The Next Generation of Corrections
Good morning and welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee! I hope you’ve grabbed a steaming mug of something and are enjoying some beautiful fall weather. The view in my neck of the woods is bursting with fall colors, one of my favorite times of the year. I plan to relax a little today, as this week and the upcoming one have been and will be busy. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking, another favorite thing of mine…this week I spoke to students at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the University of Maryland about educational programming for incarcerated students, and this coming week I’ll be at the STEM Ops Conference in St. Louis, speaking with esteemed colleagues about technology in correctional settings. I love these opportunities. First of all, I love to talk (for those of you reading this who know me, I know you’re smiling and nodding. Or grimacing. Whatever), and I love, love, love, to talk about this work. There are two audiences that make these speaking engagements fascinating and rejuvenating for me…one is a room (or conference center) full of like-minded colleagues who are equally passionate, equally knowledgeable, and in many cases much MORE knowledgeable and experienced than I, and two is a classroom or lecture hall full of university students who are equally passionate but who haven’t yet dipped their toes into the actual practice.
I want to talk about that audience today; because these are the minds and bodies that can, and I feel hopeful, will, change the way we approach the prison system in the United States past my own generation. Whenever I ‘m teaching in a university classroom, it feels exactly the same as when I’m teaching in a prison classroom. In both instances, I’m teaching skills; I’m teaching theory; but most importantly, I’m teaching people how to expand their mindsets. In a correctional setting, we think generally that we’re teaching people how to change criminogenic thinking to then change criminogenic behavior, or we’re teaching a technical skill that will get someone a better paying job that will then negate the necessity for criminogenic behavior, etc…In a college classroom full of young people thinking about a career in criminal justice, we should be teaching about mindset as well. In that situation, I’m teaching people how to think about incarcerated individuals as students, as mothers, as fathers, as sons, as daughters, as productive citizens with untapped potential so that they can change any thinking they may have that these individuals are somehow unredeemable and unworthy, and I’m teaching technical skills in leadership, instruction, and advocacy that will move the current, unproductive system to one that might actually reduce crime, decrease our reliance on high-cost prison systems, and actually open doors of opportunity to people for whom they’ve been perpetually closed so that they can change their lives. If you’re engaged in the criminal justice system or the education system in the U.S., you should be doing the same.
The two university audiences were full of questions, some of them ideas they put in the form of questions, and my response was YES! YES! YES! My wrap-up for both of these engagements was a challenge:
It’s your turn! My generation has done what we can, and for the next ten years or so we can continue to raise our voices, do the good work, or unfortunately fight like heck to make sure we keep the status quo that was set generations before us. That is NOT your mission. Your mission is to throw out the bathwater and nurture the baby. What could be next? What could it look like? How can you SERVE?
(yes, I was a cheerleader in a former life. Still am! Without the short skirt, thank goodness).
In other words…go past the edges of what is and build what should be.
Enjoy that cup o’Joe and start imagining so that you can start building!
P.S. If you want me or any of my team to speak to your class or your team or your organization or at a conference, contact me here.
