in the assignment and by far the best paper of the week. they are making the most of this opportunity.
finally, for now, because the prison water is a bit suspect, the administration arranged for us to share bottled water during class. the first 2 weeks we had a couple of gallon jugs waiting for us; this week, there were 31 individual bottles along with a note saying that i needed to make sure we got back all 31 bottles before anyone left. apparently, they can be used to make “pruno” in the cells, so the administation wanted to make sure none of our inside students left with contraband.
in our closing circle, one of the men made the week’s most memorable statement when he said: “i knew about bottled water, but i’ve been in since 1983 and this is my first ever bottle of water.”
small privileges and a lot to think about. wednesdays have become nearly all of the oregon inside-outers’ favorite night. i’ll say it again: i can’t wait for next week!