Madeline Halpert
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place Division 4, News Writing
Human Interest Feature
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place Division 4, News Writing
Human Interest Feature
It happened during the third year of his prison sentence when a gang fight escalated.
“It was either hurt or be hurt, and[God] stopped me and said, ‘Take a look at this and try something different.’ And I did,” Schultz said.
It was then that Schultz’ life began to change.
“I stopped being that person,” he said.
“I looked where my life was going and how it was continuing to deteriorate.I was becoming more like an animal than a responsible man, and I had to stop that.”
Schultz started going to the church in prison, where he found Northridge prison ministry. This program is one of many intended to help prisoners become more responsible during and after their time in prison. Through letters, church activities and pro-social groups, Schultz began to surround himself with better individuals.
“[I found] my new social group, my new role models,” Schultz said. “I didn’t have to be that tough guy that I thought I needed to be. I could look at these other people and say, ‘This is the person that I want to be.’
According to a study from the U.S.Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 68 percent of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of release from prison. 77 percent were arrested within five years. KenSmith, one of the leaders of the PrisonMinistry at Northridge Church, says that through their program, they can significantly reduce this percentage.
“We have found that with people who develop faith and understanding, it gets down to about 25 percent [of people who return to prison],” Smith said.
Smith explains the ministry has a multitude of methods intended to help their “friends inside” get back on their feet. One of these ways is by building relationships with them through a pen pal program.
“We write to people inside and send them materials about things that they can do as far as anger and all kinds of other issues,” Smith said.
Smith adds that the ministry also does one-on-one visits with the prisoners,where they’re able to talk freely about who they are now, and who they would like to be in the future.
Their program “One Day with God” offers the opportunity for reconnection between incarcerated parents and their children.
“We take the children of our friends inside in the prison for the whole day,”he said.
The day consists of playing games,music and crafts. At the end of the day,the children leave with a big package ofgifts from their parents.
Smith feels it’s important the prisoners get a chance to do these types of activities. He believes they deserve forgiveness.
“People think that people in prison are like [they are] in the movies,” he said. “They’re not. They’re just like youand me. They put their pants on the same way we do, they have families they love, they have the same concerns that we have, but they did something wrong, and they got caught for doing it,and now they’re paying the price. But they deserve another chance, and God gives another chance.”
Schultz wishes that people would think twice before judging someone who has been incarcerated. “Men and women who are in prison– they are human beings,” Schultz said. “And they can change, and change takes hard work on their part, but it also takes forgiveness by society to take them back into the community.”
He says that the current justice system, along with rates of mass incarceration, do not allow for change. He likesto think of it as putting a shoebox on ashelf for a period of time. A few years,or ten years, or 20 years go by, and it’s time to send the shoebox home, so someone takes the shoebox off the shelf and releases it into the world. But it’s still the exact same shoebox someone put on the shelf 20 years ago.
Schultz believes programs like Northridge Prison Ministry gives prisoners a chance to feel like more than just another shoe box on the shelf, to feel like they’re evolving.
“A lot of men and women are in prison because of poor self-image, feeling ashamed that they can never be any-thing other than that inmate,” Schultz said. “Because in prison, that’s whatyou are. You’re an inmate or a number,so you don’t feel like a human beinganymore. These programs help you to strive to be something that you didn’t think you could be.”
It was after a mother finished reading the story “Fish Had a Wish” in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility that she began to cry. She was narrating a tape that would soon after be given to her child.
Karen Smyte, a volunteer and board member of the program Staying In Closer Touch, was with the imprisoned mother. Smyte thinks the repetitionof the word “wish” in the book is whatmade her cry. She believes the mother was thinking, “I wish, I wish, I wish, I could be with my child.”
“Staying in Closer Touch” is one ofChildren’s Literacy Network’s four main programs to help get books in the hands of low income children. The program’s volunteers work at three correction facilities in Michigan: the Washtenaw County Jail, the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility and the Men’s Federal Detention Center in Milan.
The volunteers then help mothers,fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers select books for their children and grandchildren record readings of the books. They send these recordings,along with cards decorated by the parents, to the children of the prisoners.
Kristy Cooper, the executive director of Children’s Literacy Network, says the program can serve more than one purpose.
“For a lot of the children, it’s a really great experience to hear their parents’ voice on command,” she said. “And to actually be able to do that in the context of encouraging reading and helping them be interested in reading is vital.”
Cooper says that the tapes can be delivered to children all over the state. Because the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility is the only women’s prison in the state, any woman who is incarcerated in Michigan is then brought to Ypsilanti. This can make it difficult for the children to see their incarcerated parents.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, around 53 percent of people held in the nation’s prisons in2007 were parents of minor children.
For Rick Duncan, a volunteer at theMilan Men’s Federal Correctional Facility, the program hit close to home.He found an ad for Staying in Closer Touch during a difficult time in his life when he was looking to volunteer regularly.
“When I saw it, it sent a shiver down my spine because my dad had been incarcerated for ten years,” Duncan said.“And not only was he incarcerated, but he’s also illiterate.”
Duncan was 25 years old when his father was imprisoned. He says it felt al-most like a death in the family– except worse, because the pain continued on with no closure.
“I closed off to the world,” he said. “It was very painful. All day long, everyday, I had this aching, searing feeling in my stomach.”
Duncan says that, no matter how hard he tried, he could not stop caring about his father. He visited him often. They wrote letters which, due to his father’s illiteracy, could be incredibly difficult for the average person to understand.Still, Duncan and his father remained in close contact.
Duncan explains that during a per-son’s time in prison, their relationships with family members are often messy.He likes that the program can provide a form of effective communication for parents and their children.
“If they’re going to be in touch any-way, this is an opportunity to make that contact as positive as possible,” Dun-can said.
Jan Brimacombe, the first volunteer at the Milan’s Men’s Federal Correction Center, says she does it because of the positive feedback from inmates.
“It was just amazing to hear a grand-mother say, ‘My grandson listens to this book every day. He takes the book to bed,’” she said.
Brimacombe also likes the personal twists the prisoners add to the stories. On one particular occasion, a father
chose a story about three little owls waiting for their mother to come home from hunting. The father changed the three owls’ names to the names of his own children, and the mother owl to the father owl.
Brimacombe says that one of the largest challenges the program faces is get-ting new volunteers into the prisons.
“Our biggest frustration is not with the men, but with the bureaucracy,” Brimacombe said. “I have a volunteerI met with in October who wants to do this program, and she still hasn’t been called by the prison to be trained.”
She says that there can also be mis-communications between the program and the prison. If the prison is under
lockdown, it’s difficult to contact the prison to find out what’s going on.
lockdown, it’s difficult to contact the prison to find out what’s going on.
Smyte adds that there can be a different kind of difficulty for the inmates. She says the hardest moment is when the book is closed.
“The moment the recorder goes off is exactly when the absence of not being with that child is felt acutely,” Smyte said.
Smyte feels the program could be expanded to many other prisons to help prisoners remain in contact with their families.
“My dream is to spread the program all around the country,” she said. “I believe it’s a relatively easy intervention that helps build community and connects families.”
Smyte hopes to create a book club with the parents and their children. She be-lieves it would provide an opportunityto bring children of incarcerated par-ents together, with no shame involved. Duncan says the most gratifying part for him comes with thinking about what these stories mean to the children, and how it inspires a love of reading.
“Some child that was just born– they didn’t do anything to deserve what they have,” he said. “They’ve been dealt
some difficult cards, but that package that you’re holding is going to bring them such happiness.”
some difficult cards, but that package that you’re holding is going to bring them such happiness.”