Behind Prison Walls

Her eyes bulged, her mouth dropped, she put down her fork. She demanded, "You volunteer where?" I won't ever forget my aunt's reaction to my decision to volunteer at the Suffolk Country House of Corrections. Through the Harvard Prisoner Education Program, approximately 35 students drive in a van to a medium security prison to tutor inmates. One Harvard student is paired with one inmate, a relationship which ideally lasts throughout the stay of the inmate. The curriculum ranges from basic math to advanced calculus, depending on the skill level of the tutee.

In an attempt to convince me to stop, my aunt raised thousands of safety concerns, most of them completely unreasonable. Yet, I won't deny that some of her concerns had crossed my mind. Is there a physical barrier between the tutor and student? Will I be tutoring a murderer? Is it safe in the prison? What if the prisoner attempts to find me when he's released?

Most of the inmates at Suffolk Country House of Corrections were convicted of crimes involving substance abuse. While some prisoners have committed violent crimes, they can only stay at Suffolk if their sentence is two years or under, which obviously excludes rapists and murderers. A row of classrooms, the setting for tutors in the prison, is very comfortable. There are no screens or bars between tutor and tutee; we sit at desks very similar to those in our lecture halls. Guards periodically roam the halls to check on the safety of the tutors.

We use only first names in the prison, to prevent any possibility of prolonged contact once an inmate is released. In order to establish boundaries in the tutor-tutee relationship, we are not allowed to write to our tutees during their incarceration or accept any cards from them. All the tutors I have encountered agree that the environment within the prison is very safe.

Working with the same person for months establishes a strong bond between tutor and tutee. Although we are prohibited from asking them what crime they have committed, inmates often volunteer this information, along with stories about their families and prison life. For some inmates, we are the only civilian contact they encounter throughout their stay in prison, a fact which often blurs the line between our role as tutor and confidante.

While some tutors chose to focus solely on academic work, many discuss more personal subjects with their students. With dreams of eventually becoming a New York City prosecutor, these conversations have been very enlightening for me. Many of my tutees have had severe learning disabilities, which were completely ignored by the school system. One tutee claimed to have been placed in a Special Education class because the school had no other means of coping with his learning disability. Some tutees were products of immigrant families and continue to struggle with reading and writing in English. Many tutees dropped out of high school or middle school and lack the resources to continue with their education. While these obstacles don't excuse criminal conduct, they do explain the circumstances under which the inmates arrived in prison. After listening to the stories, I can't say with absolute certainly that I wouldn't have made some bad choices if placed in similar situations.

Please don't mistake me; I'm not attempting to paint a warm and fuzzy picture of prisoners. Some of them are manipulative and test the boundaries of the tutor-tutee relationship every week. Some tell stories just to appease the ears of tutors. After months without contact with women, some tutees make inappropriate comments to female tutors. Some lack the motivation to progress through lessons or continually forget to complete assignments. Yet the structure of the Harvard tutoring program grants individual tutors autonomy over their curriculum and allows them to ask for a new tutee, if the situation becomes uncomfortable or ineffective. The two co-directors closely monitor all tutor-tutee relationships, ensuring the integrity of the program.

I've worked with many different populations in community service programs, ranging from the elderly to children. The prison population brings with it a new set of rules. While many of the inmates are guilty of terrible crimes, I believe our school system needs to drastically improve before the crime problem can be solved. I've told many of my tutees about my ambitions of one day becoming a prosecutor. Most of them laugh and ask, "Oh, so you would be the one locking me up?" Ironically, this tutoring experience helped inform my career ambitions. I believe in our criminal justice system; however, locking up thousands of criminals without looking back solves nothing. Prisons need tutoring, substance abuse and personal health programs in order to help rehabilitate criminals.

Many argue that by the time an individual arrives in prison, the time for reform has passed. While this may be true for some, many of the prisoners I've encountered hold dreams about their future just like college students. They often just need a push in the right direction. While improvement in the school system serves as a preventative solution, we can not ignore an entire population and expect them to smoothly reintegrate into society.

These are not the thoughts of a typical bleeding-heart liberal. Much of the effort will be wasted, but some of the lives of inmates will be improved by the education they receive. Even if it helps only a few, the effort should be made.

Arden O'Connor '00 is an English concentrator in Pforzheimer House.