From time to time we have shared and will continue to share

(with our client’s permission),highlights of work done together.

This month we are honored to highlight our work with the New Horizons Academy.

In the past two months I have had the privilege of convening what may be for me the most powerful “What One Person Can Do” conversation of the past twenty-five years and I’m not exactly sure why it feels this way. Perhaps it is because this work is so close to me or perhaps it is because we have misjudged the nature of human existence and capacity and therefore created the exact opposite of what was intended in an attempt to be just. Or, perhaps at an even further extreme, in our insecurity, we continue to have the need to feel superior to other people.

This iteration of “What One Person Can Do” is part of the New Horizons Academy program which, in addition to the twelve week conversation, includes extensive work with highly skilled career counselors (to discover what each participant’s interests are, where their natural talents lie and what will be necessary to achieve their desired results). We have had the honor of working with the New Horizons Academy before; the client at that time was the staff of the Job Corps. This time, the client of the New Horizons Academy is the Bolduc Pre-Release Center of the Maine State Prison. There are twenty-five participants in the program, the age of these participants’ ranges from mid-twenties to sixty; they are incarcerated for every kind of activity and for varying amounts of time. One of the things they have in common is that they all are to be released from the prison within a year.

Every Wednesday I meet with the participants for the “What One Person Can Do” conversation within a gymnasium that has yet to be warm. The gym is quiet most of the time. There is the usual agreement about one person speaking at a time and yet this room is quiet in a different way. These participants have, by their own admission, not been successful in traditional educational environments. Most of them were told they were stupid; many were expelled from school or did not finish. A number of people with whom I have spoken have said that the reason for the quietness is because this conversation is taking place inside a prison. The participants tell me that this conversation is quiet because it is about the rest of their lives. This isn’t about the fact that their lives may become a train wreck. The train wreck has already taken place for these participants.

It is my opinion that the reason for the quietness within the gym has something to do with the fact that loving-kindness can be detected, felt and sensed. In my experience people know when they are being treated with dignity and respect. And, it may have just been such a long time since these individuals have been treated with anything but disdain and disrespect.

“I’m a criminal,” one participant said.

“So, what was your crime?” the counselor asked.

“I robbed a store using a gun that wasn’t loaded.”

“How much time did that take?”

“About six minutes,” he said.

“Have you ever committed any other crimes?”

“No.”

“So, for six minutes you committed a crime, were engaged in criminal behavior and now you’re a person who committed a crime and paid a price.”

I’d like to say that this is how these inmates have been treated while in prison, by each other, by those that work in the system and by everyone in general – that they committed a crime and are paying a price for that crime. Nothing more. Nothing less. Unfortunately, that has not been my experience.

Two years ago the government created a program called the “Serious and Violent Offender Re-entry Program.” The name of the program speaks volumes. It is a program which reflects the fact that most decision makers do not believe people can change and certainly do not change while incarcerated in Federal Correctional Institutions (FCIs). It is my experience that FCIs are in place to punish and deter, returning the inmate to society expecting them to return. I wonder how many of us hold this assumption.

Offering the New Horizon’s Academy (the conversation and the career counseling) to this group of twenty-five, who are expected to be released from the Maine State Prison within the year, is a pilot study into another type of possibility. For example, in the “What One Person Can Do” conversation, we ask participants to select case studies, people they care and are concerned about. In the second week, one of the inmates said that they understood completely why we asked them to pick case studies as part of the program, in addition to all the other homework assignments given.

“In order to communicate to our case studies that they are loved and valued, we have to believe that about ourselves.”

He got it absolutely – you can’t give away what you don’t have and never, in any other conversation I’ve convened, has anyone made that correlation so quickly.

Another inmate recounted the fact that his wife’s behavior had deteriorated over the past year, turning more often to alcohol for support and had lost her job.

“It never crossed my mind that letting her know how much I still loved her and appreciated her would make any difference. I always knew she was capable of accomplishing anything and I assumed she felt the same way. It’s amazing. In the past four weeks she has quit drinking and has a job. She actually talks like there is a future for us again.”

Each week I continue to learn a great deal about what is possible from these participants. One week, we discussed one of the greatest unresolved issues within the prison system, which has to do with the pecking order of inmates, a pecking order regarding certain crimes, with pedophiles and child abusers being at the bottom of the list. In our conversation, very strong positions were taken regarding the usefulness of the people who committed these crimes and the “fact that they can’t change” their behavior. To the strongest and most vocal proponent of these positions within the group, I posed the following question.

“If these people are as you say, going to commit similar crimes again, then is it fair to say that your strategy is to do as much damage as possible to them while they are incarcerated so that they will be even more likely to do just that when they are released? If it is our experience that all damage comes from damage, your strategy is to contribute more?”

The silence in the gym got louder.

I have come to discover that I am at home working with the inmates in this prison. Perhaps it is because of the inmate in Somers, Connecticut Maximum Security Prison, twenty-five years ago who told me he was sorry my daughter had been raped and taught me in doing so that we are all capable of loving-kindness. Perhaps it is because here there is no doubt in my mind that our greatest gift to one and other is loving-kindness and treating everyone with dignity and grace. Perhaps it is because here, through the stories of these men, that I am reminded again and again that everything we do counts absolutely. We can discipline, punish, demean and incarcerate. We can look to get even, control and overcome. And, then we can wonder why we are surrounded by unwellness, violence, indifference and fear. Or, we can serve as an encouragement for lives of value and purpose.

Churchill was right:

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

For me, the question that continues to arise is,

“How am I going to be in the world.”