Time Markers:
(0:49) A Nonpartisan Mission
(4:42) A Heart for Incarcerated Individuals
(6:41) Praise Can Lead to Growth
(10:48) Tough on Crime
(13:14) Getting Started with CO Support
(17:44) Any Bit of Support Helps on Either Side
Welcome to the PrisonCare Podcast!
I’m Sabrina Justison, founder of PrisonCare.org, equipping compassionate people to support the often-invisible people groups who make up a prison neighborhood - the inmate residents, correctional officers, staff, administration, and the families of all of these folks.
Join me for this week’s episode, and be encouraged to think, care, and respond as we explore the challenges facing prison neighborhoods everywhere.
Let’s support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYone on the inside matters.
(0:49)
Hello, friends. I'm delighted that you are joining me for today's episode. We are going to talk about partisan applications of the PrisonCare model, which is really weird because one of our distinctives is that we are a nonpartisan model as a non-profit. So yeah we're going to… we're going to flip that on its head a little bit today because both are true.
So as a nonprofit organization and in terms of our Core vision and Mission PrisonCare is nonpartisan. That means it doesn't matter whether you like chocolate or vanilla or strawberry. It doesn't matter if you sleep with the sheets tucked tightly in at the foot of the bed, or you like for your feet to be out. No matter what your political and philosophical position is on matters relating to criminal justice, to the criminal legal system, to the US prison system… all of that. You can use the ideas and the tools that we provide through PrisonCare Incorporated and you can use them to do what you believe is best to improve the toxic culture inside prisons today.
If you are tough on crime and your politics and your voting and your financial support and your ideology and all of that leans in that direction, there's a place for you at PrisonCare Incorporated. And if you are the absolute opposite end of the spectrum and don't even believe that prisons should be a thing and you're an abolitionist, and whatever else, there’s a place for you at PrisonCare Incorporated.
The reason for this is because very simply everyone on the inside matters. There are literally millions of people who are making up prison neighborhoods all over this country and they are all being damaged, deeply damaged, life and death damaged by the unrelentingly toxic culture inside a prison. By the US versus them rules that run everything. It's bad for everyone. And so our model is focusing on the reality that all these folks are having to live side by side in this prison neighborhood where the air is killing them, where the water is killing them, where the violence is killing them. It's terrible in so many ways. I'm speaking metaphorically. I'm sure there are prisons where the ventilation system is just atrocious and there's black mold, and yeah, but metaphorically. Okay, all elements of the neighborhood are toxic for the people who are living there and it doesn't matter whether they are serving prison sentences or whether they are working in Corrections and we need to do something about it.
We need to care enough to say, “wow, we want to try to reduce the toxicity and to be positive culture, creators and supporters inside those prison neighborhoods because those people matter.”
Nonpartisan, right? Nonpartisan Mission. But today, I want to share with you some practical applications of the PrisonCare model and I want to help you sort of line them up in your head with the most common differences in politics and philosophy. Okay? So we're going to take a partisan application approach to our nonpartisan mission. Okay?
(4:42)
So let's start with someone who has a real heart for people who are incarcerated and their loved ones. If you have a heart for incarcerated individuals, the most obvious thing that you can do using the PrisonCare Incorporated model is to become a penpal encourager and even better, a Compassion Team Leader. What that means is that you decide that you want to be a voice of encouragement and challenge, mentoring, friendship. And that you want to use virtues based language in corresponding with a person who is incarcerated. Someone who is open to having a penpal encourager. Not just a random, shallow pen pal to write about stupid stuff with but someone who has said, “I want to be a voice of encouragement in your life. I want to help challenge and motivate you to work hard on the things in your life that you need to work on, to become a better person to become a healthier person, to become a more grounded person, to become a person who knows how to have healthy relationships.” All of those things.
And encouraging an individual through your correspondence, and friendship with them, you are not only making their own life more positive but you are then encouraging them to spread that positivity to be contagiously positive with the other residents around them. You encourage them to speak in ways that include virtues based language. We always start with the word respect and we use that one a lot. You know, I really respect that about you.” And when you use that in the right way and you use it regularly, you're encouraging people around you to express positive, healthy, meaningful character traits in their dealings with others, right?
(6:51)
When we have something praised by people, something good in us, that gets that gets praised and applauded, we're much more likely to continue doing that, to continue speaking or acting in that way. There are so many other words using words, like courageous, generous, honest, perseverant. Those kinds of words are a little lofty sounding when you're throwing them into a letter to your penpal and that's part of the point. They catch your attention because they're just a little cheesy sometimes… in a letter.
For example, recently someone wrote to me about their experience in administrative segregation, the hole… solitary. And I had asked him to share his story because I wanted to learn more about what it's like to be in seg for an extended period and he told me his story and then gave me permission to share it if it would help other people understand, if it would help other people learn too. So when I wrote back to him, I thanked him for sharing his story, I affirmed the courage that it took to share that story with me, and then I told him that I thought it was really generous of him that he gave me permission to pass it along to others who would benefit from learning about it. And in the process of a couple of sentences in a letter, I was able to with absolute sincerity tell someone that I was grateful to him for connecting with me, for relating, for sharing something of himself, right? That I recognize that it took courage to share what he did and that I recognized his generosity of spirit.
And my guess, is that over the course of the next few days after he got that letter, he had those words running around in the back of his mind. "Wow, Sabrina thinks I showed courage. I can be courageous, can't I? Hmm. Sabrina said I was generous with this. I… do you know what, I want to be a generous person. I do. I wonder how I could be living generously right now.” Like these are the things that just they niggle around in the back of your mind. It's not like you have this big sit-down Epiphany moment but those words start to become a part of how you think about yourself and you begin acting in congruence with those thoughts.
So if your heart is for incarcerated individuals, please visit prisoncare.org and avail yourself of the curriculum that we have there. I say curriculum and then I have people who tell me “you really shouldn't call it curriculum because it sounds intimidating that way.” So I'm sorry… PDF downloads. I like school stuff. I like curriculum. I'm geeky and nerdy like that so it never occurred to me that curriculum was maybe an off-putting word. But I'm trying to shift my my thinking and just call them PDF downloads. And we're also working on creating short one to two-minute videos that go along with each of those PDF downloads that offer how to instruction for how to choose a prison to adopt, how to go about adopting it and making connection with some pen pals, how to write that first letter, how to use virtues based language, right? So it's all there… how to start a Compassion Team and gather other carrying people around you to work together to be a voice of positivity and to be a support for positive culture inside your adopted prison.
(10:48)
Now, let's flip to the other side. What if your politics and ideology are in a very different direction? You are tough on crime, you are not at all interested in the idea of prison abolition. And you think that it's ridiculous that people even think that way.
What does PrisonCare have in terms of a place for you? Well, that's the beauty of it. If your heart is in that direction, then you have a heart for Corrections professionals. You have a heart for this overlooked branch of law enforcement. You have a heart for people who are doing an extremely difficult job that we, as a society have told them, someone has to do. We have people who need to be incarcerated and so we need professionals who are providing for their custody, care and control. That is a noble profession and that is not a profession that is typically appreciated, respected, well compensated or supported.
So I would encourage you to visit prisoncare.org and to check out some of the suggestions for a focus on the staff in a prison that you adopt. Maybe this is just you by yourself, you’re thinking about this for the first time and you're like, “I want to do something with this. I don't want to write to somebody who's incarcerated. That is most definitely not my thing and there's a whole lot of talk about these penpal encouragers and I guess that's okay, but like no, not for me. But I do care about the staff and I do realize that I've never paid any attention to correctional officers or case managers or any of the other prison administrative positions. I've never thought about it. And man, they do have a hard job and it is a job that we absolutely have to have somebody doing. And yeah, I would like to adopt a prison and I would like to focus on the staff appreciation part of it. What could I do?” And you essentially could be the first touch point for a Compassion Team that focuses on staff support.
(13:14)
Now, offering support to staff in a prison is a hard thing to get started. It's not at all an impossible thing, but I'm just going to tell you that it's been overlooked. This group of professionals have been overlooked for so long. And there is so much suspicion that goes along with their daily jobs because of the prevalence of manipulation from residents in the prison, that they are typically suspicious when somebody says they want to do something nice for them. They’re like, “uh-huh what are you setting me up for.” Right?
So it will take some time. It will probably take a point of personal connection. And once you can get one point of personal connection with someone on the staff, it's going to get a whole lot easier because that's going to give you legitimacy. So one recommendation would be to contact the corrections union chapter that that provides you know, Union presence in the prison that you've adopted. If you connect with the Union first and you say, “hey, we want to do something for staff in this facility to make them aware of the fact that we notice what they're doing, that we appreciate it that we respect it. We would like to cater a meal to be brought in during Co Appreciation Week, first week of May or on one of the major holidays, right? We'd like to fundraise on the outside and raise the money to cater a meal for all the COs on such and such a date. Could you help us get administrative approval to do that? Find out, you know, who is the catering service restaurant… whatever, that would be allowed to provide that food and yeah, could you help us get the permissions to do that?”
Someone who is not directly in that facility will probably be more open to talking to you about a staff support and appreciation event. Someone within the facility is putting their own personal reputation on the line if they say, “Yeah, sure. I'll go to bat for you.” And if they don't know you really, really, really well, that might be too big an ask. It's just really important that security is never compromised in a prison facility by a staffer. And so they're not going to want to do anything that might possibly backfire and cause a security problem at the facility. Right?
So by talking to a union rep first in their role, as a union representative, you're coming at it really respectfully, you’re asking them to investigate how this might be done appropriately and according to policy. And so that's going to bring a real legitimacy that you need to it.
If you're not ready to do something that big yet, there are smaller things that you can do. You can pay attention in your community at large. You can ask friends and coworkers, “is there anybody in your family who works in Corrections in any capacity?” And if they ask why tell them, tell them that you become aware of the fact that this is an overlooked and under respected and under resourced profession and branch of law enforcement. And you just kind of personally want to put something good into the world and try to change that, but you will probably be able to find somebody, if you ask around. Somebody’s going to know somebody. Somebody’s going to have a cousin who's kid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when you get a connection to an individual, you can simply reach out to them and give them a gift card to take their family out to dinner someplace. And just say, “I see the job that you do as important and I'm not sure I ever thought about it before and I'm not sure anybody ever tells you, thank you for your service but that's what I'm doing.” So you could just support one person that way.
(17:44)
Do you see how very differently people can choose to support a prison neighborhood? You could be very directly just looking for ways to support incarcerated individuals as a penpal encourager. And if you do that, you are indirectly supporting staff as well because you're helping to make their workplace a little bit safer with a few residents, who are now more stable, more connected, less anxious, less angry because they have a voice of encouragement in their lives, and they settle down a little bit, and they become voices of encouragement to people around them. You've just touched the staff in a positive way by helping to make their workplace safer, and calmer.
And on the other end of things, if you never want to write a letter of encouragement to someone who is incarcerated, but you help even a single staffer in a facility feel a little better about themselves, feel a little more validated by someone on the outside, respected, and noticed and appreciated. If they pull into work thinking, “what I do actually got noticed by somebody on the outside in a positive way and man that made me feel good about myself.” Then that's a staffer who's coming in to work, less burnout, less resentful, less, depressed and discouraged. And it's going to be a positive impact on the culture inside for all the residents. They’re going to be interacting with a CEO who was not having a terrible day. And that's going to be good for them. So you're going to have an indirect impact on the incarcerated population by offering support to a staffer.
So, I hope that today's episode just encouraged you to look at yourself honestly to say, “this is me and how I'm wired, and what I believe. And there are things that I like about this PrisonCare thing but man, the nonpartisan is actually like kind of weird. Like, I really think it's important to be focused on X or Y, you know… the incarcerated individuals and their families OR the correctional staff and their families and I don't really think you can do both.” That's fine. You don't have to do both.
The vision is nonpartisan but the application can totally be a partisan application. You should behave in congruence with your personal wiring and your belief system. And if supporting Correctional staff is where your heart is, the PrisonCare model can help equip you to do that. If you have a heart for supporting incarcerated individuals, the PrisonCare model can help you do that.
And as always I just remind you that we are a 100% compassionate person funded 501 c 3, nonprofit organization and so you can decide to be a financial supporter no matter where your politics and your ideology falls and you can know that that financial support is indeed going in the direction that you care most about because it will be going in both directions. Right? Partisan application of a nonpartisan vision. That’s PrisonCare, that's PrisonCare. And I'm glad that you are a part of what we're doing, and I hope that you will engage with conversations that we're having on social media, that you will use those posts as a springboard to have organic conversations with people in your life about the prison neighborhoods in our country and about the challenges that are so often ignored and overlooked there, things that we need to care about. Thank you for listening to today's episode and thank you as always for caring.
Thanks for listening to the PrisonCare Podcast. Be sure to visit us at prisoncare.org. PrisonCare: equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters.