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Prison Transformation is the story of the changes in the New York State prison system from 1962 to 2009. Interwoven with that history is the biography of Stephen Chinlund, who lived through those big developments as an active participant in various capacities. In 1962, fourteen years before the Attica uprising, there were only twenty-two prisons in the state system. Then there were seventy-two, now sixty-six. Discipline was maintained by force, often capricious and brutal. There was only minimal education and vocational training. After growing up in New York City, going to good schools, and being ordained as an Episcopal priest, Chinlund started working inside as a volunteer. He created groups of people inside with the plan that they could help each other more effectively than he could help them by preaching or even counseling them directly himself. The groups developed into small communities inside the prisons. Chinlund also recognized the need to help the men and women after they were released and developed counseling and job training on the outside. Parole, at the time, provided none of that. With small steps, the prison system was improving, reflecting the growing consciousness of civil rights in the society at large. School opportunities were offered, and even college courses began to appear. But the progress was slow, and the discipline was still needlessly harsh. Chinlund became a consultant to the Narcotic Addiction Control Commission, helping new treatment facilities in the city get started, using his experience helping individuals who were locked up. He was then recruited, in 1968, to be the director of the Manhattan Rehabilitation Center, confining three hundred female heroin addicts. Then the uprising in Attica occurred in 1971. That tragedy led to a few more improvements: inmate grievance committees, contact visits, conjugal visits, inmate liaison committees, and some better schooling. In addition, the legislature created the Commission of Correction to be an independent monitor of the prisons. Chinlund had had success at the Manhattan Rehabilitation Center, so he moved on, in 1973, to become superintendent of the first work-release prison in New York State, giving reality to an important policy improvement. Governor Hugh Carey then asked him to become chairman of the Commission of Correction, where he was able to confirm the improvements that were being made. As important, he was able in 1979 to start the Network program, a more formal and extensive implementation of the old groups inside. Funded with federal money initially, it grew to be a force for good in twenty-six prisons, at its maximum size. Declining Careys request to serve another term, Chinlund moved on to a parish and then to be the executive director of the Episcopal Social Services, where he has continued the Network program and continued to advocate for progress in the correctional world. He continues that work after his retirement in 2005. The book tells the stories of the prisoners, staff, and politicians of those forty-eight years.
Going to prison was the most horrible and traumatizing experience of my life, however, it was also one of the most significant things that ever happened to me. Prison scared me straight, so to speak. While in prison I came to recognize what I am not, and I was able to create an internal space where I found the freedom to explore and reconnect with who I am. While in prison I learned to identify my thinking and behavior errors, and how not to repeat those same errors as I moved forward. As a (wo)man thinks, so is (s)he. My personal experience has taught me that those things I think about most often are the things I will do most often. Years before I went to prison my thinking was very limited and full of false information and ideas about the world around me. False information and ideas mixed with hard drugs and liquor most often end with poor results. How I used to think about things and solve problems before going to prison is what led me to prison. I think I experienced a growth process from the inside out while in prison, and I hope to share a part of my journey with you through this journal. I was released from prison on December 26, 1997.
The Artists' Prison looks askance at the workings of personality and privilege, sexuality, authority, and artifice in the art world. Imagined through the heavily redacted testimony of the prison's warden, written by Alexandra Grant, and powerfully allusive images by Eve Wood, the prison is a brutal, Kafkaesque landscape where creativity can be a criminal offence and sentences range from the allegorical to the downright absurd. In The Artists' Prison, the act of creating becomes a strangely erotic condemnation, as well as a means of punishment and transformation. It is in these very transformations--sometimes dubious, sometimes oddly sentimental--that the book's critical edge is sharpest. In structural terms, The Artists' Prison represents a unique visual and literary intersection, in which Wood's drawings open spaces of potential meaning in Grant's text, and the text, in turn, acts as a framework in which the images can resonate and intensify in significance.
New York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”
Motivation, persistence and perseverance are the distinct traits of determined and dedicated individuals who can make things happen. It's always possible, even when the task is awesome -- transforming the mindset of human beings. Located in India's capital, New Delhi, Tihar is one of the largest prisons in the world. Within a prison complex of over 200 acres are housed over 9,700 inmates -- men, women, adolescents, children; Indians and foreigners. They comprise unconvicted alleged offenders, convicts and remandees. Tihar was a limping, languishing institution, condemned by the media, and its inmates were isolated from the community, exploited, used and abused, yet 'housed'. Dr Kiran Bedi was appointed Inspector General of Tihar Prison in 1993. She brought about fundamental changes, giving a human face to the administrative structure and creating an exemplary system covering every possible aspect of prison management. The whole objective was to collectively and individually manage the transition from a moribund system to a responsive and sensitive administration. Hence her efforts unfolded the process of reformation involving prison administration, prisoners and the community, toward one common goal -- Correction through a collective approach. Dr Bedi's account is enhanced by input from the prisoners themselves, expressing their feelings in letters and sketches, in petitions and poetry. This book is a graphic portrayal of an holistic process of conversion, a metamorphosis from criminality to humanity, achieved within a restrictive legal framework.
"Chris Hedges's powerful memoir of his year of teaching inmates in a maximum-security New Jersey prison takes readers into the lives of men who were all but destined to become incarcerated because of their impoverished and dangerous childhoods and shows why criminal justice reform is so essential"--
Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America’s largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola’s unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.
Gaskew presents a prison-based education designed to address a prevalent racial politics of shaming, self-segregation, and transgenerational learned-helplessness. He explores the Black counter-culture of crime and tasks incarcerated Black men to draw upon the strength of their cultural privilege to transform from criminal offender into student.
From the sixteenth century on, hundreds of Portuguese New Christians began to flow to Venice and Livorno in Italy, and to Amsterdam and Hamburg in northwest Europe. In those cities and later in London, Bordeaux, and Bayonne as well, Iberian conversos established their own Jewish communities, openly adhering to Judaism. Despite the features these communities shared with other confessional groups in exile, what set them apart was very significant. In contrast to other European confessional communities, whose religious affiliation was uninterrupted, the Western Sephardic Jews came to Judaism after a separation of generations from the religion of their ancestors. In this edited volume, several experts in the field detail the religious and cultural changes that occurred in the Early Modern Western Sephardic communities. "Highly recommended for all academic and Jewish libraries." - David B Levy, Touro College, NYC, in: Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews 1.2 (2019)
Formerly known as America's bloodiest prison, the 18,000 acres that comprise Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary are now home to 5,000 inmates, a full range of seasonal crops, a 9-hole golf course, yearly rodeos, a Bible seminary, a museum, and much more. All of this came into being at the behest of Warden Burl Cain, who is now the longest-standing warden in the history of Angola prison. Under his leadership, the inmate population of 5,000 has gone from regular knife fights to Bible studies. Cain is a strong believer in the ability of the gospel to turn the most incorrigible of sinners into productive, moral citizens. Because eight out of ten prisoners are serving life sentences without parole at Angola, Cain has taken upon himself the task of making the lives of these prisoners productive and educational. Through a partnership with New Orleans Baptist Seminary, prisoners have the opportunity to get a bible degree and even be transferred to other prisons as a missionary. The Angola phenomenon has been covered by such media outlets as: Time Magazine, Christianity Today, and in the award-winning film documentary, The Farm: Angola, USA. Author Dennis Shere combines his background in journalism and law to bring readers this account of redemption and life change in the most unlikely of places: a maximum security prison.