"Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States"

"It's a custody world." Spoken by an administrator of a prison vocational education program, it sums up the challenges faced by three Chico State University researchers contracted to help the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) determine whether new basic and vocational education programs instituted in 2007 were reducing recidivism. Back then, some 66% of those released were re-arrested within three years.

The idea was to assess the situation, modify behavior, prepare prisoners for re-entry into society, and follow up. All very logical, all very numbers-based. And, it turns out, all very misguided.

The story of the final report, and the behind-the-scenes reality, is told with wry wit by the three professors, a curriculum consultant and two sociologists: William Rich, Tony Waters, and Andrew J. Dick (who died in 2012). "Prison Vocational Education And Policy In The United States: A Critical Perspective On Evidence-Based Reform" ($100 in hardcover from Palgrave Macmillan; also for Amazon Kindle) sounds dry. Far from it.

The book presents the report in the context of prison bureaucracy and the inherent limitations of gathering data. (In the prison system, the researchers are warned, everyone lies.) Eight vignettes provide personal reflections from the white professors ushered into a world of mostly black and brown faces.

In the end, the report went nowhere as the Great Recession hit hard and vocational programs were abandoned. Yet lessons abound. "A class may be well conducted, teachers well trained, and a curriculum well chosen, but the fact that the students may have to submit to anal cavity searches before and after class has consequences for how much learning occurs and the quality of that learning."

The authors "still think that vocational education in prison is a good idea," especially for those with limited sentences, "but this is no longer all we think. We know that prison populations are far more difficult than spreadsheets at the main office may indicate…."

Prison is about punishment and restriction of freedom. "Classes will always be disrupted" for "lockdowns, sudden transfers, gang segregation, safety training, tool checks, and many other routines that trump the educational goals specified by the Legislature."

It's a custody world.

“The Rise And Fall Of Our Youth”

Weldon Shaw spent twenty-five years with the Department of Corrections, twelve of them “as a Gang Investigator inside the prison walls and on the streets.” Now retired in Corning, he writes that in his interviews with gang members he always asked “what made them go down the criminal path in life.”

Though he maintains that “no matter what a person’s upbringing is, the path a person takes in life is solely determined by them,” he has identified negative social factors that make raising good kids especially difficult.

His thoughts are distilled in “The Rise And Fall Of Our Youth” ($17.99 in paperback from Library Tales Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle; more at weldonshawauthor.wordpress.com).

“I am just an old-fashioned guy,” Shaw writes, “I want you to have the feeling we are just two people sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation about what is wrong with society.” And he finds plenty wrong. The political system is corrupt (he praises Donald Trump), youth are “blinded by media illusions,” the education system isn’t teaching the basics, parents are over-protective, gang pressure is destructive.

“In my opinion racism has been all but wiped out in the United States. … Do not let vices like the term racism hold your child back. You as a parent should want more for your child than you had. Push them to achieve their goals in life. Do not let outside people influence their lives by giving them excuses to fall back on if they at first do not succeed.”

What about young adults “shacking up”? “I know as far as a religion goes, it is not acceptable, and I too was raised in religion. But if I was asked what I felt about it, I would say this: young adults of proper age should live together for at least six months before they enter into marriage.”

In the criminal justice system, he’d like to see misdemeanors “drop off a person’s record after so many years” and the abolishment of plea bargains which in some cases enable the District Attorney to “win” even if the case is not strong enough.

Plenty of controversy in these kitchen table musings.    

“Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption”

In the early 1980s Bryan Stevenson was studying at Harvard Law School and working on a graduate degree at the Kennedy School of Government. He was not the child of privilege; he “grew up in a poor, rural, racially segregated settlement” in Delaware, and the prestigious schools he was attending seemed disconnected from his deep interest in “America’s history of racial inequality and the struggle to be equitable and fair with one another.”

Then he met Steve Bright, director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, who told him: “Capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment.” Something connected. Later, “I was in my late twenties and about to start my fourth year at the SPDC when I met Walter McMillian. … Even though he had lived in Monroe County his whole life, Walter McMillian had never heard of Harper Lee or To Kill a Mockingbird.” Walter was on death row in Alabama, convicted of murder. And he was innocent.

Stevenson’s efforts on Walter’s behalf stretched over years, and form the backbone of his riveting account of “Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption” ($16 in paperback from Spiegel and Grau; also for Amazon Kindle). It has been selected as this year’s Book In Common.

Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama and his honors include a MacArthur “genius” grant.

The story he tells is bleak. In America, he writes, “incarceration became the answer to everything—health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavioral disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor. ….”

But there is hope through “just mercy.” “Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.”

The Book In Common community kickoff event is Thursday, September 24, from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. at Chico City Plaza. Chico State University (www.csuchico.edu/bic) and Butte College (butte.edu/bic) are holding campus activities throughout the academic year as well.

The author is scheduled to speak at the BMU Auditorium on the university campus April 19, 2016.