My name is John, and I'm incarcerated right here in Monroe Correctional Complex.
And I want to talk to you about changing the prison paradigm.
To do this, we must address the misconceptions that we have
about crime and incarceration.
You see we think that crime is the problem.
But the truth is the pains of crime are really a symptom,
warning us of a problem in our society.
Much like pain in your left arm or a tightness in your chest
or a shortness of breath is a symptom
warning you there's a problem with your heart.
In that same sense, there's a problem in the hearts of our society.
We see in the racial disproportionalities of our justice system
and the failings of our educational system
and our socioeconomic inequalities.
Many crimes are merely symptoms of these problems
and trying to solve them through mass incarceration is not the cure.
That's like taking aspirin to ease the symptoms of a heart attack,
which will work, temporarily,
but it will not fix the problem, which is the heart.
And in that same sense, there's a problem in the heart of our society.
Now, what do we do about this?
Since I've been here the last 16 years I saw so many men, children,
coming in and out of this revolving door we call prison.
In my experience, lack of education is at the heart of the many problems
that lead to prison.
In fact, if you will, raise your hand if you believe that lack of education
contributes to incarceration and recidivism.
Wow, well if we all believe there's a direct correlation
between lack of education and incarceration
as well as the rate of recidivism,
why don't we turn prisons into schools?
(Applause) (Cheers)
That way, we can address the symptoms, which is crime,
and at the same time address what many would call the heart of the problem:
lack of education.
And, yeah. I said, "Turn prisons into schools."
Did I get your attention?
Let me tell you how this idea came to me.
When I was around nine years old,
a bunch of friends and I were trashing this empty lot in my neighborhood:
breaking bottles, kicking over potted plants.
There was this old wooden shack we used to practice our karate on,
trying to break the boards.
None of us really knew karate though.
And then one of my friends' grandmothers caught us, Mrs. Alice.
She called our parents, asked for permission to deal with us herself.
Now if you've ever had your parents called on you, you know how bad this is.
(Laughter)
But when I found out this elderly woman would be in charge of my punishment,
I figured I'd get off easy.
Boy, was I mistaken.
(Laughter)
You want to talk about misconceptions: this sweet old lady was tough as nails.
I come to find out, that wasn't just an empty lot.
It was a rundown community garden.
She said our punishment was we had to fix it up.
Next thing I know, my friends' allowance money, even my paper route money
was going to pay for dirt, seed, and fertilizer.
She even made us pay for, print up, and pass out flyers in our neighborhood,
explaining what we did wrong and how we planned to atone for it
by renovating this garden.
Now, amazingly enough, our community came out and helped.
We grew corn, lettuce, cabbage, potatoes; I loved the tomatoes.
We even turned that old wooden shack into a greenhouse.
I learned a lot about cultivating but more importantly
I learned not just what I did wrong but why it was wrong.
I learned how good it felt to do the right thing and give back in a real way.
How amazing it felt that my community believed enough and cared enough
to invest and impart these values to me.
It's the strangest thing.
That wasn't just a garden to me.
It was my punishment; it was also a school for me.
This, this is what we need to do in prisons today.
Well, I'm not saying we should call people's grandmothers.
But could you imagine that?
A bunch of grandmas shuffling around, snatching up prisoners by their ears?
(Laughter)
But, what I do mean, is we need to cultivate a place of learning,
a place where prisoners can work with the community
to give back in a real way.
In that garden Mrs. Alice taught me the whole purpose of punishment
was to teach me, to educate me, so that I made different choices.
And when I thought about it, I realized yet another misconception that we have.
Like Mrs. Alice, prisons are supposed to be teaching a lesson, educating,
so that these men and women make better choices in the future.
But somehow we've become so fixated on the punishment part,
we're missing the whole point.
And when I thought about it, it hit me.
And I saw it as clear as day.
Just for a moment, imagine, if we turned prisons into schools.
Oh yeah.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
What if we took policies and legislation
that are overwhelmingly weighted toward punishment,
and we balanced them out by focusing them on education, redemption as well?
What if we saved a small percentage of penitentiaries that exist today,
designate them for initial assessment, placement, behavior management,
and then reorganize all other prisons into schools:
high schools, vocational trade schools, technical institutes, colleges?
Imagine.
Now obviously we all know the reason for the fences,
the razor wire, and the walls are to ensure suspension of freedoms.
But behind these fences and razor wire,
behind these walls, we should be focused on rehabilitation through education.
Now this is not something that can be forced or coerced.
But if a prisoner is showing the desire to change and grow,
if they have a knack for art, architecture, math, engineering,
we should be telling them, we have classes for that.
If they're dedicated to leaving a life of crime,
and want to become counselors for at-risk youth
to prevent kids from making the same mistakes they made when they were young,
we should be cultivating these positive aspirations.
If we turn prisons into schools,
we could take committees like multidisciplinary teams,
facility risk management teams, which for one, it's a mouthful.
If you're not familiar with these terms, I don't expect you to remember them.
They're just classification reviews in prison that assess prisoners,
determining what they should do and where they should go while they're incarcerated,
and they're closed off to the public.
We could take those, exchange them for community conferences.
First thing we do: open them up to the public.
Let the community see
the actions that prisoners are making toward atonement.
Let them see the steps institutions are making
to facilitate and hold prisoners accountable.
After all, it's our community that's the heart of our society.
It's where these prisoners were raised,
where they committed their crimes, where they will eventually be released.
And these communities have as much right, responsibility, and duty
to be a part of the process as DOC, Department of Corrections.
Just imagine, if we turn prisons into schools,
we could take things like custody levels, replace them with grade levels
where the higher the grade level achieved
through the completion of educational and cognitive programs
furthered access for reintegration,
allowing prisoners to use what they've learned
at their respective schools to earn back their place in society.
And by doing this, we could take the general public's lack of information,
the growing communal fear regarding a prisoner's release
and transform that into a graduation,
an acceptance back into society supported by the community's knowledge
of a prisoner's personal progression.
I say turn prisons into schools,
because it's not enough to simply bring educational programs behind these walls.
No.
Just like Mrs. Alice taught me:
it's not enough to simply throw seeds in the ground; you've got to fertilize it.
You've got to till the soil.
You've got to water it.
And if the environment is not conducive to producing the type of plants you want,
you've got to change the environment.
In this same sense, we need to change the environment in prison.
We need a greenhouse,
because as prisons function today, they're an environment of marginalization,
objectification,
an environment that is increasingly becoming counterproductive
to the very ideals of correction
that the Department of Corrections is named for.
It's become so systemic that even terms I'm conditioned to accept
and identify with, terms you will hear today, often repeated:
"inmate," "offender," "convict" - they marginalize me.
They marginalize us.
And I can tell you from personal experience
that if you're under such conditions long enough,
it's likely you'll begin to feel like you're incapable of growth and change.
That no matter what you do, you'll never become a better person.
And this environment is not just affecting
the prison population, but the prison staff as well.
Staff who find themselves struggling between treating us
like the human beings we are,
or treating us like the less than human objects
these institutions have come to define us as.
Despite the good intentions of many that work within the system,
despite the good intentions of many in this very room,
instead of rehabilitating these men and women in prison,
we're institutionalizing them.
And because of our misconceptions about crime and incarceration,
we're perpetuating a disservice,
an injustice on our neighborhoods,
our families,
when we're not properly rehabilitating these men and women in prison
before we release them into our communities.
Ask yourself: do you want institutionalized ex-convicts
being released into your neighborhoods?
Or would you rather have rehabilitated men and women
graduating back into society?
Imagine.
You see it?
So, why don't we shed our misconceptions?
Why don't we address the heart of the problem?
Why don't we cultivate a place of learning?
Why don't we turn prisons into schools?
Thank you for your time.
(Applause) (Cheers)