TEACHING ON THE INSIDE Part I

This winter I had the privilege to work inside the correctional industry as an educator. This was an unexpected opportunity as I was browsing the correctional website and saw the advertisement for an educator in a facility that houses minimum, medium, maximum and closed security level male inmates. I emailed my vita to the personnel rep and forgot about it. Already working about 100 hours a week I really wasn’t in need of another job per se, but thought the experience important. What an understatement!

Weeks later my cell phone rang and I was offered an interview. Again, on a lark, I accepted the offer to interview and the date was set. Little did I realize that I was about to embark on a short, and yet life changing journey.

The day for the interview came and somewhere in between the other 3 jobs I was currently working and my 19 year old daughter self-diagnosis as a diabetic after a spell of feeling light headed I actually arrived for the interview.

Navigating my way through to the inside administrative area was a feat within itself. Standing at the steel gate and looking upward at the razor barbed wire I realized that this is a world unto itself connected only to the outside world by the staff members that work here.

Once inside the first gate was told to leave my driver’s license with the correctional officer in case of a riot or some other type of activity requiring an account of all non-inmates inside the compound. I then proceeded through the metal detector and was cleared to continue to the next gate.

Once inside the administrative area I met with the personnel director and deputy warden to discuss my qualifications to general education courses to inmates. Sitting inside an office replicate of many other offices I have had the pleasure to work in, visit in, etc. I soon forgot ‘where’ I was. Leaving the prison following the interview was much less of an ordeal then getting in. I suspect the opposite is true for inmates.

Several weeks later and again after I had dismissed the experience, I received an offer by phone to teach part-time at the facility. After considerable manipulation of my schedule and a commitment to work tirelessly 18-20 hours a day I agreed to forego sleep and embark upon this 8 week journey.

Little did I know what I learn or to the extent I’d broaden my horizons. The first day of work began with learning how to maneuver through the maze of steel doors locked and controlled by correctional officers in ‘central’--- the hub of the entire compound and the residence of the keepers of the facility.

As a person with a computer connected to her lap and a cell phone always within reach, I was devastated to learn I had no email access and no cell phones were allowed within the compound! I was cut off from the world inside a men’s prison. How could anyone contact me? Imagine all the emails that were going accumulate in my inbox! What if someone wanted to ask me something or tell me something via the cell phone? This was the most absurd thing of which I’d ever heard! Surely, I was not expected to arrive here at 7:15 am and leave at 3:30 pm and have no contact with the outside world! Well, not only did they expect me to do just that, but I did just that! I suffered from true and real withdrawal symptoms.

Once through central and inside the actual compound I learned I was to teach approximately 20 male inmates ranging in age from 18 to 65 general education courses in preparation for taking the General Education Exam (GED). I was assigned 5 teacher’s aides. These guys were invaluable as they were familiar not only with how the material was organized but also with the inmates who were students. The teacher’s aides were trusted inmates, well as much as one is willing to ‘trust’ an inmate, who had worked in the education department for sometime.

I met young boys, they were incarcerated as men but they were boys, who had just turned 18 and I mean just turned 18 by perhaps two or three months, living in solitary confinement by choice because they feared for their lives in the general population. Of course everyone has a story and inmates have very interesting stories that are sometimes colored by fantasy and untruths.

I soon realized that living behind steel doors, razor barbed wire and steel walls isn’t perhaps the biggest problem---separation from family and friends and a support group is the greatest punishment.

One guy shared his story in that he was free on bail and was not anticipating a sentence that included incarceration. On sentencing day he had a job, a fiancée, a great relationship with his family, an A.A. degree and 4 years service in the Army---a regular life as he called it. Within a few minutes he was sentenced to a 9 year sentence and whisked away to a cell to await transfer to the intake facility. Life changed within a matter of minutes.

Once they enter the system with a significant sentence to serve, an inmate is removed mentally as well as physically from the life he once knew. After all, how can he keep up with the day to day activities and the events of their lives living often hundreds of miles from their family with limited communication? This is difficult for a human to do. Many inmates are not familiar with the way of life that exists within a prison---the manipulation, the anger, the drive for control are but a few adjectives that may be used to describe life on the inside. As one inmate said, ‘Never forget where you are’!

More next week---Melissa!

              - Melissa Harrell, MSCJ, BSCJ

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