In too many American prisons, John J. Lennon writes in an essay for Pacific Standard, fathers and sons live just a cell block apart. Here’s one way lifers are joining correctional workers to break the cycle.
EXCERPT
This past Halloween, a dozen or so lifers, myself included, sat in a conference room in Attica State Prison in western upstate New York. A man named Anthony Haynes was making his pitch: He wanted each of us, and whoever else we could convince back in the prison population, to consider giving money to his cause. Sure, he was asking only the price of a candy bar each month. But Haynes had been a jailer for more than 33 years, a warden of several different federal prisons — all of which made him the last person these prisoners would want to give a dime to. He got $3,000 from the lifers that day.
Haynes is the executive director of the Creative Corrections Education Foundation, a non-profit that provides scholarships for college-bound young people aged 18 to 27 who have a parent in prison, on parole, or off parole. Haynes is a black man in his late 50s with a smooth delivery and a seen-it-all swagger that one picks up over a career in federal corrections. These days, he drives state to state, visiting jails and prisons, asking for donations to CCEF.
Read the full piece at Pacific Standard.