"Let Me Stay In Prison - And Teach"

["Mad" Miles]

Good Evening Denizens of Waccobb.net,

A piece I submitted a couple of weeks ago to the Press Democrat's "Close To Home" editorial section will be in tomorrow's paper. It's already on their website:

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100125/OPINION/100129655/1350?Title=GUEST-OPINION-Let-me-stay-in-prison-and-teach

It's a cut-down version of a letter I wrote to Senator Pat Wiggins in November. The submission requirements for the PD limit the words to 650 and they still printed it when I couldn't get it under 700.

I can't take credit for the catchy headline. I suspect Paul Gullixson came up with it. Thanks Paul!

When walking through the yard between my office and the tier where my students live, I often got comments about the sunglasses. "Cool Shades!" was typical. (See the PD website for the pic I'm referring to.) One guy, knew their exact make. Yes, they're modern RayBans.

Here's the entire piece before it was edited down to the bone.

"Mad" Miles




11/18/2009


I am one of over 650 teachers who are being laid off due to state budget cuts in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Prison educational and rehabilitative programs are being gutted in the name of “streamlining” and efficiency. The two percent of the CDCR budget dedicated to education and rehabilitation has been cut to one percent.

Yes, I’m concerned about losing my job and income. I’ve worked at San Quentin for two years and eight months. I was prepared to do it for another fifteen to twenty years. Now I’ll be collecting unemployment and seeking professional teaching work in the current economy.

But I’m also greatly concerned with the impact on our society. Convicted felons who are released to our communities and have not been allowed to use their time in prison to gain the job and emotional skills to stay out, will quickly end up doing something that will get them re-incarcerated. And there will be victims. We are all victims when it comes to the cost of crime. We are all victims when it comes to the cost of warehousing the criminals who get caught, and caught again.

The solutions to these needs are well known and have been proven when applied. See Little Hoover (2007) for recommendations. Education and rehabilitation should be the last thing cut in prison. As they existed before these budget cuts they were inadequate and sometimes poorly designed. The need is to expand and improve them, not eliminate them in exchange for a false show of “streamlined” prison classes.

The CDCR plan is that volunteers and inmates will pick up where credentialed teachers were forced to leave off. A little of that may happen in a place like San Quentin, centrally located in a large urban area with a pool of well-meaning volunteers. But most prisons are in areas with much lower numbers of much less sympathetic local residents.

Teaching is not a hobby. To become proficient at the art requires specialized knowledge and years of experience. Teachers are regularly blamed for problems caused by lack of resources and lack of support from students’ families. Our students in prison are some of the most damaged in our society. The whole litany of poverty, racism, broken families, inadequate public education, untreated learning disabilities and criminalized substance abuse/addiction that helped them go to prison, is well known.

In spite of the limitations and frustrations of my job, I’ve taken satisfaction in the genuine respect and gratitude expressed by my students when I give them; their county social service resources list (so they can write before they get out and perhaps have the bed, job, school and/or rehab spot they need waiting for them before hitting the streets with $200 and nothing else), a pencil with an eraser, a little writing paper once and a while and five days of Adult Life Skills work printed on newsprint with poor editing that hasn’t been fixed in the five years of the program I was hired to teach. I go to their cell front to teach. We do not have a classroom. It’s noisy, dirty, smelly and hot there. It is potentially dangerous (yet not as dangerous as most imagine). But the look on a man’s face when he realizes that I’m there to help him, not push him around or shame him for his failures and faults, is priceless.

The program I teach, Bridging Education, is being completely eliminated. It is has its flaws, if you ever have time I’d be happy to tell you in detail what is wrong with it. But it is better than absolutely nothing. And that, other than taking a fifty-minute reading test, is what they will get. This is because I teach in the Reception Center. Many of those prisoners never spend enough time in prison to get to mainline and have access to a classroom. No volunteer led self-help program is available to them. Nothing. I am it and I constantly question myself to make sure I’m doing the most I can with the time and resources available to me. I know full well how inadequate what I do is, given the real needs of my students. But the vast majority of inmates paroling to our streets have cycled through the RC without ever serving time anywhere else.

We were beginning to make improvements by holding reentry workshops with county service providers in the dining hall. The impending budget cuts loomed and that took the wind out of our sails on that project.

The foolishness of gutting already inadequate educational and rehabilitation programs in prison will become abundantly clear from the cost in money and blood that will inevitably result. What has been destroyed will not be restored. The pattern in corrections is that once physical space is reassigned, for example for medical, the only way to bring back eliminated educational programs will be to build additional offices and classrooms. And of course it will be argued that there is no money available to expand facilities. Even if it was mandated, that would take years, and in the mean time criminality, recidivism and the victimization of innocents and perpetrators alike will continue and will increase.

These cuts are outrageous. Anyone who has a voice for reason and justice needs to do all they can to stop them. If worse comes to worse, I urge you to reverse them when it becomes economically and politically possible.

["Mad" Miles]

Hey My Waccie Peeps,

An update, but first thanks for all the gratitudes in response to my article. I've gotten great and grateful feedback from this board and the many friends, family and colleagues I forwarded it to by email.

Yesterday we correctional educators learned that the layoffs have been postponed for a month. The required 30 Day Notice was improper and our union proved it.

The layoffs are still scheduled, just a month later.

"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

There is a lawsuit on our behalf (us teachers) filed by our union as well. The first hearing is at the end of February.

Some prison teachers from around the state are going to a hearing in Sacramento on Thursday to present our case, again. By my vague memory this the third or fourth such event in the last few months.

If you really care about the lack of education and rehab in prison, and the gutting of what there was, send those cards and letters, make those phone calls, to your Assemblypersons, Senators and Der Groepenfuhrer.

I would focus on the Assembly and State Senate reps if I were you.

Aaahnuld, is a lame duckie who seems to grow increasingly desperate and deluded by the hour. Ship our illegals to Mexico to serve time!? Has he any knowledge of the law at all? Of economic principles involving budgetting and public policy? Has he seen the news about current Mexican prison conditions? How does he think he'll convince the Mexican government to accept them? Does he think he can find a federal judge who would allow such a thing?

You couldn't prove it by me. He's just farting through his mouth. His latest plans for corrections are along the lines of his coded, "Fuck You" to Tom Ammiano a couple of months ago.

I hope everyone's prepared for escalating county costs to warehouse the guys getting early release from prison?

And if you think angry runners who don't like off-leash dogs on the local trails are the worst thing you'll encounter on our streets, get ready for the escalating influx of homeless tweakers/drunks and med-less mentally ill who are decomping, dumped from prison and jail, and who still have no access to resources like rehab, education, shelter or work.

This is no joke, as I tried to emphasize in my op-ed.

Who knows, reason might prevail?... or not.

Stay Tuned!

"Mad" Miles