Personal Thoughts: No Contact Ever Again

I apologize in advance that this is probably going to be an emo-ish post.

I’ll elaborate more about this when I get access to my OSP folder which is at home, but for now, participating in Inside-Out meant we had to agree to many rules regarding etiquette not only in, but outside of the prison. One of them was about contact outside of the prison, and beyond the class. Or should I say, non-contact. One of the rules was that we were never to reveal our full names or any personal details that could lead to us being contacted (address, phone number, e-mail account). We are also not allowed to ever be in contact with any of the men, even those who finish their sentence and get out of prison.

This obviously means I’ll never see them again. Those who got multiple life sentences will probably die in OSP or some other facility. These men, who I got to know over Dostoevsky and Levinas (of all things/men)- I will never see again. S doing stupid things with Atomic Fireball Candy, W’s brow furrowed in thought, R slamming Professor Shankman’s Russian, M’s quiet way of talking, R’s pride in his children- these must all be carefully filed away into the OSP mental folder to quietly yellow with age.

These were conditions I knew and agreed to well before. They are just a lot harder to stomach now that they are no longer merely criminals in blue uniform who take pride in their choice of footwear (the only way they can express their individual identity in terms of dress). I have not only been able to put a face to the vague collective term of ‘the incarcerated’, but I have identified with, felt for, and grown to respect these men.

I hope they eventually receive what they deserve, and much much more.

Cultural Exchange Programme: NJ Inmates vs. Princeton Students in Chess

Greatest apologies for not keeping up with this blog through the semester. I’ve got my first exam tomorrow, but I end next week, and hope to get this running again.

For now, a really Cultural Exchange Programme that’s happening at Princeton University. I stumbled upon its existence through CNN‘s ‘Daily Snapshot’ feature, which had this picture of two inmates playing chess:

Malvem Lewis (R) and Rafael DeJesus were among 46 inmates who played chess against six Princeton University students at the New Jersey State Prison on Novemer 19 in Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.

I googled more about it and learned it’s an ongoing exchange between Princeton University and New Jersey State Prison. The full article is quoted as follows:

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NJ inmates vs. Princeton students: Prison chess

By WAYNE PARRY 
The Associated Press

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. — David Wang is a young man who’s clearly going places. The Princeton University sophomore is gifted with a brilliant mind, a movie-star smile and an understated self-confidence.

Kelvin Washington is a middle-aged man who’s not going anywhere for the next 44 years. He’s a career criminal who has spent 29 years behind bars for a string of robberies and burglaries.

An unlikely pairing, the two men went head to head Wednesday at the New Jersey State Prison, a maximum-security lockup. Their battlefield: a chess board.

In an unusual cultural exchange program that began six years ago, Princeton students travel to the prison in Trenton, 16 miles from their Ivy League campus, to play chess with the inmates.

“When I heard about this opportunity, I jumped at it,” said Wang, who has competed three times in worldwide chess tournaments, placing as high as 30th.

Prisons across the nation have thriving chess clubs. Some invite outsiders for matches behind bars. The chess club at the New Jersey State Prison has 75 members, including inmates serving life sentences for murder, robbery and other heinous crimes.

Washington, 52, is six years into a 50-year term for a gas station stickup. Chess offers him an escape from prison — short of actually breaking out.

“It eases my mind off the burden of fighting for my life,” he said. “It relaxes me and transports me to another place momentarily. As soon as it’s over, it’s back to business as usual.”

That involves being awakened by corrections officers at 6 a.m., filing into a dining hall for breakfast and checking a log book to see whether he has been granted a pass to go to the law library or the exercise room. If not, it’s back into the cell.

The numbing routine may help explain the popularity of prison chess.

“For one short, sweet moment, I get to be in charge and make my own decisions,” he said. “I get to decide where to move or what not to do.”

Washington and other inmates see parallels in chess and their daily lives.

“It gives me patience,” he said. “Sometimes you see something on the board and you want to jump on it, when maybe it’s best to hold off for a minute and see what’s developing around you before you just jump out and take it.”

Each year, one or two inmates defeat a Princeton visitor. But on Wednesday, 12 of the 46 inmates prevailed — more winners than in the five previous years combined.

“I feel great, baby!” exulted Alonzo Hill, breaking into dance worthy of an NFL touchdown celebration after defeating Atanas Petkov, a Princeton student from Bulgaria. “He got the Princeton shirt on: He the Princeton dude, and I beat him! I did good!”

Hill, 39, is serving five consecutive life terms for his role in a carjacking murder in which a woman who owned a clothing store was shot in the back of the head.

“I just defended, just defended,” Hill said. “He wanted me to make a mistake, but I defended it to the end, baby.”

The inmates were seated at long folding tables covered by new plastic tablecloths inside the prison’s spacious gymnasium. The games were played on cardboard chess boards with plastic pieces.

Each of the students played as many as nine inmates simultaneously, quickly moving down the line, making moves at each board, leaving the inmates several minutes to plot their next moves.

Michael McCall, seven years into a 45-year sentence for murder, held off Wang for nearly two hours before succumbing to a checkmate.

“I like strategizing; it’s like life situations,” McCall said. “You have to think about what you do. Everything you do should be calculated. We all make mistakes, but we still need to be thinking.”

When the three-hour session was over, Wang returned to campus to pursue his dream of a medical career.

“My goal is to maybe conquer a disease that’s creating havoc and suffering in the world,” he said.

Washington, after dropping his match, went back to his cell. His goal is simply to get back home one day.

“The tiniest little things you enjoy are the things I miss: Getting up to buy the newspaper in the morning while the wife and kids are asleep, sitting down in my easy chair while the downstairs smells of coffee perking,and I look out into the darkness at the stars. I miss that.”

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Click here for the original report.

Thoughts on ST Article on New Changi Prison Complex

In the last post, I linked an article by The Straits Times about Singapore’s new Changi Prison complex, and that was it. Some have asked why I have not written my thoughts/comments about the article. This post hopes to address that.

The article had Teh Joo Lin describing the merits/differences of the new complex, Singapore’s prison regime, and the current discourse on the relation between prison conditions and recidivism rates- essentially facts that I don’t have any quarrel with.

The reasons why I thought the article was interesting and worth posting are as follows:

1) The very fact that an article was published is encouraging to me. To have a report published in the newspaper is indicative of at least some interest in engaging the public in what happens/the regime in Changi Prison;

2) I think it’ll be interesting to read my experience in Eugene, OR in the U.S. against current realities in Singapore;

3) What most struck me in the article were the quotes from Prisons director Mr. Ng Joo Hee, particularly these two quotes:

‘It’s a fundamental philosophy we hold on to. We operate a strict regime because these people have done harm and they have to pay for the harm they have done.’ 

and

‘You cannot let them run around and do whatever they want. They’ll learn more bad things in prison. Naughty prisoners infect one another.’

With reference to both quotes, if my experience in Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP) was anything to go by, I realise what Mr. Ng is saying. When we took a 2.5 hour tour around OSP, we saw the realities of the prison- how most inmates were not like our classmates who were polite and had made the personal choice to reform. Inmates we encountered on the tour were leering, abrasive, and hard to control (a fight broke out in the field just 5 minutes after we were there). In this sense, yes- ‘naughty prisoners infect one another’.

I do, however, question the use of the words ‘infect’ and ‘pay’. With reference to the former, ‘infect’ conveys the idea of contagion, which makes me uncomfortable. Let’s attribute this one to personal taste- referring to wayward behaviour as bacteria seems a little demeaning to me.

With reference to the need for ‘these people [to] pay for the harm they have done’- it is precisely this mindset which I challenge myself (and you, my readers) to question.

What is the essence/purpose of prison systems? Retribution, or rehabilitation? I am not disputing the fact that prisoners ‘have done harm’ to society- I merely question whether saying they have to ‘pay’ for it is warranted/effective/humane.

It is here that I must pause and reiterate- my thoughts/opinions on all things prison-related have not been fully formed yet. The reason for setting up this blog was so I could engage with such issues. Happy journeying along with me as I figure out what on earth I think about prison systems, and share the experience with you.

Speaking of what is humane- I hope to talk about a section of our tour (the death chamber) in a future post, where I was irked beyond words.

As usual, comments/questions, whether by the comment feature below, e-mail, chat, or in person, are greatly welcome!

Changi Prison covered in ST

Just in case you haven’t yet seen this: There’s an article on Changi Prison in The Straits Times’ Home.

The Outside Students’ Application Process

Many have asked how I even got involved in such a programme, so this post will deal with how I stumbled upon Inside-Out at the University of Oregon (UO). Please note that I can only relate the Outside students’ (meaning UO students’) experience.

Quick background: I was at the UO for the terms Winter, Spring and Summer 2008 on an exchange. The exchange was between the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) University Scholars Programme (USP) and the UO’s Clark Honors College (CHC).

Inside-Out was pioneered at the UO through the CHC in Spring 2007 as a 200-level course. Professor Steven Shankman, the first UO professor to be trained in the programme, taught the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky in the class- Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, for example.

In Winter 2008, advertisements in Chapman Hall (the CHC building) were put up, giving notice to an information session on the course (application was still restricted to UOCHC students, although I have heard that there are plans to open the programme to the rest of the University, which is great). Interested students were to meet at the Knight Library for a briefing and to pick up application forms. I was walking down from class one day when I saw the poster, and decided to go for the briefing with my then-roommate, Suzi.

We went for the briefing where we sat through a presentation about the programme, then had an informative question and answer session, where we were told that the course would be a 400-level Honors College Colloquium this time. (We were also told that we were going to read just one massive text this time, against philosophy, instead of a selection of Dostoevsky’s shorter works. This was received with mixed reactions at the time. Looking back, though, I wouldn’t've had it any other way). A student who had taken the class in Spring 2007 had come in to share her experiences as well.

Interested students had to pick up an application form, which basically had questions asking why the applicant was interested in the course, whether he/she had had any experience with prisons, how he/she may contribute to the programme.

Students were then shortlisted for interviews with Professor Shankman, where we were asked to elaborate on certain bits of our answers, and had the time to clarify any doubts and/or ask any questions. We were then told that we would get a confirmation via e-mail to let us know if our application was successful or otherwise.

The process ended when Professor Shankman selected 13 Outside students to participate in the programme (13 because there were to be the same number of Inside students as well).

As for the application process for the Inside students, I’m not quite sure of the details, but Professor Shankman had told us that it was similar- application forms, interviews. Of course, there were more stringent criteria for Inside students (e.g. record of good behaviour, non-sex offenders)- but more on that in another post.

Hope that was helpful for now! Just out of curiosity- would you have gone through the application process to take a course like Inside-Out?

The Background of Inside-Out

While I would love to dive into writing about class experiences/issues/things that struck me while traveling, I think some background information is in order. This post will give an overview of the programme at its inception- its founding story, principles, statement, etc.

I would highly recommend going to the Temple University website about Inside-Out at your own time- it isn’t too packed with information and is a rather quick read. I’ll be using a lot of their material for this post- where I don’t have a ‘click here for more’ link after a quote, the information would have come from their website.

One thing to note before this all begins: As I state in my About page, I had the opportunity of being part of Inside-Out during my stint at the University of Oregon’s Clark Honors College (UOCHC). I experienced all this in the U.S., but now write about it from Singapore. More on the significance on this in another post in the future.

 

Why Temple University/Who is Lori Pompa?

 

Lori Pompa, Founder and Director of Inside-Out

 

 

‘In 1994, Lori Pompa, a Temple professor and longtime volunteer at several prisons, was hired to teach a course on the corrections system for Temple’s criminal justice department. Pompa says it wasn’t long before she realized, “we can’t just sit in a classroom and do this, we have to go in.”

Soon enough, Pompa was taking her students into prisons and meeting with death row inmates once a semester. The experiences proved so valuable for both the students and those behind bars, Pompa felt compelled to expand on the concept. By 1997 she had created the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, a course that meets once a week for an entire semester behind prison walls…

…Inside-Out has proven so successful that in 2002 the Soros Foundation awarded Pompa a [highly prestigious US$65,000] grant to develop it into a national program. Over 160 professors from 80 colleges across the country have been trained in the program’s curriculum.’ (Click here for more).

 

She is now the Founder and Director of Inside-Out, and has taken the program nation-wide. So far, 18 states in the U.S. have participated in this programme, such as Maryland, New York, Delaware, Ohio and Oregon, amongst others.

 

Whose Idea Was It?

‘In fact, the idea for Inside-Out belongs not to Pompa, but to Paul, a bespeckled, soft-spoken man currently serving a life sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford.

“Honestly, I don’t really think I would have come up with this idea myself,” said Pompa, noting that students in the program are identified only by their first names. “It’s not the obvious thing.”

A decade ago, Pompa’s students were participating in a panel discussion with some “lifers.” The dialogue was so intense that Paul said the groups could likely talk for an entire semester.

Pompa mulled over the idea for a while — almost two years, actually — and eventually wrote the Inside-Out curriculum, which, by its orchestration and locale, invites students to come together as one group to explore issues of crime, justice, race, class and victimization.’ (Click here for more).

 

How Does Literature Relate?

Professor Shankman referred to Paul many times throughout our course. Paul was present at a huge Inside-Out meeting a while ago, and had stated that his vision for Inside-Out was, (paraphrased), the bridging of two worlds. This could be interpreted in a variety of ways, of course, and to Professor Shankman, it was confirmation that reading Literature and Philosophy in his Inside-Out class was in line with the program’s mission statement:

‘The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was established to create a dynamic partnership between institutions of higher learning and correctional systems, in order to deepen the conversation about and transform our approaches to issues of crime and justice.’

It’s perhaps useful to note that most often, it is criminal justice and sociology courses that are taught under Inside-Out.

 

Why Bother?

‘It has become commonplace to note that, with two million people incarcerated, the United States has the largest prison population of any country in the world, in both relative and absolute terms, with millions more men and women under other forms of criminal justice supervision.  The other side of this coin is that we also have hundreds of thousands of men and women across the country working in prison security, administration, treatment, parole and probation.  Meanwhile, our violent crime rate, though lower than at any time since the 1970s, still is many times higher than that of other western industrialized nations, and more than two-thirds of those released from prison are back behind bars within three years.   

The cost of this situation can be measured in many ways: in our vast public corrections expenditures, in the pain suffered by those whose lives are damaged or destroyed by crime, in the frustration and wasted energy of many men and women who devote their lives to working in corrections but feel they aren’t making a difference, and in the wasted talents of those whose life situations and poor choices have led to their spending years of their lives locked behind bars, shut away from their families and communities.’

 

How Does Inside-Out Hope To Arrest (pun intended) This Problem?

‘Inside-Out provides an opportunity to put a human face on a problem that can be kept simplified only if it remains faceless.  The ability not only to look at issues in complex ways, but to recognize the complexity in ourselves and others, obviates our propensity for knee-jerk reactions.  Stretching beyond our simplistic assumptions will, in time, produce a growing transformation in public thought.  By exploring theoretical concepts inside the prison, theory is moved out of the purely mental sphere to a more powerful level – as the mind is engaged, so is the heart.  If how we feel, to some extent, drives what we think, herein lies the crux of the transformative potential of this program.’

That is, by the way, my favourite paragraph of the Inside-Out website. It relates so well to my personal experience with the programme.

 

Alright! That’s about it, for now. I hope that it all was just enough information for you to grasp the background behind the Inside-Out Prison Exchange as a nation-wide programme in the U.S. Now that the programme’s founding principles have been covered, expect future posts to relate to the UOCHC experience at the Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP).

Lastly- thanks for your interest thus far. It’s heartening to see page hits going up and getting msgs of support from everyone. :]

For Starters

Hello, all. After being part of the UO-OSP Inside-Out Prison Exchange in Spring, I have been thinking of ways to keep myself engaged with issues concerning criminal justice and prison systems. I decided that blogging about the experience and discussing such issues would be a good way (amongst others) to achieve this- so here we are.

Although subsequent posts will shed light on myself and how I got interested in all things prison-related, if you’d like an overview, please visit my About page.

At this point, expect posts about the programme, the prison, and ones that think aloud about pertinent issues. They’ll be often (but not always) relevant to the Singaporean context.

Please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail (kellyqwtay@gmail.com) with any thoughts you might have.

Thanks, and here’s to the value of open discussion!