#prison programs

Tell us about this program. What do classes look like when you're in these correctional facilities?

Well, the students, it looks like basically urban America. It looks like urban New York City and it looks like the youth, it looks like the teenagers that are New York. Some of them smile, some of them have long faces and some of them [are] just quiet and just waiting to be inspired by what date, what the day has to bring.

What does this do for them behind bars? Does this change their behavior? Does this change their thinking? What does it do?

From my perspective, it seems as if it gives them space, mindfulness, similar to like what morning meditation or practice might do to someone just, you know, trying to clear their mind throughout their day. It seems as if this is a break from the monotony. They seem to be in a room 24/7, either in a cell locked in, or in housing units for 24/7 with 15-to-20 other young adults. And the program seems to just give them a breath of fresh air and make them feel weightless in a creative space, they feel weightless in an environment where tons of things are weighing on their shoulders.

Let's talk a little bit about the song we just heard, “At My Door” by Bampton. Can you tell us a bit about him and what was it like working with him on it?

That song was recorded back in like 2015 and it was one of the first sessions of the program. This particular artist, Bampton, was brought to the program by the correction officers and people in the building. They were really championing him to be a part of the program. He had been writing and creating music prior to being incarcerated, but it seems as if inside the jail he really took it serious and he had this heartfelt story about possibly finding out how much time he could be facing. He didn't know what his sentence was going to be. And I got word that he was in there for protecting his sister and some things went left. The song, once it was recorded, it felt like a surge of energy. I just knew that capturing this, I felt blessed. You go in there thinking that you're going to help the students, you're helping, you're helping, but really it felt like when I heard the song, I was being helped and healed through music, you know? Just by being able to capture it. And I ended up moving to Rosie's, the women's correctional facility inside Rikers Island. I was doing a program there a year and a half later and actually was introduced to his sister and played her the song. And this song became like a local hit inside the jails.

How much experience do your students usually have with making music?

It varies. Some of them actually have ambitions to be in the studio before they got involved with the law and this is the first time they actually had the time to relax and actually get creative. Some of them were actually aspiring hip-hop artists and rap artists that were actually making music and making some noise or buzz for themselves in the town. And then there's those that are rappers that actually never got to experience the concept of audio engineering or got to learn how to make beats or tracks or stuff like that. Some of them are aspiring musicians that are just touching the keyboard. So it varies.

Let's check out another track made by one of your students. This is "Phone Time" by Remy Cartel. It sounds like Remy is singing about her real life, real world experience.

Absolutely. I met Remi a couple of years ago at the Rosie's jail that I mentioned earlier. I met her during a hip-hop rap battle and she was the champion MC inside the building. She's a mother, a wife, and a powerful creator. And this is her after 31 months on Rikers Island and calling just to share some bars, just some words, from a phone.

Why record this over the phone?

During that particular moment, my program had shifted to another facility. When we're not in Rosie’s or we're not in facilities, some of the students keep in contact with us through our business line and we allow them to record music over the phone so they can just have the moment captured for themselves.

I'm curious, in all that you have done in the seven years with this program and as it's growing, what have you learned from teaching these classes?

                 Scanning a prison menu is a bleak task. Common food items range from nutraloaf—a mishmash of ingredients baked into a tasteless beige block—to, rumor has it, road kill. The substandard quality of food at some correctional facilities has led to protests and hunger strikes, as in summer 2013 when nearly 30,000 California state prisoners refused food to demand fresher and more nutritious meals.

But some states, along with correctional authorities and prison activists, are discovering the value of feeding prisoners nutrient-rich food grown with their own hands. Prison vegetable gardens, where inmates plant and harvest fresh produce to feed the larger prison population, are on the rise in correctional facilities from New York to Oregon.

In addition to being a cost-effective food source, the gardens are seen as a way to save money on healthcare for prisoners struggling with diabetes, hypertension, and other ailments. But the gardening itself provides opportunities for personal growth, as inmates learn how to plant, raise, and harvest crops.

Hilda Krus is the director of the Rikers Island GreenHouse program in New York City, where prisoners nurse seedlings of herbs, tomatoes, and cauliflower. She says that the experience of caring for a garden is often therapeutic, sharing the story of an antisocial inmate she calls “B.” Before entering the gardening program, B was just as afraid of touching soil as he was of connecting with his fellow inmates.

“We gave him assignments that included raising an amaryllis bulb and making a fruit salad. The two turned out to be huge icebreakers for him,” she says.

B’s amaryllis was the first to bloom, a feat that had him on the phone with his mother reveling in his success in growing something. As far as the fruit salad goes, B not only helped make it, but later served it to the same inmates he once shunned, people he now calls friends.

“[Gardening] allowed him to practice compassion in an otherwise often harsh environment,” Krus says.

It also functions as a method of rehabilitation in what is often a deeply stressful environment.

“Inmates are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment,” says Tonya Gushard, public information officer for the Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI) in Salem. The OSCI has run a garden program at its facility since 2008, when it joined Oregon’s 13 other state prisons with farm-to-table programs, where master gardeners from Oregon State University teach inmates how to grow and harvest fruits and vegetables in greenhouses.

Between 2012 and 2015, Oregon state prisoner-gardeners raised more than 600,000 pounds of produce for nearly 14,000 inmates.

Administrators often opt for the cheapest items available to feed prison populations, but instead of saving money, they’re usually spending more. Oregon taxpayers were spending almost $100 million a year on inmate healthcare costs, seven times the general fund spending on the state Education Department, The Oregonian reported in 2011. Gushard says that the potential savings for taxpayers in health costs from providing inmates with high-quality food cannot be overstated.

“It behooves us to try and keep [inmates] as healthy as possible. Not only can we keep our healthcare costs down if we have healthy individuals, but it can also save taxpayer money growing some food ourselves on-site,” says Gushard.

Farther down the coast, Wehtahnah Tucker agrees.

The nutrition offered by fresh food is important, but that’s not the end of it. “The more power people have over their well-being, the better for [themselves] and the taxpayer,” she says. Tucker heads up San Diego’s Farm and Rehabilitation Meals program (F.A.R.M.) at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, which teaches about 20 inmates how to tend a garden. On three-quarters of an acre, the prisoner-gardeners spend time harvesting and sorting through ripe crops, picking what’s edible, and discarding the rest.

The produce is then served in the prison cafeteria, which, according to Tucker, is the first time in years many inmates have eaten fresh food.

Says OSCI inmate Steven Tynan, “I never really ate much fresh food growing up. [In prison] you can’t buy fresh vegetables at the canteen, so the only time we get them is when they serve lunch at the chow hall. I definitely appreciate the [prisoners] who grow them.”

Tynan, who is in the last year of a 15-year sentence, credits the man he is today to his experience eating healthy. The man whose chaotic life led him to a robbery conviction now dedicates himself to healthy life choices, from his diet to his friends, and plans to become a nutritionist after his release next October.

The programs also open doors to many who would otherwise be excluded. At the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, most of the prisoner-gardeners are physically disabled. Their canes and walkers would usually limit their job prospects inside the prison, but planting cabbage and uprooting weeds requires less physical exertion than most positions open to prisoners, such as cleaning bathrooms and collecting and delivering laundry.

A weekly farmers market will soon be established in the facility’s prison yard. There, inmates will be able to purchase fresh food grown by participants in the F.A.R.M. program. All proceeds will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity that helps injured veterans readjust to civilian life.

Tucker and Gushard hail their respective farm-to-table programs as future, and necessary, models of healthcare. Instead of sourcing food from far out of state, prisons with garden programs can grow, share, and eat fresh produce of their own, reducing their carbon footprints, creating more jobs for prisoners, and improving quality of life.

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Source: Daily Good, syndicated from Yes! by Marcus Harrison Green (April 2016)

I thought I would share with you something positive I witnessed here at Marion CI:

The G.I.V.E Program hosts three seminars over the year that ends each of the three sessions

Examining Manhood; Errors in Values; and Truth in Consequences and focuses the participants’ attention on the consequences of their choice from the perspective of their family, the victim, and the courts.

Our mission…

"I had walked all the way from Oxford Circus. It was the 20th of December – but the sun, in a rare moment of compassion for its earthly progeny, had its hat on, and the sky was a deep, mediterranean blue. Walking in the sunshine it wasn’t all that cold. In fact, it was lovely. When I saw the bars on the windows of the prison I realised what a privileged position I was in. Just being able to walk in the sun. It’s a cliché, but it brings one’s perspective sharply into focus.

I sincerely believe that the LSW Prison Project brings a little bit of that outside light into the inside. To go back to U2, for one afternoon we were some ‘friendly’ faces ‘to take them out of that place’, not with sunshine, but with Shakespeare.”

[“All That You Can’t Leave Behind”—a diary entry by Tom Hiddleston, HMP Pentoville 20 December 2001]

Doing Time–an opportunity for change?

I recently received a letter from a young relative, currently incarcerated at Wallkill Correctional Facility in New York State.  “I really do a little too much to be bored in here. I never had to start anything at ground level but now I finally get an opportunity to and god willing (sic) I will be successful. That’s one of the benefits of being incarcerated you have a lot of time to brainstorm…

Hello my Blogsters,

Finally, a chance to say hello again and give you all a quick update, how has everyone been doing since the holidays? Taking good care out there, I hope. It’s crazy how fast the time is moving, as January was just a blur it seems. Has…