This is a great topic and I wish to thank each of your guests for their contributions to making our society a better place for all…My question to them is: What would have made a difference in their lives- an education that connected with them, a better living environment, counselors that could listen …that would have helped them make better choices? Thank you.

To Vilma,
Thanks for being willing to tell your story.
There are so many people who can benefit. Especially women. There is such a disconnect between life outside and life inside of prison.Society at large suffers when such a large number of people are warehoused without a commitment to the basic concept of rehabilitation.

What is the most important thing that a loved one or family member can do to support someone starting to make a change?

Great topic; it’s my understanding that the US has more prisoners in jail for drugs offenses alone than the EU has in jail altogether. The rate of incarceration in the US is around 1 in 150; in the UK (which has one of the EU’s highest rates of imprisonment) it is about 1 in 800. If prison does not serve a retributive AND rehabilitative function then it is a costly and immoral burden on society. Money invested in rehabilitation is saved later on through reduced recidivism, policing savings, reduction in property damage and increased tax revenues. There will be failures, but that is no reason not to try.

We have a very similar project in Boston called And Still We Rise Productions. “And Still We Rise!” is an ever-evolving performance by ex-prisoners and their loved ones re-enacting their true life stories for the purpose of healing, empowerment, eduction, and social change. For info and brochure, please write us at: andstillwerise@gmail.com.

I have one big question. Why are criminals entitled to anything? Why do people think that someone should help them? No one helps me, no one forces education on me I went out and paid for it. No one gave me a career, I earned it. No one ever gave me anything, except life.
All that being said I do think the there should be some training in prisons, and that inmates should be allowed to seek education and knowledge, but that they should have to work for it and it should not just be given to them. Thank you.

I woke up listening to Jane Clayson’s interview and thought what a depressing topic until I really started to listen. It was a very emotional ending to this show. The interviewer was really tuned in to the topic. I was very impressed with Jane Clayson.

Interesting show today but we should keep things in perspective. Prisoners are in prison because they’ve committed crimes. To argue that the prison system and high incarceration rates are somehow self-sustaining due to a lack of quality rehabilitative programs and government-funded after school activities in the 1980’s is absurd and ignores the contributions to society that other Americans, perhaps also from disadvantaged backgrounds, make every day while avoiding criminal activity. Many Americans are quite able to fill out a job application and/or support their families without help from the state. I would argue that people who commit crimes suffer from a lack of social maturity that the rest of us have developed. Some (such as your guests today) will reform themselves and sow the seeds for a better life while incarcerated, and some will not. No amount of taxpayer dollars thrown at the problem will turn the most committed (and least moral) prisoners into decent, productive members of society. Prisoners should be treated humanely and offered opportunities to better themselves, but let’s stop short of placing the blame for repeat offenses on the prison system. Instead, blame those who continually make poor choices - I don’t think most people need a rehabilitation program to understand the difference between legally right and legally wrong.

I would just like to reiterate what many have already said, what an inspiring story. People ask why are criminals entitled to anything and yes they made poor choices but I ask this, what type of a society does not care for its most vulnerable individuals. Although many may disagree with me the best prevention for crime is not large police forces but education. Does it not make sense to anyone that EU nations have substantially lower incarceration rates when they provide state funded education and health care including mental health needs?

I wish there were time for me to call in. After listening to the man who was so judgemental, I wanted to share another perspective, and that is the positive affect projects like this can have for the victims of crimes.

Many years ago, my family and I became victims of a sociopath who tried several times to kill me, among other crimes. Yet, he was able to manipulate the system so that he received only three years of probation. My family and I were deeply traumatized, and I experienced the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder for years, at a time when there was little support for victims.

I give you only enough detail so you can understand why I think programs like those at the Fortune Society are so important for all of us.

Several years after these events in our lives, an organization at the college where I was working sponsored a three day Prisoners’ Rights Conference. I was assigned assist the sponsoring organization in setting up.

It was a life-changing experience for me. I listened to people who worked with parolees, people who ran half-way houses, people who had struggled to recreate their lives after prison. I listened to former cops who talked about how they targetted certain people by their looks, their economic status, or just because. I listened to stories similar to those told by the guests on your program. That familiar wall in me began to dissolve. I felt profoundly moved. I began to see them in me, and me in them.

But the one that stands out vividly in my mind is this one:

Some of the people who spoke the last day were prisoners who had been furloughed from prison long enough to attend the conference. Each was accompanied by a corrections officer (who I later learned had volunteered for the duty). One of the prisoners who spoke was a Native American man. He spoke humbly about what he’d done and his feelings of shame and contrition. He spoke of his struggle to maintain a sense of his humanity in the harsh, racist environment of the prison.

Last of all, he spoke of the day that his sister brought her new baby to the prison for him to see. He spoke of holding that baby, and as he spoke, his hands made the shape of the baby in the air, and his arms cradled that shape next to his heart. His voice grew soft and wondrous as he described his feelings of holding the potential that new life represented, and how he felt he’d let his family down by squandering his own. Then, his voice caught as he realized how tremendously isolated from real life prison made its inmates, so much so that they turned off their emotions in order to survive. Tears were running down his cheeks, and down a great many others in that room. Including mine, and I think that was when I began to heal.

There is more, but this is the story I wanted you to know: It is important for these stories to be told, not only so the people convicted of crimes can begin to heal and to recreate their lives, but so that those of us who have been victims can too. And so that prisons can become the kinds of places that people are able, when they are ready, to heal themselves. And so our society itself can become a healthy one.

A program like this can never really change the person who victimized me and my family. He is what he is. But I saw in that conference, and in the stories told on your program, the profound possibility of damaged people to surmount their pasts, and for their hunger for the ordinary things of life to heal. Theirs is real courage, and the stories I heard that day several decades ago helped me begin to heal too.

Thank you.

I work with troubled youth, and was actually driving a student around when I heard this show. I sometimes read about my students in the police blotter after they graduate. The student in the car at the time was interested in the show and I am motivated to find a way to show the play to students to help them avoid prison in the first place.

With regard to the nay-sayers who insist that criminals are bad people and deserve what they get, we already have a process in place to address their wrongs. We have a court system that levies punishments for people who have been deemed to have committed crimes. (I could debate the quality of the criminal system, but that is not the point I am making here.)

Once they are out of prison, however, they have supposedly paid their dues. To continue to punish them by refusing them jobs, places to live, etc, etc is nothing more than vigilantism. If you do not think they deserve to be free then change the system and keep them in jail. Otherwise, once they have served their time they are citizens like the rest of us and deserve all of the same rights.

We are all implicated in the creation and maintenance of a society that facilitates the marginalization of such a high proportion of its citizens. Of course each of us has to take responsibility for our own choices and each of us needs to take advantage of the opportunities we are afforded, but as well as individual with free choice, we are also part of the society we live in.

Some of us live with many more options available to us than others and that to me is the heart of the problem.

Just because I suffered and no one helped me - not true by the way - does not mean that I have to choose to refuse help to others. Each of us has the choice to reach out a hand and pull others up to where we are, just as we depend on the others to do the same for us. Whether we like to admit it or not, we each live on the backs of those below us. We can either ignore that fact or make conscious choices that recognize that fact.

I have no clear alternative to prison. But I choose to engage with the reality of the institution, its security, comfort, horror, grinding boredom so I remain conscious of the price we pay for our comfort and security.

Without that consciousness it is too tempting to regard prisoners as other - lock them up and throw away the key. And once they come out why should we regard them at all? They are our brothers and sisters. Our Uncles and Aunts. Our sons and daughters. Our nieces and nephews.

Perhaps that is the biggest choice facing us: can we create a society that helps us include in our awareness every member of that society?

i am currently writing a peper on prison education and whether people think its a right, a duty, or a priviledge.

i have asked people their views but think it would be helpful to get the views of people that have actually been in prison and whether you believe you had the right to the education or whether it was a prvivledge, and why you chose the view you did.

it would be much appreciated thank you.

i am currently writing a peper on prison education and whether people think its a right, a duty, or a priviledge.

i have asked people their views but think it would be helpful to get the views of people that have actually been in prison and whether you believe you had the right to the education or whether it was a prvivledge, and why you chose the view you did.

it would be much appreciated thank you

She couldnt willingly emma watson upskirt let me. Kate went to ask.