Prison Gardens
Most people who end up in prison come from a variety of life-long difficulties that include growing up in environments of poverty, low levels of formal education, childhood abuse, limited options and a lack of role models for earning a living honestly. The prison system rarely fills in the missing blanks in prisoners’ lives to provide the kind of environment these people need to enable them to make restitution for their crimes, regain their dignity and reenter society once they have served their terms. Recidivism is high, showing clearly that the system needs new strategies if inmates are to successfully rejoin society. (Koshak,1998) Prison gardens offer people who want to turn their lives around a place to reconnect with their natural rhythms, get healthy exercise in the fresh air, work cooperatively with others and care for the earth in a healing way (Clinebill, 1996). An inmate working in a prison garden can learn job skills, contribute to the common good by growing food for others, and find a focus for their lives post-release (Hynes, 1996). The new Women’s Garden at a Corrections Canada facility near Vancouver, British Columbia was inspired by one such program that has run with great success in San Francisco for over a decade…
Legume Sam:
I have a friend who wrote a grant to get a garden project started, at the Chino Prison for Women in Chino, California. She says that the dirt she has been given is super-compacted and rock hard. We told her that she should have her prison dirt thoroughly watered and that she should let it soak until it’s softened up a bit.
Ideally, as well, prison cafeterias (like other institutions which serve food) should separate out waste into garbage/ recycles and compost. I’d imagine that, like with my friend’s experience, the biggest challenge facing prison gardens is the difficulty in “making good dirt.” Here is my most recent essay on the whole gardening thing…
12 December 2008, 9:28 pmLegume Sam:
(besides, that is, the tendencies of prison establishments to deny in cavalier fashion any “privileges” granted to prisoners: see, e.g. Tommy Chong’s prison garden experience)
13 December 2008, 7:02 amcyndi:
i have a small business in my home town. a local paper wrote an article regarding my business and subsequently the article reached the detention center (prison) that is not too far from where i live. i’ve received two letters and a phone call from the same inmate since the article. in his first letter he inquired about my business and expressed how he would like to have a similar business when he is released. second letter he inquired as to why i hadn’t written back, after all jesus has forgiven him (his words). the phone call came while i was not at my studio, but there was a recorded message asking if i would accept the charges, or if i wanted to block all inmate calls. plus the caller i.d. on my phone showed the call was from “prison.”
18 December 2008, 8:45 pmall advice is not to have any contact with this inmate, and that is my gut feeling too, of course.
i don’t know what to do or feel. i’m a bit on the worried side, but don’t want to be overly judgmental about this guy, but on the other hand he is in prison and that is a whole different world to me.
perhaps if u email me i can give you his mailing address and you can send him this article. but send it without any references as to why you thought he might be interested. is this guy just looking for acceptance? did he see my photo in the paper and is now obsessed? is he actually interested in “crafting.” i don’t know. i will not make contact (i don’t want to), but will i be contributing to the problems of the “system” by ignoring him?
if he really is interested in crafting, perhaps he’ll be interested in starting his own garden. is this even possible in a detention center for men?
egad i’m confused!
thanks for reading
ps the timing of this article seems weird
BuddhalovesPaine:
cyndi,
19 December 2008, 12:50 pmYou have written a quite challenging letter. If this person is sincere about wanting to start a crafts business after he gets out of prison he can get the information that he needs from sources other than you. But your letter raises some really challenging ethical issues. Do we as human beings have any obligations to those in prison other than ensuring that our political institutions do not torture prisoners and feed and cloth them? Do the obligations of American citizens and European citizens differ because of the higher rate of violence in American society? One thing that seems logical to me is that the obligations of a female in dealing with a male prisoner would be different than that of a male person outside of prison but then some people may not agree with that.
Also not everyone who is in prison is there because he or she has been convicted of a violent crime. But then isn’t it more likely that they have committed a violent crime but have not been convicted of it? Furthermore who wants to start a relationship with someone who has been convicted of fraud, or dealing drugs?
Something that comes to mind concerning this dilemma is a policy of George Washington’s. When battling the British Washington said that the militia forces only had to fire once at the enemy. The militia could then retreat and let the regular army do the rest of the fighting. The idea was that the militia only had to weaken the enemy to give those who were better trained a better chance to win. America’s army in this case would be its social workers. It seems that the social workers have been getting routed for the past 30 years. Not to blame the social workers, they are only a part of a society which unfortunately breeds crime.
Cyndi your letter is very troubling because it makes me ask myself if I had an auto repair shop and a person convicted of some serious crime were to apply for a job opening would I hire them? I do not think so. But then I would feel bad because I would think, if I do not do it who will?
Robert Reed:
Cyndi, my advice is to let it be. You have no obligation to answer. And you had no obligation to answer. The person who has written you has no business questioning you as to why you haven’t responded to his previous unsolicited communication.
If the person writing you is sincere about getting that sort of help, there are other doors that they can knock on, besides soliciting a woman in a single-owner business, to adopt them single-handedly and provide them with individual attention.
I realize that there aren’t enough rehabilitation programs for people convicted of crimes. But there are some, and that person needs to look for one, and get on their waiting list. Or they need to find another way to pursue their dream, if that’s really what they’re after, other than trying to strike up a “pen pal” relationship with a stranger who was featured as the subject of a local newspaper story.
And you need to heed the wisdom in Stan’s axiom: “Perfect masculinity is sociopathic.” You need to err on the side of caution, rather than being guilt-tripped into playing a part that someone else’s imagination has decided to cast you for. Regardless of whether they’re well-intentioned in their own mind, they’re demanding that you assume entirely too much responsibility for them.
I think that would be so even if you were a man, with an auto repair shop. But the fact that you’re a woman who’s a sole proprietor of a small craft shop raises even more alarms with me.
Part of the reason for my responding here is because of what happened to a close relative of mine. She got involved with a prisoner’s rehabilitation group, and after a while she felt enough trust in one of the men in the program that she allowed him to become her roomate- not as a lover, simply as a way of helping out. He ended up acting very suspiciously-staying up all night talking on the phone, after she had gone to bed. My relative was not very streetwise, but she told me that she eventually developed the suspicion that he was dealing meth. But she somehow did not feel up to putting him out of the house.
One night he pulled her to the floor and forcibly raped her. Then she summned the courage to throw him out of the house. She did not, however, report the rape.
She told me that on several occasions after they became acquainted, the man used to query her: “Why are you doing this for us (me)?” That is, getting involved with ex-offenders just out of prison. It’s plain to me that he couldn’t see the situation any other way than that she was a mark, and she was asking for whatever she got.
I spent many years as a cab driver, and met people from all walks of life. I know that all ex-offenders aren’t like that. But all too many of them simply remain predators, awaiting an opportunity. Some of them are capable of evolving to be well-grounded and trustworthy people. But it takes a lot more contact, in a lot more secure circumstances than the one you’re finding yourself in, to be in a position to feel confident to take the risk of trusting someone with that personal background. It isn’t anything you do on a cold call.
From your comment, it sounds to me as if you don’t even know the offense for which the man was incarcerated. I think your within your rights to contact the relevant authorities with your story and find out details like that one.
Not that it should be a deciding factor in whether or not you take him up on his unsolicited offer. Personally, I wouldn’t even respond. I’d treat the emails as pernicious spam, and tell more people, including the police.
Despite anything someone might say to give you a different impression, this isn’t really about offering a final judgement on another. It’s about wariness and self-preservation.
21 December 2008, 1:14 amRobert Reed:
“Perfect masculinity is sociopathic.”
That’s a terrible judgement. Understand, that’s one that Stan is rendering on himself, too. And I’m a male who also accepts that judgement.
Unconstrained by any other influence, the sociobiology of masculinity in male humans is entirely individualistically driven to boost egotistical power and the search for a maximum of sensory gratification. Without anything to put it in check, that’s the essence of it.
Those are paltry rewards for human awareness to settle for, and unworthy goals for which to strive. But it’s part of the biochemistry of men.
I don’t hate my gender. But we bear careful watching. And those of us who thankfully don’t view “perfecting masculinity” as the highest of personal achievements have to find ways to hold the line against those who do, while having to guard against our own tendencies to go overboard- which is just another way of succumbing to the male ego trip.
There’s general agreement about this, from the stories compiled in old books like the Bible and verses in the Tao Te Ching, to commentatorsin the present day:
like Denis Leary
“…Ultimately, especially having raised children, if guys were left alone … I don’t know what would happen, but I think we have pretty good evidence: A lot of stuff would get blown up, there’d be a lot of really stupid fights over stupid stuff. And because there are these giant weapons, a lot of the time they’d be going, “Man, I wish we hadn’t blown each other up.” And also, I just don’t think it’s possible to be civilized and have children get all the information they need without a strong female hand…”
to Rodney Adkins:
“Well now that I’m a father
I’m scared to death one day my daughter
Is gonna find
That teenage boy I used to be
That seems to have just one thing on his mind
She’s growin’ up so fast
It won’t be long before
I’ll have to put the fear of god into
Some kid at the door
(Chorus)
Come on in boy sit on down
And tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter do you now?
Yeah we think she’s something else
She’s her daddy’s girl
Her momma’s world
She deserves respect
That’s what she’ll get
Now ain’t it son?
Y’all go out and have some fun
I’ll see you when you get back
Probably be up all night
Still cleanin’ this gun
Now it’s all for show
Ain’t nobody gonna get hurt
It’s just a daddy thing
And hey, believe me, man it works”
The comedic commentary seeks to keep a light take on things, but the actual subject matter actually has quite a bit more gravity to it.
I feel bad about derailing a hopeful thread on prison gardens in order to post a dire warning to someone about the perils of trusting prisoners. But some sorts of well-intentioned endeavors require controls and supervision, lest they become ineffective, counterproductive, or even the means to enable tragedy and victimization. I think things like prison gardens programs can be very helpful at connecting people to cultivating authentic values and praiseworthy virtues. But most of the penitentiaries of the South are, or were, prison farms. So it’s plain that tilling of the soil and growing crops has to be only a means within a wider project of providing people to get in touch with a sense of shared humanity and worth.
And- to return to the earlier letter by cyndi- post-incarceration rehabilitation of adults is not a project to be confused with offering a few hours a week to mentor a small child. So you’ve done the right thing by not getting involved with the man who contacted you. I want you to be clear about that.
21 December 2008, 2:08 am(Boer) Tom:
To Mr Reed:
You say that masculine behavior is sociobiological – this is somewhat confusing – if someone tells you to stop doing something, I’m confident you’ll stop it if the person is sufficiently powerful, without any need for the powerful person to use his violence. Men can stop repulsive behavior without being forced – whatever basis masculinity may finally have in biology, the pathologies of masculinity have a largely psychological basis, and one can change one’s behavior with minimal effort – so stop being demanding, and change your masculine behavior – take instructions from women, think about the ideas they are discussing, and remember and acknowledge their authorship of their ideas. Easy: Get yourself into a demanding or predatory mindset (e.g. where you might nag for sex, the queasiness of acknowledging a woman’s contributions especially in presence of other men, or a tool taboo), work through the psycho-somatic manifestations that show up (see the link). Repeat ~5 times, and move on to other problems of masculinity.
I don’t see any value of monumental struggles against masculinity – it is not too hard to just undo step by step – the only work is identifying the masculine, problematic behaviors and mindset-components, e.g. Madonna-Whore complex (I have worked through it, then it was gone; upon working through it, I understood that it is a question of possessiveness of others’ bodies, and I simply accepted that it is not my business when or whether other people have sex – the complex manifests as “She’s a whore because she doesn’t meet my expectations of what she should do as a woman“ and then moves on to bizarre fantasies and hatred) – much of which is amply described in feminist literature – read the description, ask yourself if it applies to you – work through the denial (whether it actually applies to you is initially immaterial) and then play with the idea that you fit the description. You’ll watch your behavior, get e.g. headaches from the new behavior, then work through them, then behave differently.
Ditto masculinity (and other problems) of prisoners – it is up to men to get other men to quit masculinity (if on a piecemeal basis). It is the difference of a repressed and resentful masculinity versus a devolved masculinity.
21 December 2008, 10:15 pmBuddhalovesPaine:
I was giving some addition thought to the problem of people who have committed serious crimes and have been released back in to the society. It is tempting to say that when people are released from prison that the prisoners families and social workers are responsible for helping them readjust to life outside of prison.
22 December 2008, 5:28 amBut their disfunctional families, or neighborhoods, are often the reason the ended up in prison in the first place.
My spouse had a grandmother that worked with people that had TB. Her work eventually cost her her life. She died of TB herself. So should we all avoid working with the sick because we ourselves might become sick? If any society is going to avoid collapse decent people are going to have to take some risks above and beyond their normal routine. There are a million and one problems that need to be addressed a person can take their pick.
That being said if I was faced with the question of hiring a qualified person from prison for a job, I think that I would make it very clear to that person that if he or she comes to work for me they are going to be tested. They are going to be put in positions where they will be tempted to do something wrong and they will be watched. There will be no pattern to the tests it may be once a year it may be five times a year and as long as they work for me the testing will never stop. As soon as they think that they have won your trust they may be tempted to take advantage of that trust. They would also have to agree to drug and alchohol testing on a random basis, and body searches for concealed weapons.
This does not address the question though of should a person hire a former prisoner when another qualified person has applied for the job. Unfortunately we live in a system in which some people can work 60 hours per week at their main job and then 20 or 30 hours per week at their part time job while other people then get squeezed out entirely.
Well perhaps in the future when Rumsfeld and Gates and Pace and Mullen are prisoners I will not feel so sympathetic towards prisoners.
~SJH v.3.0:
One must remember that the model of today’s criminal justice system is based on the idea of atonement and punishment, not rehabilitation and reconciliation.
That it’s skewed and flawed is a given from the outset.
I’ve seen the wholesale criminalization of the mentally ill in my state as working from a rehibilatative model and have been told my services were no longer required.
The best we can all do is love unconditionally yet discern most pragmatically.
Reason and emotion are meant to be reconciled as are the archetypes of the saint and sinner. Both are embodied in the same vehicle.
Love this site, love the input, and was just hoping to ad to the discourse without really having any credentials to do so other than reverance.
When the smoke clears and I as an individual can look myself in the eye and be comfortable with the compromises I’ve made and the pitfalls I have succumed to, then and only then will the contradictions and imaginary dialectic that exists in western culture be reconciled and integratedinto the whole of my experience as messy as that might be.
Tragic, comic, moving, and insatiable….I remain a neophyte under a new moon and sun.
23 December 2008, 2:55 amcripes:
Cindi:
Of cource, you have no personal obligation to take on a prisoner as your employee or personal project. However, i can say that it is common for prisoners to try anything to reach out to the unincarcerated in their effort to make some kind of leads that will help them function upon release.
imagine a person released without money, without a home, without a job and without even identification. imagine doing that yourself.
There are a couple of practical things you could do:
1. see if you can lookup this person’s criminal history in your state department of corrections website, to give yourself a sense if he presents a threat.
2. advise the corrections department that you do not want this prisoner to send mail to your address, if that’s what you decide.
2. lookup “prisoner reentry” in your state or city, make a couple of calls, and accurately record the services and contacts, forward this to the prisoner, explain that you cannot offer him assistance, to desist from writing you, and wish him well.
23 December 2008, 6:10 pmStan:
What about prison gardens? Does anyone have other links, stories, about the use and-or results of gardens in prison?
24 December 2008, 7:54 amRobert Reed:
(Boer) Tom: I noted my opinion that there’s a sociobiological basis for human masculine behaviors, and that taken to its extreme as a univariate value, masculinism is sociopathic. That opinion should not be confused with support for sociobiological determinism. Humans possess reflective self-consciousness- which implicitly entails the potential to factor in other values that lead to a higher and more self-disciplined state of awareness- and their behaviors are not simply captive to the tides of their endocrine systems. I have to note here that I identify myself as a Christian- and that means, for me, that I require something beyond rationalist materialism to underpin my value system. I’m not a superstitious literalist about it, and what I’m after in seeking “God” is more subtle than the standard caricatures applied to “the religious.” Not to get too far into it- it’s a topic for a different discussion, and I’d prefer to bring the thread around. But I want to make clear that I don’t reduce human motivation and behavior simply to the materialist paradigm of the triggering of chemical networks of physical-sensory aversion and reward.
It can be a struggle, though.
Onward.
Here are links to some gardens programs at correctional facilities in California:
http://www.insightgardenprogram.org/program.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19145093.html
A related archive with various stories worthy of attention
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/prisoner-rehabilitation
26 December 2008, 7:36 pmeric blair:
http://michiganmessenger.com/9227/kingsley-prison-grows-tons-of-food-for-poor
28 December 2008, 8:54 amSarahW:
Cyndi, this is a late response to your ambivalent post about the inmate contacting you.
I was kind of impatient with the well-meant
handwringing about our obligations to our fellow man that followed.
The correct response to the attempts at contact you have received from the inmate is clear to me.
Someone needs to wise you up. Your instincts to avoid this man are your God-given common sense, and you should understand that the follow-up letter was an attempt to use your higher angels against you, for the inmate’s own benefit.
In short, it’s a con.
Inmates target some women featured in articles in the local paper because they are casting a net for marks, women who will be a present and possibly future source of income and goodies and other forms of help.
Targeting small business owners, especially single women of a certain age or, even better, pictured as being overweight or plain, (not saying you are, but that’s catnip to the would-be con) is a common strategy employed…to strike up a correspondence, establish a sort of intimacy, to appeal to a woman’s emotional needs, or generousity, whatever he figures out they might be; he strikes gold when he builds up an imaginary relationship that allows him to eventually reel in the prizes – financial support, mainly, (although the game itself is fun, the process of reeling in a victim gratifying.) and status among his prison peers.
He is not interested in your craft business, nor you, but you as a depersonalized source of gain.
I can not emphasize more strongly what an old ploy and a common one his is. Most telling is the fact that he criticized you, essentially mildly insulting you as “unforgiving”, hoping you will respond and behave in a way to disapprove his mild allegation.
(I believe Gavin Debecker , author of “Gift of Fear”, calls that “typecasting”. )
The whining, manipulative follow-up letter is a clue.
You are not the answer to this person’s prayers, not his saviour, you are a target.
30 December 2008, 12:35 pmRobert Reed:
Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to set up projects like that to help people without criminal records, as well. Probably a lot cheaper to set up and maintain, strictly in the financial sense.
There are some very lush and productive backyard home gardens in some Sacramento neighborhoods, by the way. You can see the corn and beanstalks growing over the fence tops. I’ve noticed that a lot of the households are Hmong folks. Stockton and Sacramento are where a large fraction of the Hmong immigrants to this country were resettled. Geographically a far cry from the hill forests of Laos, but they’re making a go of it.
Sometimes I see chickens scratching around in the front yards, too, which makes me smile. One of the reasons I like this place, you can occasionally hear roosters crowing in the backyards of some of the houses. Not just the Hmong-settled neighborhoods in the south area- all over town. The zoning laws of Sacramento apparently make allowance for that sort of thing. Some people might find that annoying, but I’ll take some 6:00am cockcrows over 9:00am leafblowing machines for hours on end, any day of the week.
I also have a cab driving buddy who has been known to put a fire pit in his front yard and make a campfire once in a while, and as far as I know, nobody has ever hassled him about it. Not sure how strictly legal that is, but this place is laid back.
You couldn’t do that in McLean, Virginia. Much of McLean doesn’t even have sidewalks, for that matter. Walking to any neighboring town, for part of the way you’re more or less taking your life in your hands, having to walk directly on the road pavement on narrow roads that often host a huge amount of automobiles
(as in “traffic-choked.”) No bike lanes on the roads yet, either- although I just did an on-line search, and found out that they’re about ready to put in one .7 mile link to the other local bike paths, which is undoubtedly better than nothing. Still, I don’t envy the people who live there.
On the positive side, my folks did have a vegetable garden in their back yard when they lived in nearby Vienna. So at least that’s okay with the local community standards (as long as you don’t grow…etc., etc.)
I knew a woman who lived in downtown Sacramento as a child, during the WW2 Victory Garden era. She said that every back yard had a garden, the alleys were all strung with lights, and at night the adults would sit on the back porch and watch over the children playing there.
It seems like such a waste of rich alluvial soil to put a lawn in, instead. In my opinion.
30 December 2008, 6:50 pmRobert Karaffa:
Just for some perspective on this issue some of you (maybe it will help you cyndi) might want to read “Convicted in the Womb” by Carl Upchurch. I was involved with the Council for Urban Peace and Justice some years ago and knew Carl during all of that formational time and for a while before and after. Carl really made a difference in many lives especially among gang members nationwide during the gang summits, as well as with academics and regular folks around my hometown and in many other places. The gang summit concept was truly revolutionary and valuable, as was Carl himself. He is deeply and sorely missed by many of us here in Granville, Ohio.
30 December 2008, 10:05 pmRobert Reed:
I would hope that it’s fairly obvious that my last message was an unintentional cross-post, meant as a response to eric blair…I’m trusting the readers (especially recent lurkers) to sort out the contents of the divergent topic threads, as it were.
( Cyndi, I agree with SarahW’s warning to you. Her advice about the risks and possible consequences in your case is sufficiently direct and explicit that I don’t feel the need to add anything more on the subject. )
31 December 2008, 6:40 amcyndi:
i appreicate all the comments made in response to the comment i posted. i agree with every comment and take all advice seriously. i am, in no way going to engage this prisoner. i do agree with sarah w. and her mention that i am a target. it’s all so random. the crazy thing is that he’s the only person to respond to the article! (business is slow) sorry stan to distract from your post about prison gardens.
2 January 2009, 10:20 pmnow about that diet!