Prisoner Reform and Public Safety in Alaska 

               And I am also doing a life sentence for the senseless and pointless murder of an innocent person.

              I make no excuse for my actions, nor do I claim innocence. While I did experience trauma as a child, as an adult I had the ability to choose another path. And someone paid for it with their life.

     The PRPSA Report is the result of my experience and education in prison combined with my prior experience as fill-in dad, business owner and religious teacher. It is built on the shoulders of the many teachers, professors, pastors, volunteers, doctors, prison administrators, and others who have studied the issue of incarceration and then developed classes, programs and correctional methods that effectively change people for the better. It is also founded on the basic beliefs and principles found in almost all religions: that everyone can change if treated with compassion and dignity, but that they must genuinely take responsibility for their action and turn away from criminal acts in order to be forgiven.

    To be honest I never thought I would be writing a report on effective prison reform, despite often considering how prisons could be run far more effectively and efficiently, fixing people rather than recycling criminals. Over the years I read books on substance abuse, anger management, conflict resolution, parenting, meditation and more. I expanded my understanding of various faiths and cultures as well as adding to my post-secondary education through computer classes and books.

    During this time I was housed in at least eight different prisons, private and state, jail and prison. I have seen superintendents and commissioners come and go. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, suffered and created suffering. I have played the convict role, and led a programming mod to success. As a prisoner I intimately know the criminal mind with all its con games and refusal to take responsibility.

    One basic fact of prison is the EVERYTHING in prison is a form of programming: All prisoners are being taught to act a certain way. Many inmates are physically violent, trapped emotionally somewhere in childhood, and are easily influenced. Unfortunately the vast majority of what you learn in prison is bad; to be explosively violent, to take from others without regard, to victimize the weak, to dominate and abuse women, and to never, ever take responsibility or show guilt. Even when at the tail end of a sentence, a prisoner does a couple years of programming, this is often only after years of brutal, unforgiving programming in how to be a better criminal. Yet inmates can, and sometimes do, change.

    One of the reasons I believe anyone can change is my own experience working to convince fellow inmates to change their ways. From November 2014 until October 2016 I was the Senior Coordinator for the Spring Creek Multi-Faith Mod. With no budget, few materials, and very limited staff support and involvement we took a failing mod with low participation and frequent serious incidents and turned it around. We expanded programming, increased participation by 300% and had in-mod incidents of violence, pruno, drug use, tattooing, strongarming and rollups¹ all but disappear. At our state’s hardest facility, using bootstrapped classes and a few incentives, men willingly stopped acting out and showed respect for the program, believing we really were trying to help them change. Big, previously violent men now sat down to mediate their disputes nonviolently.

    It wasn’t easy. As an inmate with a head full of steam and a goal of not seeing these men return to prison I butted heads at times with staff and faced ridicule and opposition from so called “convicts”². The mod also often acted as mental health overflow as we proved better at “managing” such residents. Without any actual authority I had to fill the roles of program director, curriculum designer, counselor, pastor, priest, teacher and at times, parent. No matter what though, no matter the name calling or attempted “hits”, no matter the challenges and hard times, I refused, and still refuse, to give up. The vast majority of men and women in prison today can learn to take responsibility for their actions, deal with their anger, get off drugs, become good parents and ultimately become productive, law-abiding members of society.

    I deeply believe prison is not a place anyone should return to, yet so many do return. I want the cycle of crime and violence to stop, to no longer see people return time and again, destroying not only their own life, but the lives of countless others. I want to, one day, be the lone man amongst a sea of empty bunks.

    I believe it can be done. Everyone can change, and most want to change. They just have never been taught how. Prison, as it exists today, turns out harder, more violent, more criminally proficient criminals when they come out than when they went in. They learn to be what prison is: Hard. And countless innocent victims are paying the price.

    Although I gained a lot of gray hair over my two years managing the Multi-Faith Mod, I learned hands on, what works, and what doesn’t. I saw previously hardened cons, many like I had been, change their lives.

    It will take time and effort but prison can become a place that is truly “tough on crime”, a place that teaches criminals to change, to give up their criminal ways, rather than being a place that trains them to be a better, harder criminal. If we do not do this, it is the innocent who will suffer as the victimization continues and grows, time after time, life after life, generation after generation.

     I am not advocating for being “nice” to the stubbornly unrepentant or to “let everyone go”. Having a place to contain individuals who have harmed or seriously wronged others is necessary in order to maintain a stable society. What I am advocating for is a prison and reentry system that, top to bottom, is focused on transforming as many prisoners as possible through both passive and active programming so that they (1) do not commit another crime upon release and (2) do not return to prison period.

1. An inmate being forced to go into protective custody.

2. Many of these self-proclaimed ‘convicts’ do not actually follow the ‘convict code’ even informing if they can “get away” with it. Yet, for their own reasons they desired to undermine and destroy the program as well as making life difficult for those in the program, especially coordinators.

    Lastly, it is worth noting that by writing this report I am ultimately putting my life on the line. I am an inmate with at least another twenty years before I have any foreseeable chance of release. While this report does advocate for the return of prison rights and privileges eliminated in the last twenty years as well as some technological innovations, it also has many things dedicated convicts may not like including:

• Increased programming and therapeutic communities

• A modified phase system

• Harsh punishment for privilege abuse

• A professional and better trained staff

• Increased security and savings through technology

• A promotion, system-wide, of non-violence and positive change

       

    In the end it is worth the risk in order to try to both help the incarcerated change and to protect the innocent.