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How prisons can help inmates live meaningful lives

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    We're seen as the organization that is
    the bucket for failed social policy.
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    I can't define who comes to us or how long they stay.
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    We get the people for whom
    nothing else has worked,
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    people who have fallen through all
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    of the other social safety nets.
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    They can't contain them, so we must.
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    That's our job:
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    contain them, control them.
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    Over the years, as a prison system,
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    as a nation, and as a society,
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    we've become very good at that,
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    but that shouldn't make you happy.
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    Today we incarcerate more people per capita
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    than any other country in the world.
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    We have more black men in prison today
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    than were under slavery in 1850.
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    We house the parents of almost three million
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    of our communities' children,
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    and we've become the new asylum,
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    the largest mental health provider in this nation.
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    When we lock someone up,
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    that is no small thing.
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    And yet, we are called the
    Department of Corrections.
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    Today I want to talk about
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    changing the way we think about corrections.
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    I believe, and my experience tells me,
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    that when we change the way we think,
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    we create new possibilities, or futures,
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    and prisons need a different future.
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    I've spent my entire career
    in corrections, over 30 years.
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    I followed my dad into this field.
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    He was a Vietnam veteran. Corrections suited him.
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    He was strong, steady, disciplined.
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    I was not so much any of those things,
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    and I'm sure that worried him about me.
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    Eventually I decided, if I was
    going to end up in prison,
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    I'd better end up on the right side of the bars,
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    so I thought I'd check it out,
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    take a tour of the place my dad worked,
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    the McNeil Island Penitentiary.
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    Now this was the early '80s,
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    and prisons weren't quite what you see
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    on TV or in the movies.
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    In many ways, it was worse.
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    I walked into a cell house that was five tiers high.
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    There were eight men to a cell.
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    there were 550 men in that living unit.
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    And just in case you wondered,
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    they shared one toilet in those small confines.
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    An officer put a key in a lockbox,
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    and hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.
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    Hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.
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    I walked away as fast as I could.
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    Eventually I went back and
    started as an officer there.
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    My job was to run one of those cell blocks
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    and to control those hundreds of men.
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    When I went to work at our receptions center,
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    I could actually hear the
    inmates from the parking lot,
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    shaking cell doors, yelling,
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    tearing up their cells.
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    Taking hundreds of volatile people and lock them up,
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    and what you get is chaos.
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    Contain and control: that was our job.
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    One way we learned to do this more effectively
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    was a new type of housing unit
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    called the Intensive Management Unit, IMU,
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    a modern version of the "hole."
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    We put inmates in cells behind solid steel doors
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    with cup ports so we could restrain them
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    and feed them.
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    Guess what?
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    It got quieter.
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    Disturbances died down in general population.
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    Places became safer
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    because those inmates who
    were most violent or disruptive
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    could now be isolated.
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    But isolation isn't good.
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    Deprive people of social
    contact and they deteriorate.
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    It was hard getting them out of IMU,
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    for them and for us.
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    Even in prison, it's no small thing
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    to lock someone up.
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    My next assignment was to one
    of the state's deep end prisons
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    where some of our more violent
    or disruptive inmates are housed.
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    By then, the industry had advanced a lot,
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    and we had different tools and techniques
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    to manage disruptive behavior.
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    We had beanbag guns and pepper spray
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    and plexiglass shields,
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    flash bangs, emergency response teams.
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    We met violence with force
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    and chaos with chaos.
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    We were pretty good at putting out fires.
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    While I was there, I met two
    experienced correctional workers
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    who were also researchers,
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    and anthropologist and a sociologist.
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    One day, one of them commented to me and said,
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    "You know, you're pretty good at putting out fires.
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    Have you ever thought about how to prevent them?"
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    I was patient with them,
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    explaining our brute force approach
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    to making prisons safer.
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    They were patient with me.
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    Out of those conversations grew some new ideas
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    and we started some small experiments.
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    First, we started training our officers in teams
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    rather than sending them one or two
    at a time to state training academy.
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    Instead of four weeks of training, we gave them 10.
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    Then we experimented with an apprenticeship model
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    where we paired new staff with veteran staff.
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    They both got better at the work.
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    Second, we added verbal deescalation skills
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    into the training continuum
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    and made it part of the use of force continuum.
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    It was the non-force use of force.
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    And then we did something even more radical.
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    We trained inmates on those same skills.
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    We changed the skill set,
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    reducing violence, not just responding to it.
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    Third, when we expanded our facility,
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    we tried a new type of design.
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    Now the biggest and most controversial component
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    of this design, of course, was the toilet.
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    There were no toilets.
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    Now that might not sound
    significant to you here today,
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    but at the time, it was huge.
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    No one had heard of a cell without a toilet.
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    We all thought it was dangerous and crazy.
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    Even eight men to a cell had a toilet.
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    That small detail changed the way we worked.
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    Inmates and staff started interacting
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    more often and openly and developing rapport.
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    It was easier to detect conflict and intervene
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    before it escalated.
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    The unit was cleaner, quieter,
    safer, and more humane.
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    This was more effective at keeping the peace
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    than any intimidation technique I'd seen
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    to that point.
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    Interacting changes the way you behave,
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    both for the officer and the inmate.
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    We changed the environment
    and we changed the behavior.
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    Now, just in case I hadn't learned this lesson,
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    they assigned me to headquarters next,
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    and that's where I ran straight
    up against system change.
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    Now, many things work against system change:
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    politics and politicians, bills and laws,
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    courts and lawsuits, internal politics.
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    System change is difficult and slow,
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    and oftentimes it doesn't take you
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    where you want to go.
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    It's no small thing to change a prison system.
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    So what I did do is I reflected
    on my earlier experiences
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    and I remembered that when we interacted
    with offenders, the heat went down.
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    When we changed the environment,
    the behavior changed.
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    And these were not huge system changes.
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    These were small changes, and these changes
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    created new possibilities.
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    So next, I got reassigned as
    superintendent of a small prison.
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    And at the same time, I was working on my degree
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    at the Evergreen State College.
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    I interacted with a lot of
    people who were not like me,
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    people who had different ideas
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    and came from different backgrounds.
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    One of them was a rainforest ecologist.
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    she looked at my small prison and what she saw
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    was a laboratory.
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    We talked and discovered how prisons and inmates
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    could actually help advance science
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    by helping them complete projects
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    they couldn't complete on their own,
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    like repopulating endangered species:
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    frogs, butterflies, endangered prairie plants.
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    At the same time, we found ways to make
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    our operation more efficient
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    through the addition of solar power,
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    rainwater catchment, organic gardening, recycling.
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    This initiative has led to many projects
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    that have had huge system-wide impact,
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    not just in our system,
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    but in other state systems as well,
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    small experiments making a big difference
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    to science, to the community.
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    The way we think about our work changes our work.
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    The project just made my job
    more interesting and exciting.
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    I was excited. Staff were excited.
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    Officers were excited. Inmates were excited.
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    They were inspired.
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    Everybody wanted to be part of this.
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    They were making a contribution, a difference,
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    one they thought was meaningful and important.
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    Let me be clear on what's going on here, though:
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    inmates are highly adaptive.
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    They have to be.
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    Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems
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    than the people who run them.
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    And they're here for a reason.
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    I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them,
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    but I do think they can have
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    decent and meaningful lives even in prison.
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    So that was the question:
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    could inmates live decent and meaningful lives,
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    and if so, what difference would that make?
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    So I took that question back to the deep end,
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    where some of our most
    violent offenders are housed.
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    Remember, IMUs are for punishment.
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    You don't get perks there, like programming.
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    That was how we thought.
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    But then we started to realize that if any inmates
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    needed programming, it
    was these particular inmates.
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    In fact, they needed intensive programming.
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    So we changed our thinking 180 degrees,
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    and we started looking for new possibilities.
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    What we found was a new kind of chair.
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    Instead of using the chair for punishment,
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    we put it in classrooms.
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    Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control,
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    but now inmates could interact safely face to face
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    with other inmates and staff,
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    and because control was no longer an issue,
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    everybody could focus on other things,
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    like learning. Behavior changed.
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    We changed our thinking
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    and we changed what was possible,
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    and this gives me hope.
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    Now, I can't tell you that any of this stuff will work.
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    What I can tell you though, it is working.
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    Our prisons are getting safer
    for both staff and inmates,
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    and when our prisons are safe,
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    we can put our energies into
    a lot more than just controlling.
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    Reducing recidivism may be our ultimate goal,
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    but it's not our only goal.
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    To be honest with you, preventing crime
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    takes so much more from so many more people
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    and institutions.
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    If we rely on just prisons to reduce crime,
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    I'm afraid we'll never get there.
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    But prisons can do some things
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    we never thought they could do.
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    Prisons can be the source of innovation
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    and sustainability,
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    repopulating endangered species
    and environmental restoration.
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    Inmates can be scientists and beekeepers,
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    dog rescuers.
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    Prisons can be the source of meaningful work
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    and opportunity for staff
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    and the inmates who live there.
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    We can contain and control
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    and provide humane environments.
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    These are not opposing qualities.
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    We can't wait 10 to 20 years to find out
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    if this is worth doing.
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    Our strategy is not massive system change.
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    Our strategy is hundreds of small changes
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    that take place in days or months, not years.
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    We need more small pilots where we learn as we go,
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    pilots that change the range of possibility.
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    We need new and better ways to measure impacts
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    on engagement, on interaction,
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    on safe environments.
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    We need more opportunities to participate in
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    and contribute to our communities,
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    your communities.
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    Prisons need to be secure, yes, safe, yes.
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    We can do that.
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    Prisons need to provide human environments
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    where people can participate, contribute,
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    and learn meaningful lives.
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    We're learning how to do that.
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    That's why I'm hopeful.
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    We don't have to stay stuck
    in old ideas about prison.
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    We can define that. We can create that.
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    And when we do that thoughtfully and with humanity,
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    prisons can be more than a bucket
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    for failed social policy.
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    Maybe finally, we will earn our title:
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    a department of corrections.
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    Thank you.
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    (Applause)
Title:
How prisons can help inmates live meaningful lives
Speaker:
Dan Pacholke
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
10:36

English subtitles

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