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GUEST OPINION:
Let me stay in prison - and teach

http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/guest-opinion-let-me-stay-in-prison-and-teach/
By R. MILES MENDENHALL

Seven hundred prison teachers are being laid off due to state budget cuts in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Prison educational and rehabilitative programs are being gutted in the name of "streamlining" and efficiency. The 2 percent of the department's budget dedicated to education and rehabilitation has been cut to 1 percent.

I am one of those teachers. We have been declared "surplus" state workers, and our last day of work will be at the end of this month.

Yes, I'm concerned about losing my job and income. I've worked at San Quentin State Prison for two years and nine months. I was planning do it for another 15 or 20 years. Now I'll be collecting unemployment and seeking a teaching job in this economy.

I'm also concerned with the social impact. Many released felons have not been allowed to use their time in prison to gain the job and emotional skills to stay out. They quickly do something that gets them sent back. With these cuts, there will be more victims. We are all victims when it comes to the cost of crime. We are also all victims of the cost of warehousing criminals.

The solutions are well known and have been proven when applied. (See Little Hoover Commission report, 2007). Education and rehabilitation should be the last thing cut in prison. As they exist before these budget cuts, they are inadequate and sometimes poorly designed. They need to be expanded and improved, not eliminated in a false show of "streamlined" prison classes.

The corrections plan is for volunteers, uncredentialed teaching assistants and inmates to pick up where credentialed teachers were forced to finish. Some of that may happen in a place like San Quentin, centrally located in the Bay Area with our pool of well-meaning volunteers. Most prisons are in areas with fewer and less sympathetic locals.

Teaching is not a hobby. To become proficient, the art requires specialized knowledge and years of experience. Teachers are often blamed for problems caused by the lack of resources and family support.

Our incarcerated students are some of the most damaged in our society. The litany of poverty, racism, broken families, inadequate public education, untreated learning disabilities and criminalized substance abuse/addiction that helped put them prison is well known. Yes, they're personally responsible for their situation. That's one of the first things many of them tell me.

In spite of the frustrations of my job, I take satisfaction in the genuine respect and gratitude expressed by my students after I give them a county social service resources list - so they can write before they get out and perhaps have the bed, job, school and/or rehab spot they need waiting for them before hitting the streets with $200 and nothing else. They also appreciate just getting a pencil with an eraser, some writing paper once in a while and five days of Adult Life Skills work.

I go to their cell front to teach. We do not have a classroom. It's noisy, dirty, smelly and hot there. It is potentially dangerous (not as dangerous as most imagine). But the look on a man's face when he realizes that I'm there to help him, not push him around or shame him for his failures and faults, is priceless.

The program I teach, "Bridging Education," is being eliminated. It is has its flaws. But it is better than absolutely nothing. Nothing, other than a 59-minute reading test, is what they will get.

Teaching is not a hobby. To become proficient, the art requires specialized knowledge and years of experience. Teachers are often blamed for problems caused by the lack of resources and family support.

I teach in the Reception Center. Many prisoners never spend enough time in prison to get to the mainline and have access to a classroom. No volunteer-led self-help program is available to them. I am it. I do the most I can with the time and resources available. Given the real needs of my students, I fully know how inadequate what I do is.

We were beginning to make improvements; holding re-entry workshops with county service providers in the dining hall. The foolishness of gutting already inadequate educational and rehabilitation programs in prison will become abundantly clear, from the cost in money and blood that will inevitably result. What has been destroyed will not be restored.

The pattern in corrections is that once physical space is reassigned, the only way to bring back eliminated educational programs will be to build additional offices and classrooms. It will be argued that there is no money available to expand facilities. Even if mandated, that would take years. And, in the meantime, criminality, recidivism and the victimization of innocents and perpetrators alike will continue and increase.

These cuts are outrageous. Anyone who has a voice for reason and justice needs to do all they can to stop them. If worse comes to worst, I urge you to reverse them when it becomes economically and politically possible.

R. Miles Mendenhall is a correctional educator at San Quentin State Prison. He lives in Forestville.


Source: Press Democrat

* Prison Hotel

Posted in California News, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Education, Prison Issues, Prison Reform, Prisons and Prisoners, Rehabilitation, State Budget/Money, inmates, law | Tags: California Department of Corrections/CDCR, Corrections, Government, incarceration, inmates, Prison Issues, Prison Reform, Prisoners/Inmates, Re-Entry/Recidivism, Uncategorized
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