JPCS students do time in maximum security prison

EMU sent 11 students to prison this past weekend.

Students from Developing & Sustaining the Peacebuilder and Doing Justice classes went together to Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania, where they attended Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops.

The 11 students and Professor Earl Zimmerman, who teaches Sustaining the Peacebuilder, stayed at the home of David and Priscilla Benner and attended workshops during the day. The trip began with a four-and-a-half hour van ride Thursday afternoon, and the students returned Sunday evening shortly after 9 p.m.

Students met with Donald Moon, Delaware Valley coordinator for AVP, on Thursday night to review the rules of the prison and answer questions about the program.

Moon, a former philosophy professor and businessman, has been with the program since a friend of his convinced him to attend one of the sessions. He found it a life-changing experience and has been coming back ever since.

The group registered prior to the visit. At the prison, they had to show drivers' licenses before signing in and receiving wrist bands, visitor badges, and invisible ink hand-stamps. They then walked through a metal detector to enter the prison. Saturday morning the routine also included drug testing.

Moon reminded students that although there have never been problems with the program, the inmates were at the prison for a reason.

"As a raging liberal do-gooder it's very easy for me to believe everything that [inmates] tell me," Moon said. As a result, he has been taken advantage of numerous times.

As a maximum-security prison, Gratterford houses inmates who have been convicted for murder, rape, and drug-related crimes. Students were not allowed to take anything out of the prison at inmates' requests and were discouraged from exchanging names and addresses with the prisoner.

No photographs of the prison or surrounding area are allowed. Moon told the classes that a student with a previous group had tried to take a photograph of the outside and had the camera confiscated. In that case, Moon managed to negotiate the return of the camera without the film.

Students were divided into two different classes, each directed by an outsider such as Moon and several inmates who had taken previous workshops. Sessions began with an overview of the program, followed by group-building activities.

Participants chose adjective names that began with the same letters as their common names (first names, nicknames, or for some last names) by which they were known throughout the program. During listening activities, students had a chance to listen to individual prisoners one-on-one as they talked about people they respected, goals that they had, and accomplishments they were proud of. They engaged in cooperative activities as small groups silently fitting puzzles together or building tinker-toy creations.

After learning about the idea of transforming power, which Moon explained using the Romans 12:2 passage "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (NIV)," the groups worked on addressing problems with "I messages."

The climax of the workshops was roleplays devised by mixed groups of students and inmates. The role plays dealt with drug-related conflicts, relationship abuse, and a bar fight over a woman. Groups performed the roleplays for the classes and then each actor responded to questions from the facilitator and class.

During the workshop, inmates talked about problems with "cellies," cellmates who live together in a space smaller than a typical bathroom, and with prison guards who abuse their authority over prisoners. Before a 1995 prison raid, inmates agreed that the atmosphere was much different. One inmate said that before, guards would walk past a cell, see prisoners using drugs and tell them to clean it up when they were done. Order was based on a hierarchy of prisoners. Now, movement is much more controlled. Some of the prisoners said they preferred the former system just because everyone had a place and there were automatic consequences when one stepped out of line.

Other differences of opinion dealt with prison life as opportunity versus institutional oppression. While one prisoner said he viewed prison as a college experience rather than jail, another inmate emphasized the nightmare of powerlessness. "This is a form of slavery," he said.

Graterford Prison offers inmates classes for a barber's licence, refrigeration and air conditioning, and culinary school, as well as a mural painting program. Prisoners can study to recieve GEDs or take courses offered by a local community college.

One thing many prisoners wanted students to take away from the experience was that the people in jail are human. Prison is not like portrayals on TV. "You have to meet [prisoners] person by person on an individual basis," said one inmate.

According to Michael Bischoff's research paper entitled "How Restorative is AVP?", AVP started in 1975 as a collaboration between an inmate group at Greenhaven Prison in New York and an area Quaker group. At the inmates' request, Moon said, the group worked up a series of exercises still used today. AVP is purely volunteer for prisoners, so taking the workshops is not supposed to affect a prisoner's status or chance of parole. However, Moon admitted that it often does. Prisoners who have taken the classes often have a reduced number of write-ups from staff and reduced recidivism rates, according to Moon.