In a commentary originally published in the Albany Times Union, John J. Lennon argues that the resources that prisoners receive while incarcerated — or don’t — will have a huge effect on society, especially once prisoners are released.
At Attica, a friend of mine recently told me he’d almost hanged himself in his cell the night before. He’d even made a noose. He said he felt empty and had no purpose. Yet he’s an amazing orator, one of the most dynamic prisoners I’ve ever met. I told him that. He sees the parole board next year.
The difference between American prisoners re-entering society and stateless Middle Eastern refugees literally dying to enter European and American societies is that the latter group is more hopeful for their future.
This, I think, has a lot to do with the inefficiency of “corrections.”
In a recent New York Times op-ed, “Refugees in Calais, Reading and Waiting,” Pamela Druckerman explains how well-educated Syrian refugees wait in a scanty “Jungle” camp in France, working on their laptops with Wi-Fi links and reading books provided by a French group, Libraries Without Borders. They request works on the Russian Revolution and self-help books on “how to be hopeful.”
By the time I landed in Sing Sing in 2004, I was a hopeless convicted drug-dealing murderer sentenced to 28 years-to-life. I had to take a Phase One program, which was facilitated by Balal, a Muslim prisoner who beamed with a matchless swagger of intellect and prison cred. He had a bachelor’s in behavioral science, which he’d recently earned from Mercy College, a privately-funded program at Sing Sing.
Balal, also a convicted murderer, told us the do’s and don’ts and shared his 15-year prison journey: shuckin’ and jivin’, solitary confinement, finding religion, then education. He showed us a videotape of his recent graduation. There was an inspiring speech from the valedictorian, who came to prison illiterate. It was a snapshot of redemption. It gave me a vision of hope.
Today, I see prisoners just coming into Attica who need a similar vision. But administrators don’t put much thought into allocating the resources available in experienced prisoners, who are best equipped to facilitate programs like Phase One, Phase Three (which prepares prisoners for re-entry), and Anger Regression Training. My program assignment is to push a broom as a porter. But maybe I could provide the same vision of hope for others that Balal provided for me. Yet no administrator has ever asked me that. When I ask, I get no response.
Perhaps, you think, it’s that I’m not qualified.
Check me out. In April, I published my own op-ed in The New York Times titled “Help Us Learn in Prison.” I suggested that free Massive Open Online Courses be streamed on the TVs in our cells. After it ran, I received plenty of mail and did an interview over the phone with Warren Olney on the KCRW show “To the Point.” I started corresponding with a man from Manhattan named Henry Nass, a Republican who’s running for Congress. Mr. Nass asked me to poll my peers to see which courses they would be interested in, while he began to reach out to MOOC providers. Then I reached out to the program administrators at Attica and requested a meeting to pool our resources, discuss technological logistics, and see if they’d be open to streaming TED Talks on the facility channel until the MOOCs were in place. I never got a response.
Here’s the TV-in-prison backdrop. They came into New York max prisons in the ’90s as an incapacitation tool. With them came a new policy that prohibited prisoners from receiving packages from home. Organizations like Books Through Bars were no longer allowed to send prisoners free books. Now we have to purchase books from our accounts, but Amazon and Barnes and Nobles don’t accept institutional checks by mail. Friends cannot send me books.
When it comes to books and educational ideas, what if prisoners had an “Ideas Box,” like the one Libraries Without Borders has set up for the refugees in the Jungle camp? Which raises the question: why are well-paid program administrators less effective in helping prisoners than volunteers are in helping refugees?
Perhaps it’s because prison, especially Attica, is so contentious, so us-versus-them, so dehumanizing, that administrators can’t help but marginalize us. In turn, we become desensitized toward one another. I wept with the world when I saw the photo of a dead Syrian child who’d washed ashore, and yet I wonder if I would have wept if my friend had hanged himself.
I came to prison as dumb as they come, but I’ll never forget what Balal told me: the best rehabilitative opportunities were volunteer programs. If he hadn’t offered that guidance, I would not have discovered my untapped talent in Attica’s small creative writing workshop, voluntarily hosted by a Hamilton College professor. I would not have landed a spot in a privately funded community college program, from which I recently earned an associate degree. I would not have articles in prominent publications.
Today I chat and correspond with some interesting people. Yet, in 11 years, I’ve never had an actual conversation with a program administrator. Look, I admit, I’m egotistical and self-absorbed by nature, and humility, empathy, and selflessness are qualities I have to work for. Yet I’m influential amongst my peers. Like Balal was.
The State Department has proposed that we accept 100,000 refugees next year, most of whom will feel lucky and hopeful when they gain entry. I hope this happens. I hope that the same fear politics that pounced prisoners after the Willie Horton debacle, and then created the American industrial prison complex, don’t pounce Syrian refugees and create yet another blight on our nation’s character.
In the end, almost 700,000 American prisoners will be re-entering society next year, and they will mostly feel unlucky and hopeless. Which is why we need to be concerned about how efficiently corrections operates on the inside — for 95 percent of us will eventually be with you all on the outside.