What changes in America’s prison system would you like to implement?
I think it is a testament to a person’s determination to forge a different path when they follow step three in Mr. Santos’s recent newsletter about changing the prison system. Before I talk about what changes I would like to see, I want to talk briefly about the fortitude it takes to resist the temptations offered in prison and how “doing the hard things over and over” never stops.
Every day we are offered opportunities. Some of them are small, slight temptations – don’t go to work, play cards instead of studying, get high instead of staying sober, cut in line instead of waiting your turn, etc – but the small opportunities are simply practice for how a person will choose to live their lives on the street. Being in prison is their chance to build good habits, or even trade in the bad ones for better ones, so that upon release anyone can be a better person, if they spent their time practicing wisely.
I walk by tables full of people watching TV, playing cards, laughing and talking, wasting the time given to them by a federal judge because that is the lifestyle offered in prison. I also see other people posted up, leaning against a wall, waiting for mail or chow or the drug dealer to walk back through the door. Every day those opportunities reach out to touch someone.
Today I saw two of my friends playing chess. They play frequently, every time there is “dead time” they are playing chess. One of them is a savvy business woman who already has a release plan because her business partner is out there running their business. The other is a new GED grad (new within the last 2 years) who has moved on to teaching GED classes. She has frequently told me she thinks the Michael Santos books changed her life and she studies everything he has written. She has also told me that she wants to become a better writer because that is an area where she struggles. Today I upset the chess board.
We’d spoken about her submitting essays but she wasn’t confident about what she wrote. She struggles for ways to expand her ideas and create an essay that captures the attention of the reader. I had given her tips numerous times. Today I told her that she could not play table games until she’d submitted at least one essay, or responded to one newsletter prompt. I literally took the chess pieces off the board and walked away with them so that they could not play. Sometimes showing love in prison must take the tone of “tough love”. She protested, they both did, but the one with the business plan did it with a smile.
I was not smiling. I told her if Michael Santos is her guru, then she should apply ALL his instructions, not just the ones that are convenient for her. If Michael Santos tells her to play fewer table games and to write more, she should be practicing every day. I told her she could not get her chess pieces back until she’d written her essay. I held firm to my boundary.
While we were locked down for the fog count she wrote and wrote. When we emerged hours later she had an essay. I gave her the pieces back – a fair trade for honest work. Then I edited it and told her, when I walked off with the queen, that she had to type it up to get the queen back. Upon completion, I returned her queen and also told her that chess might be a game that requires thought, but if she wants to improve her writing skills, she needed to spend less time playing chess and more time writing.
Sometimes being a mentor in the Peer Success Program requires the person to be harsh and unyielding when dealing with people who struggle with their own discipline. But it was worth it to see the essay she’d written and the sight of success on her face. I will endeavor to help her more in the future, even if I must hold her chess pieces hostage to convince her that writing offers more success in the future than playing chess, no matter how much thought goes in to the game.
Changes in the prison system must begin with small opportunities like these. We, as our peers, must hold each other accountable. We know what our friends want for their future, we even know what they need to do to be better, to become stronger, to be more ably skilled. But few hold their friends accountable. For many years I learned and practiced and grew but I did not bring others along with me. I taught classes and tried to equip others with the knowledge that I had gained, but very few listened or practiced or increased their own knowledge or skill. I shrugged my shoulders and walked away because you cannot make a horse drink, you can only lead them to the water. But I think, for me, this is the “opportunity” that I need to work toward improving. I can read, I can write, I can do math, I can draw, I can paint, I can speak Spanish and English fluently, I can translate almost simultaneously, I can teach, I can knit, I can crochet, I can plan and organize, I can lead or I can follow. I can help, but I have conditioned my help for people who display the determination to follow through. Now I will work on those who lack the self-discipline but I know want to achieve more.
As Mr. Santos tells us all the time, no one should work harder on an individual’s improvement than that person themselves. I want to improve myself in ways that are not tangible, or are considered hard skills. I want to develop my soft skills and be more of a benefit to others. I think prisons will become better places once we begin to treat our peers as community members that we want to succeed rather than as other people who are blocking our paths. We can lift each other up to create those communities and help each other make better choices – leave the card table, walk away from the TV, go for a walk, say no to the drugs or hanging out with our drug-using friends, write letters to our family, research release opportunities, investigate schooling, or study for the GED.
Once we treat prison as a place to help each other, the lack of resources or programs won’t matter. The government’s failings will be irrelevant. We will become mentors and role models for each other and we can show the newer inmates coming in that doing time doesn’t mean wasting time, but rather achieving excellence while separated from their family. If we have to be apart from our loved ones, we owe it to them to improve our chances of staying out when we are finally released. Prison needn’t be a toxic environment, it can be a helpful community built on recovery. This is the change I would most like to see in America’s prison system.