What True Prison Re-Form Should Look Like

Hello I am an inmate of the Department of Corrections at the Faribault facility and I aim to share with you what I believe are several important topics that need to be discussed if we are to ever have any form of true prison reform. The topics I intend to cover are:

· Treatment

· Environment

· Perpetuating the cycle

· Offender representation

· Lack of programming

I would like to add a disclaimer. I won’t throw a bunch of fancy words at you. I write plainly, bluntly, and what some might consider aggressive or even in-your-face. This is deliberate, I want to invoke emotions in you, I want you to feel because when you read this and your emotions begin to rise that means to me that you care in one way or another whether you think I’m full of crap or you start to see the direction prison reform really needs to take. Either way I hope this helps to start a real conversation about this topic. One last thing: I am a man of average intelligence. I am not trying to appeal to the intellectual, bureaucratic side of anyone. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, please put it aside because our prison system is not working — but it can.

I would like to start with a little of my background so that you understand the perspective of which I am presenting this. I was born into a poor trailer park family. My mother was physically and mentally abusive. My mother’s physical abuse drove me into the arms of an alcoholic and sexually abusive father who would share me with his friend. My parents divorced when I was about seven, leaving me and my siblings in the care of my mother. This would not last long for me. By the time I was eight, I was dropped off at St. Joseph’s Home for Children. I would spend my juvenile life until I was almost nineteen raised and educated by the juvenile system. During this time, I would continue to be a victim of both physical and sexual abuse, perpetuated by peers and staff/correctional officers.

At nineteen, I would begin to perfect a drug habit for the next fifteen plus years. The day would eventually come where I would decide to get clean and I did, without the assistance of any treatment program or therapy. I say this not because I want a pat on the back, but because this was a mistake — I just didn’t know it at the time. Like most of us who choose drugs, it’s usually because our past or current reality is too difficult to face. In my case, it was my past. So after getting sober and taking on no way to responsibly deal with my demons, I would sexually abuse two young girls in the course of a year. After removing myself from one of these situations, in part out of building guilt however, I’m not here to lie to you — it was mostly out of fear of being caught. Some years passed, during which time I married and was seemingly doing well.

But slowly, drugs began to creep back into my life. At thirty-nine, I was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree sexual misconduct. I was sentenced to and am now serving 196 months for one count and 144 months for the other (running concurrently). This is a very brief but by no means complete or thorough life story. My history is much more complicated and difficult to express and likely hear. Now that you have a little reference as to where I speak from, I would like to get to my first point of contention.

Treatment:

I have spoken to dozens of inmates, DOC therapists and even some C/O’s — one thing they all agree on is everyone reaches a point where treatment will be most beneficial to them at different times. I have found this to be true for both drug and SO (sex offence) treatment. Even though there seems to be such a vast consensus on this subject treatment is only offered to someone if at all in their last 18–24 months in prison.

Here’s the logic the DOC has shared with me on why treatment is only offered at the end of your sentence. I was told “treatment is only offered at the end of your sentence so that it is fresh in your mind and ready to be put into practice when you leave.” OK this has some merit but, I’m going to challenge it anyways. Using myself as an example; when I was first picked up and sitting in county jail l was forced to face the reality of a lengthy sentence, in turn I began to contemplate what in my life had lead me to this place. This becomes a very vulnerable mind set to be in and you are left alone to face childhood demons. The kind of demons are so difficult to face, that a persons like myself have chosen to hide behind drugs and other criminal behavior.

The key here is vulnerability, if treatment had been offered to me during this frame of mind, treatment likely would have held a deeper and greater value to me. Instead a person is left to repress everything all over again and let it fester until they act out again. Being in prison that generally means an assault on another inmate or a CO. An advantage to completing my treatment when I am ready is I have the opportunity to put into practice over the period of my sentence what I have learned. It has taken me 40+ years to become the man that got me here, doesn’t it stand to reason that I’m going to need some time to apply what I’ve learned into becoming a new responsible member of society? Do you want me out there practicing to become this man with no support or in here putting it into practice with support? There are some things that would need to happen for this to succeed.

Treatment would need to be made available when an inmate expresses interest. No matter at what point during an inmate’s sentence he chooses to do treatment, continued support needs to be offered throughout his sentence. At the end of the sentence (example 3 to 6 months) aftercare should be provided, regardless of classification. This would be an advantage (for what I hope are obvious reasons) to both the inmate and the current participants in the program. Most importantly environment needs to change.

Environment

Number four leads me to my next subject, Environment. Let me start by asking you some questions:

While growing up, what kind of environment did you grow up in? Did you have support, encouragement, love or role models, even if it only came from one person? Did you have a safe place to learn how to be the person you have become? Please take a moment and ponder who you were then. Recall the smile that came with the pride that you’re Mother, Father, Grandparent, Friend or Teacher had when you succeeded and in turn you beam with pride because your actions made someone you cared about happy. What a beautiful cycle.

Now take that away. Imagine if none of that ever existed for you. Instead imagine someone in your life who sees you as a means to self-gratification so they beat you or sexually abuse you, mentally destroy any chance of having self-confidence. The only happiness you ever see in their eyes is when they’re done using you, after which you go back to not existing to anyone else because you have mastered the art of disappearing. If no one sees you they can’t hurt you. This creates a new problem, all that time alone you start to live in your head you start to relive all this pain so now you detach from reality. Essentially, you detach from everything that makes you human like feelings of: love, empathy, sympathy, because these things bring you pain so instead you replace these feelings with anger, hatred, revenge and indifference.

These thoughts and feelings give you purpose, they comfort you even keep you alive. There is a danger in living in such a dark place. You have to be careful not to turn those emotions on yourself. Although to some degree this is inevitable too much leads to suicide so, if it can’t be turned inward it must be turned outward. Now I understand there are a select few who may have lived through same or similar tragedies and have found a healthy way to deal with them. I call these people survivors. If you know anyone like this and unfortunately many of us do, or at least have heard someone’s story of survival, talk to them or read their story and I will promise you there will be one common thread to be found amongst every successful person outside these fences and every survivor: environment. They were either raised in an environment that promoted a healthy, productive member of society or they reached out and with help found a healthy environment of which they could heal in and subsequently becoming that healthy, productive member of society.

There are always some exceptions to every rule but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about over 10,000 inmates of which 90% will be getting out and coming to a neighborhood near you. I suppose you can continue to create new laws and regulations that will eventually funnel us all into designated areas, forget about us and wait to see what happens, OH! Wait you have done this before with the disenfranchised. What happened in those neighborhoods? When you continue to create laws or regulation you essentially make the problem someone else’s, then they do the same, creating the funnel effect. Eventually anyone with a record ends up living in the same area in essence creating a prison without fences or walls and the freedom to roam your neighborhoods.

When are you going to stop putting band aids on everything and get to the root of the problem? When are you going to stop looking for blanket solutions or one size fits all? We are individuals with very different needs and those needs change as we change during our sentence and when we are ready, when we hit that place in our life where we are done being the man that got us here, we need an environment in which true change can happen.

I’m not saying this should be given to us; make us earn it through the successful completion of current programing and remaining discipline free for a period of time. If we have to earn it, well then it will mean more to us when we get there. The DOC desperately needs to consider creating an environment for healing in every prison. Every prison needs one unit designated to this. I personally envision a RJ (Restorative Justice) blueprint for this. If you do not know about RJ I strongly encourage you to not only look it up and familiarize yourself with it but to get involved with it in your community, YOUR “environment” can only benefit from it. I cannot express how important environment is too true healing. Can you imagine thousands of men and woman entering your community’s emotionally healthy individuals? Just sit back and imagine the benefits to you and your communities?

Perpetuating Cycle:

The environment the DOC allows to exist perpetuates a cycle we have all lived over and over again in our lives. As of now, the DOC is preserving an environment of victims and victimizers. Most of us grew up in an environment where we were in some form a victim. We grew up to become victimizers and now we sit in prison surrounded by an environment that encourages more victims and perpetrators Note: this is not entirely done by our own hand. The DOC’s own policies cause and allow for these things to happen and continue. The prison system is full of predators and prey (mostly prey). These predators, unlike in the wild, don’t even have to hunt they just sit back and observe.

Looking for the loner anyone that appears weak or separated from the pack, then they pounce and not one at a time they do this in numbers. They isolate you even further. If you have family they will even contact them and extort them. In return they won’t harm the inmate. This is most common but is absolutely not limited to sex offenders. Some of you may have just smiled a little or even thought to yourself “good they deserve this.” Well let me explain to you how your childish vengeful thinking could turn you, someone you care about, or a complete stranger into a victim. Every time you ignore an opportunity to address real prison reform or if you’re ignorant enough to believe that somehow it doesn’t affect you so, why should you care. You are essentially tolerating even condoning the next mugging, rape or murder.

Keep in mind 90% of offenders are getting out of prison. Most of us have at one time been the victims of disastrous upbringings. Many of which have included physical, mental and sexual abuse perpetrated against us or witnessed by us. In some cases both no matter which combination, it almost always results in PTSD. Prison environment perpetuates this cycle limiting the ability to heal and releasing us back to you. What do you think is going to happen?

When a person has committed a crime against another person there is a very real danger of a same or similar crime being committed if the individual is not given a meaningful opportunity to heal from their demons. You can’t expect an individual to end a cycle of abuse when the environment he lives in does nothing to change but, rather encourage that cycle. It’s the old adage “do as I say not as I do.” Since the state demands that we pay our debt to them instead of our victims and communities maybe they should step up and “lead by example.”

Offender Representation:

With segregation being used as the end all solution to every problem the DOC hasn’t figured out how to solve, we as inmates are in desperate need of some form of legal representation inside these walls and fences. Segregation has been proven to be a threat to a person’s mental health. Yet segregation time is handed out like candy. If I disagree with a CO or tell them to piss off, I go to segregation. If I leave an aspirin on my desk instead of in the bottle or if I am the victim of an assault, I go to segregation. If I say I need to talk to someone I’m having thoughts of harming myself or someone else, I get stripped naked and put in segregation. If I say my cellmate is threatening to kick my ass, you guessed it; I’m the one who goes to segregation.

By me writing this and communicating with an organization about prison reform I take a risk of being sent to segregation. I know people this has happened to. When an individual is sent to segregation they sit and wait for their opportunity to defend themselves against a system that is stacked against them. It does not matter what you say what you do — you are guilty. You could ask them to pull up the video that would prove your innocence and they won’t do it because video is only used to prove your guilt. CO’s lie to protect each other all the time. Example, I had a CO in St. Cloud threaten to tell everyone in my unit I was a sex offender with the intent of me getting my ass kicked if I didn’t drop a complaint against him. Six CO’s stood around and witnessed this. When I brought it to the attention of the administration, nothing happened. They refused to look at the video or audio of the incident.

Point is once you are sent to segregation you’re staying guilty or not. Their number one tactic is to threaten you and say for example “you either sign this omission of guilt and do only 5 days or fight it and risk doing 90.” We all know there is no risk in it because risk implies you have a chance to win. We all know we WILL do the 90 for what they consider is us wasting their time.

Another need for this representation is in every day discipline. The kite system is a joke, if I am given LOP (loss of privilege) I am remanded to my cell for X number of days. If I decide to fight it because I don’t believe I’m guilty of the violation I can write a grievance. They have 21 days to respond to the grievance, in the meantime you have already served your LOP time. The only advantage is if you win the grievance they will remove it from your record. This happens anyways after 90 days.

There is no accountability on the side of CO’s. They are free to treat us with blatant disrespect because they lie for each other, administration doesn’t care and the union protects them. Assaults could be minimized by allowing us some form of a liaison for grievances and representation in segregation — without this animosity builds. When you take away the right or ability to defend one’s self, common sense articulates that it is only a matter of time before that person acts out in a destructive manner against their self or someone else.

Remember most of us are getting out. Let me stop for a second and make it clear that the irony in what I’m talking about is not lost on me. Most of us are guilty of doing this to someone else through our own crimes. I don’t dismiss or shy away from that responsibility. However, the cycle needs to stop somewhere. We have already proven that we are not capable of stopping the cycle on our own, we need help, or do we continue with an eye for an eye until no one has any eyes left? If you are truly concerned about staff assaults then bring in inmate representation. Most assaults whether in prison or in your communities happen because the person throwing that punch feels as though he or she has no other option. Someone needs to stop looking at all these problems so analytically and start looking at the emotions behind the problems.

Lack of programing:

Programing in prison is a charade! DOC administration loves to tout to all the legislators about all these great programs available to inmates; sure there are some good ones. What they fail to tell you is they limit the access to these programs through a number of tactics. How much money is the DOC getting from the taxpayer to maintain this farce? The following are examples of some of these tactics.

Participation numbers — the DOC loves to brag about all the programming they offer to the population but how many people actually get to participate in this programing when they only offer the programs to 15–20 participants at a time? In a facility like Faribault with over 2,000 inmates well, you do the math. When you take into consideration all the facilities, thousands of people will not be able to participate in the programing. Let me give you an example. I facilitate a class through Restorative Justice called RJ101 we are allowed to have 15 participants at a time. Now assuming there are no lock downs or cancellations due to staff shortages, we meet every Thursday for six weeks at which point you graduate the class. Then we have two weeks off to prepare for the following class. So 15 participants get to go through the class every 8 weeks. That means only 90 inmates out of over 2000 have access to this class every year. I think it’s time people stop listening to them brag and take a real look at the numbers.

The time it takes to bring new viable programing into the institution — this is one of the biggest jokes of the DOC. It can take not weeks, not months but, years. The inmate ran Restorative Justice Committee has been working with administration for over a year with the intent on implementing an already existing program in other prisons called Building Character. This gives them an already existing model to fast track its implementation. Instead they have sat on their hands for over a year. Someone screams security threat and these prisons are locked down tight in minutes. This is done for the safety of the inmates, staff and the community. I ask you why when a program that can positively change an inmate’s life for the better can take over a year to implement, I mean it makes sense to me that if the DOC takes the time to help an inmate change his life that it would lead to a safer prison and a safer community. Instead they choose to achieve this through force. This is a temporary fix that changes nothing in the long run.

Forced placement — a number of programs are offered only at select prisons however, (except in very rare cases) the DOC refuses to transfer you to another prison so you can take advantage of the educational or vocational programing offered elsewhere. The DOC will TRANSFER someone hundreds of miles from one prison to another even when you only have weeks left of your sentence for any number of excuses but, not so you can better yourself. Someone needs to ask why?

Mandatory 90 days — once you have started an assignment/job you must complete 90 days in that position before you can apply/bid for another. Here’s the problem with this. Most facilities require you to bid for an assignment right away or you risk being drafted into what many consider one of the worst jobs in prison, the kitchen. So you take whatever job is available then if before your 90 days are up (for example) a vocational assignment becomes available, you’re out of luck because you have to wait your 90 days and wait for it to come around again. This can take 6 months or more and at that point if you don’t have enough time left to complete the program once again you’re out of luck. They should allow anyone to bid out of their current job placement if it is for education or opportunity to better yourself.

One assignment at a time — you are only allowed to work in one assignment at a time. Now, here is a scenario, I will use myself as an example. I came into prison educated by the juvenile system, I was basically given a diploma. I had absolutely no computer experience. I took a vocational job in industry but in addition to vocational training I needed basic computer skills. I was not allowed to do both. Some people have limited time to acquire new skills and if they have the motivation to do it why does the DOC have their foot on their neck?

Money VS education — all educational programing is paid at .50 cents an hour even elective educational programing. The approximate average pay for a two week period is $15.00–30.00. A person’s hygiene and laundry soap cost that much. The logical choice for any inmate who wants to live with some semblance of comfort in prison or even be able to save some money for when they get out is to work an industry job because it pays over two dollars an hours. Most of us lose everything when we come to prison. Having a reasonable financial safety net only makes sense for both us and our communities. There is no emphasis put on educational growth programing or personal growth programing. This is ass backwards. This says to me that the state is more interested in making a buck off of us than investing in our success beyond these fences/walls — and yes the DOC gets a cut of every industry workers pay.

HMMMMM….maybe this is why the focus is in the wrong place.

Closing statement:

Let me share with you the DOC’s Mission Statement:

“Reduce recidivism by promoting offender change through proven strategies during safe and secure incarceration and effective community supervision”

After everything I have just shared with you, do you believe the DOC’s is living up to its Mission Statement? You see the DOC doesn’t like to have their way of doing things questioned. As far as they are concerned you can’t improve on the way things are except by adding more rules. They have become so hung up on safety that they have forgotten the first part of their own mission statement.

The other problem is prison administration takes it as some kind of a personal slight against the job their doing. If they let up on or create some kind of new rule that somehow benefits us as inmates. The biggest example of this is when an inmate decides to find a way to take advantage of a privilege — the administration eliminates the privilege all together instead of removing the individual so he can no longer do whatever he did to take advantage of the privilege. This has continued till we have nothing left. What happens when a man has nothing to lose?

You may not want to believe this, but the DOC is not making your communities safer, it’s playing a hand in creating more victims. It is skirting its true responsibility to you the public and us as inmates. You see, not everyone in prison is a lost cause. As I said before we all at some point hit that place in life where we are ready to change. The DOC needs to take their mission statement a little more seriously and put a little more effort in recognizing these individuals and offer them the environment and programming to nurture that change. I recently heard a democratic political figure make a statement, he said I don’t care what race you are, where you are from, how much money you make, or how old you are — every human being has value and until America sees the value in each other it will never be great.

Now I don’t think he was talking about inmates but, I would like to apply it to us because I see the value in us, can you? Regardless of your political affiliation if you can’t see the significance in a statement like that then likely the only value you see in others is what they can do for you. I challenge you to see us as individuals with value and perceive our sentences as an opportunity to help us discover through treatment, skills building, therapy and encouragement our value.

The DOC cannot continue to treat us as though we have no value because a man with no value has no purpose, no direction. This is a man with nothing to lose and that makes for a dangerous man being sent back out to your communities. DOC will never step up and do any of this on their own the public must push for this. The community needs to step up and apply pressure on the DOC if they truly want safer communities because a safer community starts with our community behind these fences and walls. Or you can continue to roll the dice and hope we don’t move in next door or wonder into your neighborhood.

This article was written by Greg Andreotti a current inmate in the MN Department of Corrections Faribault. For more information on me and my journey through the prison system you can follow me on my Blog at lifeasainmate.home.blog. Thank you!