This past Thursday, I went on a field trip to a medium security prison in Norfolk, the Massachusetts Correctional Institution- Norfolk. And boy, was it an experience. As dramatic as it sounds, I'd say it was pretty life-changing and eye opening. I went into it nervous and a little scared, but I came out of it pretty enlightened. We got to listen to inmates talk about their background, how they grew up, and how they committed the crime that landed them in prison, as well as what they learned from it. I'll take you through the day step by step.
First of all, there was a strict dress code to adhere to. Boys had to wear button down shirts that were tucked in and girls had to wear very conservative clothing. Loose jeans, and loose shirts that covered everything and could be tucked in. No jackets allowed, sweaters only allowed if they had no hoods. We went through security in groups of 5 or 6- one chaperone sat in the security room and the other waited outside with us. I don't know exactly how security went for the guys, but for the girls, here's what we had to do: Take off our shoes, that were then passed through a metal detector. There was a female officer for the girls and a male officer for the guys (obviously). We walked through the metal detector, and then we had to open our mouths so they could inspect it, turned out our front pockets, rolled over the waistband of our jeans (some girls had to unbutton their jeans to do this), stuck our hands in our back pockets to show that there was nothing in there, show the soles of our feet, and then we were allowed to put our shoes back on. We were then told to walk across the prison grounds alone to the visitors center- a rather scary prospect at the time, because had we made a wrong turn we would've ended up with the inmates.
Once at the visiting area, we spoke to four inmates who were part of a prison-run program called Project Youth, Incarcerated. The name of the program made sense, because many of the inmates had been arrested when they were only 15-18 years old and were serving 10-12 year sentences. We heard about where they came from, how they grew up, relationships with parents and siblings, as well as what led them to commit the crime that got them in prison and why they committed it. Mind you, this is a medium security prison. These are not child abusers, rapists, or murderers (in the sense of the murder being premeditated). These are people who fell in with the wrong crowd as a result of bullying or growing up in a rough neighborhood or being in the foster system, and either were drunk or high when they committed crimes. So these people were for armed robberies or on charge of manslaughter or something of the sort.
Their message was basically: at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how you grew up or who you're surrounded with. It's still your choice. You made the bad choices, and you can't blame anyone or anything else for that but yourself. And they're right, they're absolutely right. You could tell these were prisoners who had thought long and hard about their past and truly reformed. Of course, they go through rigorous training to be allowed to do this, and it showed. They were very well spoken, sounded educated, and kept a cool head. As a result, we learned alot about prison life and inmates. We learned that violence does happen, just on a lesser scale and less often. We learned that the speakers and other people in the program make up a small demographic of the prison population- in reality, people in prison don't want to see others succeed. Not a lot of prisoners are as reformed as our speakers were, but they didn't care. Most of them only had 2 or 3 years left of their sentence, and they were ready to get out, go home, and never come back. There are also opportunities for inmates to work on the grounds or get a job in the prison, as well as take classes and continue an education. Some prisons, like this one, have a GED program for people who dropped out of high school. Like I said, it was pretty eye opening.
Whew! This was a long post. I'll break it up- next post I'll write about the specific stories, more on the takeaway message, and what social change I think can and should come about in our society after this visit.
~Simran
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