Recently, there has been, seemingly, an upsurge in juvenile offenders being tried and sentenced as adults. In reality, this is nothing new. Throughout U.S. history, juvenile offenders have been regarded as adults, even though at the same time, they were considered unqualified to make wise decisions about employment and finances. In other words, when a
On March 5, 1959, a Mr. Clyde Hall of Pikeville, Kentucky, apparently got curious about a far off land called Tibet. This much I have guessed. Around that same time, Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leader, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, was preparing to flee his country in the face of an invasion by communist Chinese forces.
I had never heard of Clyde Hall until recently. I was confined in a maximum-security federal penitentiary about 175 miles from Pikeville; a long way from my native Boston, in many ways. Through the prison’s inter-library loan program, I ordered a copy of the book, Seven Years in Tibet.
On any given night in America, 10,000 children are held in adult jails and prisons. Approximately 7,500 of these kids have never been convicted of a crime. These are horrendous numbers! These are children often tried for non-violent crimes that are housed in adult jails and prisons with hard-core offenders! Research and data, when paid
For many incarcerated prisoners, the thought of finding employment once they are released can be a daunting task. And this is where Jails to Jobs comes along to help directly with this issue. Jails to Jobs is an organization that helps ex-offenders find the tools they may need to help themselves find gainful employment, from
Effective February 1, 2011, the Federal Bureau of Prisons instituted national policy in regards to DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) collection. This policy was promulgated under Program Statement #5311.01, entitled ‘Inmate DNA Sample Collection Procedures.’
According to the Program Statement, “DNA analysis provides a powerful tool for human identification. DNA samples collected from individuals or derived from crime scene evidence are analyzed to produce DNA profiles that are entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
It’s a Friday afternoon and the inmates of FCI-Petersburg — a federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia – are abuzz. Some are playing handball or basketball on the rec-yard. Others are watching ESPN and banging loudly upon tables and trashcans as highlights are shown. And still others are stealing food out of the kitchen or engaging in any other number of ‘hustles.’ This is typical of a federal prison.
What’s not typical is a group of what appear to be students, hunkered down in room 105 of the Education Department. They sit quietly at their desks, pens in hand, taking notes. Their instructor is not a staff member or a guard, as one would expect, but a fellow prisoner by the name of Bill Batton. And these inmates are not students, but inmate instructors in FCI-Petersburg’s Adult Continuing Education Program.
Introduction
This week was week eight of Writing and Publishing. Those of you who follow this blog know that week 8 is the week in which I administer the final examination, always an interesting activity.
This week I showed up for class at around 5:30 p.m., so that I could assist the two students who were absent from week 7, the class in which we prepared for the final examination. To my surprise, one didn’t show. Regardless, around five other students did, in addition to my one, to prepare for the final. During this period of time we rolled through the content covered by the final.
In a first of its kind, an extremely innovative prison project, the San Quentin Film School, became a 7 part series hosted on the Discovery Channel. The San Quentin Film School is a documentary that follows 9 selected inmates incarcerated in San Quentin as they learn the many different aspects and techniques of film making.