Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now a part two of Alex's conversation
with Todd Chaffey right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now what happened is the political wins changed so well.
Over a decade ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that
states cannot sentence a juvenal as identified by someone as
seventeen or younger to a natural life sentence. They literally
have to show that the person that you could not
rehabilitate the person. So they told the states they have
(00:47):
to go back and review all their non parable life
juveniles and see if they can resentence them to term
of years. So that's what they started doing, and all
of Sinden, some of our guys started getting out. So
instead of a life sentense, all of a sudden, they
got maybe a forty to sixty years sentence, they maybe
had twenty eight thirty in And then if you came
(01:08):
into prison before two thousand, you could earn good time credits.
They could earn up to eight to ten years of
good time that would get applied and they'd meet the forty.
So now we've had nineteen We just had a guy
get out a month ago who was certain natural life
at eighteen. They now move the age up to eighteen.
Michigan's thinking of moving up to twenty.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
He just got yes, so.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
There's good science behind it. But this guy committed his
crime at eighteen. He did just almost thirty five years.
He's fifty three, got out. He used to be a
white supremacist, very violent, thought his life was over when
he got to prison, he said, I'm gonna die here.
What do I care? Converted to Christianity. Now he's enrolled
at Calvin Seminary and eventually he's going to do a
(01:54):
PhD in theology and teach for Calvin Prisident Initiative. Really yes,
So it doesn't get any better than that.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
There's a bunch of things you said. I want to
follow up on. One of the states saying we don't
want to invest in people in life sentences reminds me
of I once to interviewed a guy who had a
great line saying, you're standing too close to the bottom line.
Oh wow, And there's a great argument for taxpayers, like, yeah,
why were we going to spend taxpayer dollars on this?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It doesn't make any sense, and that's standing too close to.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
The bottom line, and it is if we do invest
in their lives, you know, what does that do inside
of the prison and the recidivism rate and you kind
of talk.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
About I can't. Yeah, So most of the talk years
ago is all about recidivism rates. When a guy gets out,
how many come back within three to five years, and
the recidism rates in the country, especially ten years ago
when we were easily sixty five percent, So the guy
would literally go back to prison within three years sixty
(02:55):
five percent of the time. And then they have rates
for okay, he doesn't go back to prison, but he
gets throw in jail for a month or he gets
picked up by the police or whatever. And it was
just so what we knew is this it wasn't working.
Whatever we were trying to do wasn't working because they're
all coming back basically. Now here's what you don't also know, though,
Are some prisons violent? Absolutely? Absolutely? What's the cost of that?
(03:22):
So if a prisoner harms an officer and that officer
has to go to the hospital or stay in the hospital,
what's the cost, not just what the cost physically, Now,
what's that emotionally.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Or herms another prisoner or another prisoner then gets out
and is messed up.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yes, and then exactly so we're not looking at it
at a finer level. But if you do, you realize
it's in everybody's best interest to give something positive to do,
become more humane, good neighbors with one another, and you
start saving money big time. The less violent a prison is,
(04:00):
the cheaper it is. So now to invest in a lifer,
you are saving money in the same way that you're
concerned about recidivism rates. And believe it or not, that
lifer now is your ally in helping to make sure
this guy doesn't come back. No lifer wants see guys
come back. They get it. They through in life. It's like,
(04:22):
don't come back. And so the Rand Corporation, which is
a nonpartisan think tank that looks at issues, social problems
and tries to develop public policy issues are policies for
politicians and others. They did a meta study almost fifteen
years ago now maybe a little longer, and they showed
for every dollar spent on higher end prisons, you say,
(04:43):
four to five dollars, incarceration costs.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I want to be surprised if it's higher for you
guys given hour.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right, So all of a sudden, at one level, on
an economic level, it doesn't matter what you think about prisoners.
To invest in the these types of programs is smart money,
smart tax payer dollars. Now that's what Michigan's doing. So
since we started our program, Michigan has changed their mind
about lifers. So now every time a college and university
(05:13):
wants start a hired program in prison, the Michigan Department
of Corrections says, you have to take a certain percentage
of lifers. And you know, I honestly think it's because
we were doing that and they saw the positive results,
so now it's kind of built into the thing. We're
very excited about that.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
One of the things I love about your model if
you can explain it, like the process to get into
the program and the fact that these people are coming
from prisons across the state and then often going back,
So could you explain that and how the students are chosen.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So what we thought is what we really want. We're
not so concerned about academic performance because as an educator,
we realize we can do that. So if a guy
doesn't write very well, we can get them up to
speed in a couple of years. What we need are
men who want to be a part of something new
and different and change. That's what we have to identify.
(06:10):
Now we're a Christian program, so yeah, we're gonna get
a lot of Christian students, we get Muslim, Buddhist, Native American,
we get everything.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
So why would they want to take it?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Because they realize that we don't lead per se with
the Christian flag. We rather say we're Christian University, committed
to the common good, even in prison. We're committed to
your humanity and being more and more human all the time,
and we want to see you use your life. Well, oh,
(06:43):
by the way, we're Christian, and yeah, you're gonna take
theologia courses in Bible. But again we're gonna do it
in a way that we hope isn't exclusionary. So they
get attracted by that. Now, initially what attracted them is
we said lifers are welcome, and a lot of these
guys said, I've never seen a flyer in prisons, says
that what's going on here? So they would come in
(07:07):
and we would look for others who have worked with
them to help identify passion desire commitment, chaplains, wardens, maybe officers.
We'd have them do some proctered essays and we'd ask
them certain questions that we think are trying to get
at this. We'd get them in and the academic stuff
we could work on that usually takes about two years
(07:29):
to get a guy who fully up to speed. Then
after five years in the program, upon graduation, we formed
teams of guys, eight to ten guys, and they're all
prepared to work in ministry, academics and peer mentoring. And
then we send them out to another prison, another facility
to work with that administration to say, these are agents
(07:51):
of change, here's what these guys can do. Use them
that way and.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
As a god to the point where the wardens of
those other prisons are like really behind these guys that
excited it.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And yes. So we had a sister college, Hope College
in Holland, want to start a prison program because they
thought the Calvin thing was cool. We helped them get
that going in a prison in Miskegan, Michigan, and we said,
how about if we send a team out to you
guys to help you get your program going. And we
sent I think nine guys out there, and the warden
(08:22):
was very hesitant because he didn't really know what it
was and he's like, what are we doing? And I
don't do I want this. After a couple of years
I talked to him and he said, your graduates are amazing.
Send as many as you possibly can to me. He goes,
I've never seen anything like it. They are truly selfless.
They give, they want to see others succeed. And he
(08:44):
said I need that, and then he becomes the voice
now for another warden, so we can go to other
ward and say, hey, you know him, yep, yep, listen
what he has to say about this. So we have
teams out at four prisons right now.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
If you want to change the call, sure, in a prison,
it's probably much more likely to happen from the prisoners
than from.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
One hundred percent, because there's this huge animosity in gulf
between us them. I understand that. I get it. You
know that officers are leary of prisoners, and prisoners are
leary of the administration and officers. And it's partly why
that's because of how we've done incarceration in this country
for decades. Other countries don't always have that. So in
(09:23):
our situation absolutely prisoner or prisoner's way to go is uh.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I know I keep saying, guys, is are these in
any female prisons yet?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
So? Uh. When we started, Michigan I think had thirty
one or thirty two prisons and we're down to I
think twenty six. So the good news is that we're
depopulating those prisons and we're not seen as many people
come back. Michigan has a recidivism right now at about
twenty or twenty percent.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like, how is that possibly the case?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I've never heard of a state being that low.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
No, and it's because all these programs don't I'm absolutely
convinced that.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Like, I mean, so obviously you guys are a big
part of but are their other programs in the state
too that.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yes, So what happened is I think the Department of
Corrections recognized that the main concern cannot simply be custody.
That's what they call it, custody order safety. Sure, you
got to have that, but if all you're making sure
is that guys don't harmin another person and that they
go from where they need to be a to B.
(10:23):
What's that? So they began to look at who's a
good prisoner someone who doesn't get in trouble. That's a
negative way to see it. I said, how about you
see a good prisoner as someone who's doing good things
and begin to track that. So they've ramped up their programming.
And now when we started there was just two schools
doing education of Community College and Jackson, Michigan and then
(10:46):
us who were doing a BA. Now we have twelve,
with about eight or nine started and the rest will
be online in the fall. So this is having a
huge impact on these prisons, and then that trickles out
to the main population often and so that's why we're
starting to see recitizen rates I think lowered within ten
years now. It's all to say the women's prison.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I mean, just to put a point on it too,
that's a third of the national average. Yes, and the
national average is still around sixty.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It is it is so Michigan really is leading the
way right now. I think it's because politicians, the people
who work in the Department of Corrections, and then these
outside groups. One thing that on the same page.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I think they would probably say too, if you were
here is it took an army of normal folks to
get us there right, taking us to push them, and
they see it in like all.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Right, honestly, that's exactly the way it was. There are
a lot of nonprofit grassroots groups in Michigan that I
discovered all these years, and I think they put a
lot of pressure we I I've probably testified in lancing
before state legislators now handful of maybe five six times.
(11:56):
But when you go do that, you realize there's all
sorts of folks testifying Yeah, like somebody who's just run
this little nonprofits there like saying hey, and it's made
a believer out of me that that you can change stuff,
you really can.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Now. The women's prison, that was the last thing that
we wanted. There's one women's prison in Michigan. It's an Ipsilanti,
Michigan outside Detroit. By an arbor.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Rock band in high school there you go, well, there's
a prison there too.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You can play there. And we were being asked by
our donors constantly, what about the women, What about the women?
We said, well, gee, we would do something, but it's
a good two fur drive. How do we do this.
So a couple of years ago, Eastern Michigan University said,
all right, we'll do it. We're going to offer a
BA there. So we actually worked with them, and now
(13:06):
they've started and they're running women through and I think
they all have their first BA graduates in about a
year now. That's tremendous because literally this is true of
every state. When we think of incarceration, we think of
men and we don't think of women, and all the
resources tend to go to the men, and the women
(13:27):
often get the crumbs. And yet what's interesting is that
when you go to a women's facility a prison, that
prison they're in was designed for twelve hundred inmates. They
probably have seventeen hundred in there one prison. That means
they have to have all the security levels in one prison.
So you're working already in an isolated environment that's now segregated,
(13:49):
and so to do prison time for a woman's really hard. Now,
what's interesting about a women's prison on the whole, they
tend not to be very violent, so there's opportunities there
to do different things without the worry about the violence part.
So in some ways it's fertile ground for all sorts
(14:10):
of programs. So Michigan also started what they call vocational village.
They started at our prison when we started, and that's
in the trades, so carpentry, automotive, whatever. But they did
a second vocational village for a men's facility in Jackson, Michigan,
and the third one was for the women's facility. So
(14:31):
in terms of Michigan putting significant resources, because to start
a vocational village costs millions of dollars startup, they finally
emphasized the women's prison. And as we all know who
do this, they're having good results.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
And we kind of need people in the trades, like
the country's kind of got a problem with true.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And so there's a huge employment office the department has
and they have well over a ninety percent placement record.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, So I just look at it this way. Those
of us who have kids, we know what kind of
works eventually, is like you got to prep them for
something college trades. What I mean, you know, you work
at this and you build it and do them that, Hey,
you can have a career, you can have a decent lifestyle.
(15:19):
Why aren't we doing that more in these places? It's
no different. A lot of these people didn't have that
when they're in high school, and so they're eager for
it now and it works.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
How to go back to Actuant Academy again, but one
of my favorite things they base it on. There's three
things that are trying to achieve with their students. Learn
to learn, you learn how to learn right, you learn
to do how to master something which the trades is,
and you learn to be the combination of your program
with the vocational villain. Yes, touching out all those.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
And when you think about it's all very basic and uh,
you know, parents who care about their kids having a
successful life, that's what they do. And so I guess
I don't know when we started this. I thought, you know,
mass incarceration, huge problem in our society.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Expensive tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
In your January series talk you go through a long
riff about the overincarceration in the country.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, so we can contract these things. Starting in the
seventies that it became politically fashionable to talk about a
war on crime, war on drugs. Right, it's just after
the sixties, and so the country was reeling yet from
this whole drug issue. And then Richard Nixon actually helped
pinpoint it in urban areas, and that began to target
(16:36):
African American communities, and so in our society we began to,
you know, put together, oh war on drugs African Americans.
That's a lot of the problem here in crime. Even
though we know that per capita, white people tend to
use drugs way more than African Americans. Then they started
doing tougher sentences on certain types of drugs. So now
(16:59):
we know that if you smoke crack cocaine, you got
to stiffer sentence then if you use powder cocaine. Powder
cocaine was often used by white males, crack cocaine by
black men. So you see this ramp up in the
eighties and it really hits a point under the Clinton
administration when we talk about these super predators, that language
that he used to describe these violent juveniles, and what
(17:22):
we realize the idea was that people are getting more violent. Actually,
if you look at the research on that right now now,
they're showing it wasn't that people are more violent. What
happened is there was more of an influx of guns.
And so if I tend if I'm going to hit
you in the face. Let's say, okay, it's an act
of violence. Now, if you put a gun in my hand,
I shoot you. Interesting, but the violent act is the same,
(17:46):
it's just the means by which I execute it.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
It's funny here, and some people we've interviewed, they'll be like,
these gangs are a bunch of whissies. They're just like
using guns like they're not getting in real No.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And so what you see is that the so called
the uptick in violence, it makes it sound like more
and more people are getting more and more violent. It's
actually due to the gun. So the rate of who's
violent and how often stayed relatively the same. It's just
they have a different means by which to do it,
which means the outcome is graver.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Can you talk about if you have the numbers on
the top of your had the scale of incarceration here
versus elsewhere?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So the US incarcerates per capita
more than any other country in the world. So, for instance,
at one point we were incarcerating one out of every
thousand citizens. Where you have places like England, maybe the
low one hundreds, Italy low one hundreds. The only country
that begins to really compete with this are countries like Russia, China, well,
(18:49):
un list that we don't want to be on.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
So for instance, trip that's three million Americans.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes, right. And in Michigan, for instance, we peaked in
two thousand and eight with fifty two thousand prisoners locked
up for a state that has roughly a million people.
Now we've dropped back in the seventies, we incarcerated literally
a couple thousand, and so even that you see, like
(19:17):
for instance, the facility where the prison where we are,
it was built as a vocational prison for training one
person per sell. Now it's two percel. And so all
of a sudden, they literally were incarcerating so many people
we didn't even have the ability to house them.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
Well.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
At our facility, what's called the day room and a
housing unit. It can usually hold about forty guys at tables,
they watch TV, they do whatever. They were using that
one time as a dormitory and putting forty guys that
live there and they had to put up bunk beds
and everything. Now do you are in Michigan, we've dropped
down to about thirty two thousand right now, So every
(20:00):
state had these huge massive peaks. If you look at Texas, California,
well into the seventy eighty thousands, it's.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Actually three hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I did the math throng on that. Yeah, I've had
ran out of coffee.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
This interview right right, right, But you know, I don't
think people really What we did is we created a frenzy,
We created a narrative, and we for some people that
worked politically. You know, think of when George J's Bush
ran and do Caucus and the Willie Horton issue. It worked.
All they had to do is say one guy got out
(20:35):
and murdered somebody and he wants that guy out, and boom,
the people are saying, that's what sank his candicy.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
One of my favorite lines that a politician said, I'm
not going to say it, but who it is, just
to get people on the other side not pissed off
this person, but this He had a really good line
of we need to have a difference of people who
were actually dangerous and people were really really mad at
up incarcerating a lot of people that were really really
mad at Doe.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Like so, for instance, at the federal level, it's just
over fifty percent of most people in federal prisons are
there for drug crimes, non violent drug crimes. And so
if you think is that the best way to handle
that now, we thought so years ago in the eighties
and nineties. Today if you look at the opioid epidemic,
now we're treating as a healthcare issue, which rightly so.
(21:24):
And so we're saying, if I've got a drug addict,
what is incarcerating this person going to do? Because what
we don't realize is there's every drug you can find
in a prison.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Let's talk.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't solve the problem at all.
It takes them off the street, but it's still criminal
activity going on because somebody smuggle that in. It's coming
off the street, you know what I mean, it's not working.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I mean, I think people have heard the drug stories
which shocked me. As someone once told me they were
actually brewing beer inside for a person. I'm like, this
place is so lawless that they're running a brewery inside.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
There, absolutely called spot juice.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Let's talk about some of the programs that your students
have started. Oh yeah, and I mean it probably gets
to too, some of their personal stories that hearing.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, so we knew in any good setting where you're
encouraging people to think, to be critical, to consider. What
you're calling is that people are going to come up
with things that you didn't think of. And that's what
you want as an educator at a college, I want
(22:32):
my students to go out and be creative. And that
was happening in prisons. In our prison and so a
lot of guys said, you know, the vast, vast majority
of people who are incarcerated have some form of mental
health issue. They came to prison with it. If they
didn't come with it, they got it now. And when
we depopulated our mental health institutions in the eighties, sending
(22:57):
a lot of these people out on the streets, eventually
they got locked up. So, for instance, at our facility,
of about almost thirteen hundred prisoners, one third are in
significant mental health treatment programs, a lot of our guys
and would say, we need to do something about that.
What can we do now? Again, we had the social
(23:17):
work and so we got a lot of our social
work profts to say, Okay, what would it mean to
train our guys to be peer mentors for mental health?
What would that look like? So we worked with some
of the mental health staff at the prison. We worked
with mental health staff in Lansing, Michigan. We literally all
sat down a table and we came up with a proposal.
(23:40):
We got accepted by the director of the Department of Corrections,
and then we moved several of our guys into the
mental health unit, one of the mental health units, and
they began to work with guys helping with hygiene, being
more social, being more physically active. They'd play cards with them.
Eventually that led to, hey, have you ever thought about
(24:02):
junior ged? Well, I just told I'm dumb, I'm this,
I'm that, I can't read. Well, let me work with you.
So we actually have a guy who is able not
only to finish his ged in prison in the mental
health unit, now he's been accepted in the Calvin program.
And he said, my whole life, I've been told I'm dumb.
Now he finished his very first semester with about a
(24:23):
B plus average, so he's not dumb. But that came.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
From people who said, yeah, yeah, right right.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
But that came from our graduates who said, we can
recognize what's going on here. We live it, we know
how to address it. Again, John Perkins, I'm your neighbor
and I'm gonna I'm gonna observe what you need. So now,
I just had one of the healthcare workers in that
unit to tell me, if you plucked all the eight
(24:51):
Calvin grads out of this unit, most of our programs
we wouldn't be able to run. They become such a
vital part of our programming. We trust them. It's like
having a whole new army of staff that we can't afford.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
Right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
We are. Now we've had several years, We've had about
three three and a half years of success with this effort,
and we're about ready to put it on the road
and send out a group of guys who are trained
in mental health pure mentoring to work at other facilities.
We're going to actually start training them as well now
(25:48):
in probably the next I think January, well January, now
we're in January. I think this spring Trauma informed mental
health care. And we're working with some organ outside organizations, nonprofits.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
Have you run into given hour, I have not. Okay,
I'm happy to introduce you to him. So we interviewed
them on the podcast and they actually started of helping
Post nine to eleven veterans. Oh, sure, you know the same.
That's been true with the FDN Y after nine to eleven,
where they're afraid to go to the military counselor. Yes,
they basically get that scarlet letter yes in their record,
(26:23):
which would they think, you know, often some of it's
probably reality and some of its perception exactly wouldn't allow
them to serve. And so they basically had you know,
a nonprofit provide the service for them. And then they
kind of realized, look, there's not enough counselors in the
country out there to solve the mental health crisis. And
I just in my town at Oxford too, like these
counselors are booked up for months like yes, and so
(26:44):
they've eventually started this peer support model. They're trying to
now scale that across the country. So they're training people
that's exactly what to do peer support groups. And that's
exactly what you know. The thing with the vets, it
happens in prison. If I'm a prisoner and I go
to a counselor, I don't want to get as such,
because then the department treat you differently. They often over
medicate you, and so they'll often call it about the
(27:08):
med shuffle when they get over medicated. These guys can
barely walk, so they just shuffle around and you see
it all the time. And so the perception, again partly real,
probably partly not, is that why're not gonna tell them
I have a problem, because they I'll get stigmatized and
they'll want to medicate me. Now, if it's a prisoner
to prisoner, totally different. Hey brother, I know what you're
(27:31):
going through. Come on, we can do this together, and
if eventually you need meds, well, then it will be
the right time. So they're having way better results than
the professionals. So we also sent several guys now to
the veterans unit at a Saginaw prison and we're eventually
gonna do trauma informed preparation for them with veterans. And
(27:54):
that came up because we have several veterans in our
program who said.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I didn't know what was going on when I got out.
I had one guy, he was a physician's assistant. He
did I think three rounds of active duty, and he said,
I came out and I had PTSD and I wasn't
fully aware of it, and I went crazy and I
just I just my whole life flew apart, and now
I'm looking at twenty year sentence, and he said, if
only someone could have intervened, or I would have known
(28:19):
enough to have someone intervene. So he has a real
passion now to work with vets who are locked up,
and we're just kind of letting it all grow organically,
you know. I literally teach so I teach an internship
course in their fifth year, their final year in the fall,
(28:41):
and their final project is what are we missing? Tell
me what we're missing. I can talk about vocation, I
can talk about John Calvin, I can talk about what
we've done. Something's work, some didn't. So we can do that,
but you know, you're the ones.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Who live here proximity.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Tell me what we're missing. And then they write up
a purpose. It's part of their last project. And then
I say, now you got to write up something that
you think could actually work. Don't give me a huge
pipe dream. Let's think about if you had, maybe in
a year or two, what would you want to implement.
And then I keep a portfolio of that in a
guy's file. If we send them out to other facilities,
(29:20):
I make sure the wardens say, hey, guess what these
guys got some really good ideas. Work with them for
a few years. You'll see what they can do, and
then you're gonna go back and say, hey, what was
that idea? Because I've got needs that I can't fund.
These prisons are working on shoe string budgets, and so
this is like literally giving them free staff. The most
a guy can make with a college degree in prison
(29:42):
is three dollars and thirty three cents a day. It's
ridiculous and it's sad, but in this case it works
in our favor because it costs the state virtually nothing.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
An army of normal prisoners.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
I'm not kidding you. That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Tell us about the Restorative Justice Conference, the Guard, the Garden,
Locks of Love, I mean, you have my wheel spinning
that like, we should do a special series if I
don't know if we could interview each of these guys,
but if we could, that could be you could pretty
cool to do.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
So. There was a student in our very first cohort.
So he started ten years ago and after about a year.
Interestingly enough, he's Roman Catholic, okay, and he said, I'm
part of an organization on the outside. Ruman Catholic organization
and they do a lot of work in restorative justice.
I said, Okay, he goes. I think that's how we
(30:36):
need to think about what we're doing, and we need
to create more resources around resortive justice.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
So can you explain what it is, because I'll be honest,
we try to actually avoid politics on the show. Yeah,
but people who are pretty well aware there's a certain
segment of the population that uses that and it's gotten
a bad rap. Frankly, they've probably taken it too far.
A lot of them are, hey, we don't believe in
any police. Yeah, yeah, and that there's a certain crowd
that's promoting social you know, restorative justice who also believes
(31:04):
in no police and only social workers. But no, I
mean the actual truest form from some other stories I've told,
can be really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Without a doubt. So in its basic form, you have
different types of justice that goes all the way back
to Greek philosophers. Okay, and one form of justice is
retributive justice, and that's where you punish. And so a
lot of folks would say, well, that's kind of what
we're doing in our prisons. And you know, you could
make a case that there is a certain form of
retributive justice that in fact is just now it's not
(31:34):
the only type of justice. There could be distributive justice, right,
what is it that I'm owed?
Speaker 4 (31:41):
What?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
What?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
What?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
What is someone ow mere? What does the government owe me?
Distributive justice? So there's different forms. One of them now
that people are talking about more and more is restorative justice.
And this basically says this, a harm was done. What
can we do to try to repair the harm? How
can we restore what was taking? And there's usually we
(32:02):
talk about it in three different ways. There's the perpetrator
and then there's a victim. All Right, the victim has needs.
What do we do to help restore the victim to
the best we can? Knowing that in some cases we'll
never be able to restore the victim, but we can
work in that direction. A perpetrator, let's use mail. When
(32:23):
I create a harm, in some sense, I'm harming myself
even I'm not living up to what it means to
be human. I'm misusing maybe my gifts or my skills,
and so what would it mean to restore that person?
As well? To say you know what you can't do
that you've actually harmed yourself, So what do you need
you different and be different to do it. Then there's
(32:45):
the community. So when a harm is done, it's never
just between two people. There are communities involved, where it's families,
whatever the case may be. So we start of justice
says we have to take into account all three of
those agents, if you will, and ask what does each
one need to better be restored? So what I like
(33:07):
about restorative justice? I think some people and maybe some
folks you know, misdescribed this. They think it's all about
just the perpetrator, all we all everything to No, this
is about the victim. I mean, unfortunately, in our system
right now, when the court gavel is thrown down and
court's over. When when the court galvel is thrown down
(33:34):
and court's over, the idea is that justice has been
done for the victim and or victim's families or whatever.
But notice we never talk to them again. We don't
talk about the ongoing emotional trauma that it's caused. We
don't talk about the loss, we don't ever give resources
about now what actually we put more emphasis on the
(33:55):
perpetrator because the perpetrator goes to prison.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
I'm actually, uh kind of bizarre and it's not a
serious victim case. But I'm actually the victim in a
case right now of somebody showed up at my office
and physically threatned me. Yeah, and the court like hasn't
I probably shouldn't say this give but it's an active case,
but I will because I don't care, and they like
they don't really keep me updated. I have to call
them right and ask for updates. And this guy asked
(34:19):
for an extension the continuance, yes, for kind of a
nonsense reason and like I never got to like argue
why it shouldn't happen the hearing with the judge on
that happened without me. There's a lot of serious victims
rights issue.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And we put way more emphats on the perpetrator. Perpetrator
can appeel the case, do all this. They have rights right,
they're given more attention than the victim in or victims families,
and we start off. Justice wants to correct that actually,
and the community. We never talked about the harm of
the community. If I'm in a gang and I'm shooting
another guy in a gang and we're shooting down the
(34:52):
street who's been traumatized with they don't dare to go
out of the house anymore, or what parents saying, I'm
not letting my kids out. We never think fully about
what that means to them and how they've been harmed
af by this. So I think restorative justice is actually
a more robust way of talking about justice, about there
are several multiple people involved in these things. What what
(35:16):
can we do to help restore all?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Right, let's get onto the conference.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
So this student said, I want to have a restorative
justice conference. And he told that to this organization's Catholic
organization outside and the director of that organization said, that's
a great idea. You run it. And he was kind
of well, I'm kind of locked up, and he said,
I don't have time. I mean, I support it, but
(35:40):
you run it. So he did. He made all the contacts,
he got the speakers lined up, he got the venue,
he did all the work.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
And I mean give credit to that college too.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah yeah, And a lot.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Of people wouldn't want to trust a prisoner to do it.
They were going to implement it themselves.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Right right, And so normally that nonprofit would hold a
yearly conference to get about fifty people. This one we
did at Hope College and it drew three hundred and
fifty people, and that was the impetus for the Hope
College folks to get interested in the program. That's what
did it. We were able to tape because yes, they're
(36:19):
like what is this? Who? And then they said, well
who did this? We said, oh, guy who's locked up,
Like what.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
This isn't the same guy who was forgiven by.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
It's a different guy. This guy actually won a national
award from a restorative justice org out in California. We
had to send somebody to go get the trophy. They said,
can you come on here? Like, nah, I can't do that.
We send somebody else. But that sparked I think we
did the Justice Conference resort of just four years then
(36:52):
and it's now picking back up after COVID and he's
been a huge champion of restorative justice and inside he
started a club all these sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Is he able to get out and join the conference
in person or is it virtually all virtual?
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Initially we did a taping and now we can probably
do live stream. They're allowing us. And what we're finding
now is that that is sparking creativity among our students
to say, all right, I've harmed. What do I have
to do to help repair that harm? And that's when
(37:29):
some guys years ago said, you know what, we've a
lot of us have been pretty violent against women. What
do we do? We would like to grow vegetables and
donate the vegetables to organizations that work with abused women.
And we're like, okay, great idea. So yeah, so they
started a donation guard to say how do we give back?
(37:52):
Because they they they have limited opportunities and resources, but
this is what they could do. That sparked a lot
of thinking on their hearts. They often want to make cards,
sympathy cards for people they often they believe or not.
A lot of prisoners knit in crochet and there's there's
(38:13):
a crochet club.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
They're not making the other guy's not making fun of
them for this.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Well, you go into the room and there's all these
guys in there with all their tattoos and anything else,
and they're literally all crucheting and talking. And they would
donate scarves, mittens to like children's non profit children's things.
They would they looking for ways to give back in
a way that says I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If I
(38:40):
could do it over, I would but I can't, but
maybe they can do this. And so in some ways,
in our minds it might be a very small gesture
of vegetable, but there it's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Well, and that's one of the things we're trying to
break with an army and normal folks, is if there
are millions of us doing small things.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yep, it's a different country.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well. And because in prison it's an environment of scarcity,
and so what that does is it creates in some
ways greediness. And so if I can take, I will
because I may never get another chance. And so a
lot of guys, if they grew vegetables, they would want
to keep it all because especially the food's not great.
(39:21):
And so for a guy to say, I'm willing to
work hard all summer, I'm willing to do this and
give it all away is just not the culture there.
You just don't do that.
Speaker 5 (39:33):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Action. It's against policy for a prisoner to give something
to another prisoner. However, our students create care packages for
incoming students. So when we have a new cohort of freshmen,
they greet them all and they say, here's a care package.
It don't have snacks, and a toothbrush and everything that
(40:05):
they normally would have to buy in the prison. And
these students are just dumbfounded. They're like, I just had
a guy telling me he because I've been locked up
thirty years, and he said, I got my care package.
And I just didn't know what to think or do
a stunned because nobody's done that ever for me. But
(40:26):
they're doing it as.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
A well about a lot like a lot of the
you know, when he was coaching him and asses like
a lot of these young men have never.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Experienced a hug before. Yes, yes, I kind of love
from anybody.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yes, And so I think it's a way for our
students to say, there's been a lot taken from a
lot of people. How do we begin to address that?
And so to us it might be not you know, wow,
what we do a toothbrush? There? That stuff you got
to pay for And if you're only making at best
(40:59):
three dollars and thirty three sense of day and you
know you have to buy hygiene stuff that's taking up
a lot of your money.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
It's important to stress too. I mean, a small thing
like that can really change someone's life. Like there's a
guy Bill and I know who put himself in a
foster carritage fourteen. Interestingly, now he's got a billion dollar company.
He gives one hundred percent of the profits away to charity. Wow,
kind of you figured I made enough money. I don't
need to make any more of someone challenge him, where's
(41:28):
your financial finish line in life?
Speaker 3 (41:29):
He's like, all right, I met it. A percent of
the profits from now on our gods see.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
But like when he was a kid, actually before he
got I think it was an orphanage at this point,
a guy gave him one hundred dollars bill. Right, She's
alone there at Christmas in the orphanage, like a lot
of the other kids would still go to like distant
relatives for Christmas. He's like one of the only kids
there in this guy like slipps, you know, a card
with one hundred dollars bill in to a stranger saying
(41:54):
I love you.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I love you.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
And it's just like he to this day. If you
ask him to tell this story breaks down crime. Yes,
I mean it's so one hundred dollars or a care package.
I mean, you really can change the trajectory of somebody,
you know what.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
I believe that after watching these guys almost a decade
now it because again, a prison is an environment of scarcity.
It can only be simple things. That's all they've got.
And so when I watch that happen, I'm thinking, my word,
we've got so much stuff out here and we're kind
(42:29):
of jaded to it all. And just like gift card
again for whatever will be well there, I had a
guy he found a vending card for a vending machine,
had twenty dollars on it. Okay, now again in prison,
if you found twenty dollars, you're rich. That's a lot
of money on a card, he said. Normally in prison,
(42:53):
you find the vending card, you grab it, and you
run and now good for you. You got twenty bucks. He's like,
went back to mysel side of my bunk, and I
couldn't live with myself. I can't do I can't just
keep this. And he said, after beating this Calvin program, goes,
I started to think what do I do? What do
I do? And he said, well, I decided to think
what would Plato do or what would Jesus do? And
(43:15):
he said I had to give it back, So he SAEs,
I went to the guy and I said, you dropped
your vending card and he goes, oh, I know I
lost it. And he goes here and he goes, why
are you giving this back to me? You don't do that,
he said, I have to. I mean twenty bucks, but
to them it's everything. And again it's so countercultural. I
(43:37):
had two guys.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
And sometimes it comes back to you, didn't the guy
buy him a popper or something?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yes? And I had two guys who were overpaid on
their check from the facility for their job. They went
to the classification person who oversees that, and said, you
overpaid me. You have to take it. And she like what.
She goes, I've done this for almost thirty years.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
I've never had that it's time to release that man
from prison.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
If you reached that stage, that.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
Tells you I could talk about your programs forever. But
let's move to the person the victim's mother reached out
to them.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Right. So, we got a guy in our program and
he's a person of a vibrant Christian faith and we
were excited to have him the program. He was doing well,
and I'd say after a couple of years in the program,
he came to me one day and said, I need
to talk to somebody about this. But my victim's mother
(44:42):
has always wanted to reconcile with me, and I think
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
So do you just ignored kind of her outreach for years?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Fifteen years? Wow, totally ignored her. I said okay, and
he goes, but I'm terrified. What do I do? And
I said, well, how would you normally communicate with her?
He goes, I'd call If I was going to do that,
she always said call me. I said, we'll call her.
So he did and they talked. They cried, and he said,
I'm so sorry she forgave him, and that started this
(45:14):
relationship and all of a sudden, you know, they're talking
weekly often every other day kind of thing. And eventually
she said to him, she goes vail. She goes, you
lost your mother while you've been incarcerated, and I lost
my son, the son that he killed, And she said,
(45:34):
would you be my son? And I would like to
be your mother? And he said okay. So he calls
her mother Jerline, and now his children go to her
house for holidays because that's grandmother. And we finally were
(45:55):
able to get her in the prison for his graduation
and they hadn't physically seen each other. Last time you
had seen her was in the courtroom on the day
he was sentenced, and so they embraced. I was there
and they cried, and we cried and they embraced, and
(46:17):
you know, it's just this unbelievable act of reconciliation. And
it feels like it's right out of the New Testament.
I mean, it's like, you know what the Kingdom of
God is like, It's like a mother who had her
son killed and she embraced the murderer.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
How about this is a little bit better than buying
a yacht, buying a second house, having a million dollars,
Like you're tearing up telling the story and what I'm
feeling emotionally like, this is better than anything else.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
What would you get for it? It's the point of life, right,
And he has been such a good steward of this
gift that he's received, and he acknowledged that he doesn't
deserve this. So he's been so good about telling this
story in such a way that he deserves none of this.
(47:09):
And yet it's a gift, and he doesn't want to
be he doesn't want to squander this gift, and so
he has been so active now in his ministry with
other prisoners about encouraging them to possibly find a way
to reach out and say I'm sorry, And you know,
(47:29):
I've found the people we meet on the news, the
victims or the people around the victims, what we hear
in the news is often anger. But the guy rot,
you know, he took so and so's life and he
shouldn't have a life. And I understand that, I really,
I mean, I get it. I don't know what I
would do exactly if someone I loved was taken, but
(47:52):
those are the stories we hear. The truth of the
matter is, statistically, most people who have become a victim
of crime in some fashion, they the biggest thing they
want to know is why they would actually love to
hear from the perpetrator, Why why'd you do that? What's
going on? And they were looking for a way to
(48:13):
unburden themselves to some degree of this. And so it's
really the minority we know that want to continue to
feel hatred, revenge, But those are the ones we often
hear about.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
I've never heard that before.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, that we know that for most victims, they're looking
for a way to have some resolution, and.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
The hatred of Sure you've heard this line is like
drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Yeah, I mean you know the people that I've met,
the guy who just got out a month ago, the
man he killed his brother. Okay, so the brother of
the victim. This has been thirty five years. He was
on a news clip recently when he heard that this
guy is getting out. He was so filled yet with
anger and like he should never get out on what
(49:01):
he's taken. And then he was crying about it. And
I thought, that guy is still as what just almost
destroyed on the day he heard about it. He's been
living that way for thirty five years and he cannot
let it go. And I thought, oh my word, this
guy is It's like he could I wish he could
(49:24):
just unload this, but he's just not gonna let it happen.
So I think the guy that was shot his daughter
forgave him the murderer and actually reached out to him
and said, I don't know who you've become or what
you are, but I just feel the need to reach
out to you. And then she learned that, oh, he
(49:46):
converted to Christianity. He's going into ministry. And then they
started communicating, and she said, I just needed to know
whatever became.
Speaker 5 (49:54):
Of you, We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Let's talk about what all this has done for you
and the primarily the program has to help them because listen,
our listeners know Bill. Bill constantly says your outreach for
others just a thousand times more for you than it
actually does for them.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
So I'm ordained in the press between church and I
did my seminary degree and all that, and over the
years I struggled working with your typical churches in terms
of how is it that folks consider under the preaching
week after week and it just doesn't seem to make
a whole lot of difference.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
You heard that.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
I think it's MLK said church is not place you're
supposed to go to, but the place you go.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
From, right, And you know, I can't myself in that
that that faith becomes a little blase and just kind
of you know, there's a certain form of personal piety.
But I thought, what about the bigger stuff, about the gospel,
the poor, the hungry. How can we never seem moved
enough to really do something? So when I started working
(51:18):
in the prison, there has literally not been a visit
goes by that I walk out going holy smokes. The
Gospel's real, God's doing stuff, lives are being changed, and
so it's become my kind of spiritual lifeline that you know,
(51:38):
Matthew twenty five, when Jesus says, when you visit the prisoner,
you're visiting me. It's almost sacramental. It's almost like you're
going and getting some of Jesus by showing up. And honestly,
that is exactly where it's been for me. So I
don't know what I would do now if they all
of a sudden said tomorrow you can never go into
a prison again, I don't know what to do. I'd
(52:01):
be like, wait a minute, No, this has been my lifeline.
They've given so much to me. It's kept my sense
of faith and hope for the Kingdom alive. It's also
done this. When I was in college, I really wanted
to make a difference because I was reading king and
all these you know, I want to make a difference,
and I wanted to see things change and you know,
(52:23):
change the world. And when you work with something like
a Department of Corrections, which is a total institution, change
is really hard and it feels like you're constantly struggling fighting.
It's like you're punching a wall all the time. You
want that wall to be different. And I'd say until
(52:46):
about a couple of years ago, it really started to
impact me physically. I mean, I had symptoms of a
heart attack and the doctor says it's stress. I mean,
as all these things were happening, I'm like, what's going
on here? And they said, you're way stressed out, more
than you need to be. And I realized, because I
was working so hard to change things, I was more
interested in the outcome as opposed to just being faithful
(53:09):
in the moment. And I remember a couple of the
guys said, you gotta change your way of thinking on this. See,
we've learned how to do time. We've learned how to
think of the day as how do I be faithful today?
What do I do today to make a difference? And
we doubt who knows if we're ever going to change
(53:29):
the Apartment of Corrections, But that's not for us to figure out.
And I remembered I thought, oh my word, I've not
learned how to do time.
Speaker 3 (53:39):
These prisoners are teaching you how to do time.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
They are there's an expression they use, yeah to learn
how to jail, which is to say that when you
learn how to jail, you realize there are so many
things out of your control. And so you got to
make a decision. Are you gonna let those things make
you worse, let them destroy you, let them alter you
in a way that you never wanted, or are you
(54:02):
going to look for a way, uh, to be strategic,
maybe even subversive at times, but also to come out
as the sort of person you know you need to be.
And that's why I was missing, And so these guys
help me, H, recognize my finiteness. That doesn't matter if
(54:22):
I have PhD, doesn't matter if I There's some things
I just can't change or do. And so then what
And that's when I fully began to appreciate our callings
be faithful in the moment. Yeah, we work for big change,
of course we do, but really our callings be faithful
in the moment. And if we get the big change,
glory to God. If we don't, glory to God that
(54:46):
I've been able to be faithful in what's been given
to me this day and I'm learning how to do time.
Speaker 4 (54:52):
It's reminds we we had on Paul Young, the author
of The Shack. Oh yeah, but he's got a great
line of h stop future tripping, worrying about the future,
stop past tripping. That's what most of us do and
need to live in the grace of the day. And
if we're not living in the grace of the day,
we're robbing people.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yes, of God and ourselves. Right, that's spot I get
that better now. And again, I feel like there's so
much to learn from people that we think there's not
much to learn from. So there are certain people, you know,
(55:35):
I really first began to experience that when I work
with homeless people in Atlanta years ago. That you know,
there's lots of good reasons you think, well, someone's homeless,
what's wrong. They can't manage life, they can't do this,
they can't do that. Why would I take good advice
from them? Because there's not good advice there. And then
that's when you learn everybody has a story. Nobody grows
(55:56):
up saying my goal is to be homeless, and you
realize that a lot of people are forced into situations
where they have to figure things out about this situation
and do their best to be human. And it's been
thrust upon them maybe or even they did make bad decisions.
(56:19):
And so I was remembering that now recently again that
we probably all missed great opportunities to learn from people
because we don't think they have something to teach us.
Speaker 4 (56:30):
Yeah, there's a former boss I do not get along
with that. There's a lie like you can learn something
from everybody and seeing it that way, and that's really
difficult when it is you have a bad relationship with
somebody that there is still something I can We got
to move on to other stuff. You and I could
go all day talking about this stuff. How many students
(56:54):
have you guys had so far in total? How many graduates?
And where are you guys going from?
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Yeah, so we have just under one hundred students right now.
I think it's ninety three or four, and we've got
about seventy two or three graduates. So we're coming up
on our two hundred mark or ten years into it.
Our original vision in sending out teams, we're doing now
and it works. So it's always one of those things
(57:21):
where early on we had to go to donors and
say here's the vision, and they would say, well, do
you think it will work? And we're like, oh, we
think so we had no idea and you kind of
really stepping out in faith there. Well, now we know
it works. So what we've been pleasantly surprised by is, hey,
guess what, we have a stable program and the vision
(57:41):
was on target. But then we say, but we've also
learned that there's a whole lot more we could be
considering and doing. So it's not mission creep as much
as it's mission development. Now we're getting a better sense
of what the mission is. The goal right now is
(58:01):
to begin to offer pre college educational opportunities. So while
we've figured out how to help a guy who struggles
in writing get through college, we realize, well, it would
be that much better if we could have a year
with him before college. He could really hit the ground
running then.
Speaker 4 (58:21):
And a lot of your one of your requirements that
they have a GED or right school education first, right.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
So yeah, yeah, so even that, how do we accelerate
that opportunity for guys to earn a GED. This is
no different from what universities or colleges do with high schools.
So a high school says, to whatever university or college,
what do you want? What do we need to be
doing here, and now we're there, we can do that.
(58:47):
We can start to say what needs to happen prior
to all this. In the same way, we have an
opportunity not only to offer an academic experience, but now
I have a bunch of graduates that I can pair
alongside with these guys. They can do pure mentoring all
that kind of stuff. So we're actually going to start
(59:07):
this June one. It's called a Wayfinder program. It's going
to be a year long. They'll earn eight academic credits
that are transferable, and they're going to do all sorts
of mentoring and programming that's not academic with our graduates,
and so think of it as a year of formation.
(59:27):
Then these guys by next fall. Actually this years will
be the next fall, because we'll have twelve schools in
our consortium. Just like any high school student. Now we
can sit down and say where do you want to
go to school, what's the program that's attractive to you.
You should feel confident that you're now ready to start,
not saying you won't have challenges. But the guys we
(59:50):
found this was really always interesting to me. You got
all these guys who are tough guys, gangsters, the whole bit.
And they go to college and you know, the first
course is they're absolutely lutely terrified of is public speaking?
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Me too?
Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
Yet here I am.
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
They're terrified. You know, they've done all sorts of stuff
that we would be terrified to do, and it's public speaking.
And then you begin to ask them and they say, what,
I don't want to fail. I failed that everything I've
ever done. This is my opportunity to be successful. Now
I feel like I'm gonna fail. So their biggest fears failure.
So if we could have a year or so with
them to work with them on that, they would start
(01:00:29):
their college career like a lot of high schoolers that
I know, do you've got this. You know you're gonna
be able to do this because we've been telling you
that through high school for years. My two kids, you
know you're gonna be fine. It's work, but you know
now you can do this, So they don't start college
fearful about the academic part.
Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
Let's wrap with this question of you guys are crushing
in Michigan, but it would be great to have this
all over the country. And actually my previous I interviewed
Sean Pica the founder of Hudson Link.
Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, I know, Sean, you know.
Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
And that's not a Christian program, that's general education. So
I want to stress that too for people who aren't
Christian or your guys, program is that there's also other
models like Hudson.
Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Link out there.
Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
We probably actually should have a Yeah, there's some really
great programs. But so noemore, you can check out those
other things. But with you guys too, Like, what would
your encouragement be. I mean, we're sitting here in Memphis,
somebody in Memphis.
Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
Here is that story? Hey, is this going on in Memphis?
What's the next step?
Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
And I mean one thing I think we need to
stress better in the podcast sometimes. I mean you may
be teaching seminary or teaching a college and you can
like actually be the person going to go implement this. Yes,
you could also be a listener who happens to be
friends with them and send them the story and try
to get them engaged on it. But what's what's your
advice for people listening who might find this an interest?
Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
So here's my advice. It's a lot easier than you think.
Politically speaking, across the country, we're in a good position
right now. A lot of states are at a loss
of what to do, and a lot of states don't
want to keep spending the money that it costs. Michigan
spends one fifth of its yearly operating budget on incarceration,
(01:02:16):
which is two billion dollars. So every state would say,
what do you got If you've got something that can
lower that cost, I'm all in. So we get biparers
and support on this. So we're in a good position
right now. The country wants prison reform at a political level.
Maybe not always at the street level, but at the
(01:02:36):
political level. So the wins that you're back there two
we now as opposed over ten years ago. We now
have a lot of models. It could be Hudson lank
could be the Barred Prison, it could be Calvin Prison Initiative.
We've got a lot of models all across the country.
So we literally can go into an area now and say, Okay,
(01:02:57):
what do we got here? What kind of school do
we have? Is it a community college, is at university?
Is it a state school? Is it a private school?
What do we got? All we mean is a few
people with interest. Now pel grants are available, those are
made now fully available Obama made it a pilot program,
(01:03:17):
Trump continued it, and then Biden signed it. So now
the department US Department of Corrections will offer PEL grants
to prisoners that will cover a lot of the cost,
so funding isn't as big of an issue. We're working
with our state right now to close the gap. PELL
covers this much if we got about a twenty five
(01:03:38):
one hundred and three thousand dollars grant from the state
who closed the gap. So now money is also there.
So the wins that are back right now to say,
if you truly have an interest for this and you
know the right people, we can literally talk about starting
a program. And we now have a model where we
all know what these schools tend to do. They don't
(01:04:00):
start with a BA. They start with a non accredited,
non credit bearing effort and they get some props. We're
just excited about it. Go in, teach whatever you want,
eight weeks, ten weeks, a semester, whatever you want to do,
just do it. We do that for about a year
or two. Everyone gets their sea legs and then you
ramp up to the BA. So we actually created a
manual several years ago. We created a manual for schools,
(01:04:23):
and we designed it for both private schools, Christian schools,
state schools. Whatever about how to do this? All?
Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Right?
Speaker 4 (01:04:32):
If people want to contact you, Todd, you sound pretty
open to it.
Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Let's bring this to are all open. So my email
address is last named Choffe c I oh F FI
at Calvin c A l v N dot edu. I
would most welcome your emails contacts, and so one thing
(01:04:56):
we committed ourselves to when we started the program. As
we said, we've been blessed by donors. We've been blessed
by this opportunity, and so anybody who needs our help,
we will do our absolute best together.
Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Thank you, Tom, and thanks for making the effort to
come to that.
Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Thank you so much appreciate it, and thank you for
joining us this week. And thankfully I'm joining you this week.
Uh Todd, Chaffee or other guests have inspired you in
general or better yet, to take action by trying to
(01:05:35):
start something like Calvin Prison Initiative in your state, donating
to them or something else entirely, please let us know
I really want to hear about it. You can write
me anytime at Bill at normal Folks dot us, and
I promise you I will respond If you enjoyed this episode, Guys,
(01:05:56):
seriously share it with friends, share it on social tell
people bout us, subscribe to the podcast, rate it and
review it so people know how great we are. Join
the army at normalfolks dot us. Consider becoming a Premium
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will help us grow an army of normal folks. The
(01:06:18):
more listeners, the more people in the army, the.
Speaker 5 (01:06:21):
More impact we can have.
Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Thanks to our producer, Iron Light Labs, I'm Bill Courtney.
Until next time, do what you can