Prison

Brian developed a prisoner education program while he was serving time. He's free now, but he continues to face opposition from those who think education has no place in prison. 

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Transcript

Rehabilitation

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments. How we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. We argue over things that are, at least in part, matters of taste. We argue, for example, over art, the meaning of a movie or a song, the beauty of a painting, and the artistic quality of a novel.

We argue over things that are purely subjective, whether raw onions taste good. Many of these, of course, really depend on the person. Beauty Can, the saying goes. really be in the eye of the beholder, and a similar kind of it depends logic can apply to our experiences of songs, interior design, colors, and so many other aesthetic experiences of beauty, wonder, and awe.

But we keep having these arguments. We keep telling one another that a movie or a song is really awful and that anyone would be crazy to like it. We keep running up [00:01:00] against instances where someone's subjective choices seem, to us, to violate some objective rule of beauty. There was a girl in my homeroom class in middle school that I still remember.

She comes to mind. She would, by hand, peel and eat a raw onion every day in homeroom. Every day. Right before the Pledge of Allegiance and right after the first bell rung. And she loved it. The rest of us hated it and we weren't shy about letting her know that. But she loved it. And who am I to tell her that her morning homeroom onion didn't taste good?

I'm Michael Lee. Professor of communication and director of the civility initiative at the college of Charleston. Today's guest on when we disagree is Brian Howard, a re entry expert from Ladson, South Carolina. Brian, tell us an argument story. 

Brian Howard: Wow. Good morning. Uh, the argument that I have and constantly have and it bewilders me about why is the importance of creating a pro [00:02:00] social environment in prison and the need for development.

Um, people tend to disagree with that and don't think that people who have committed crimes in our society need to be rehabilitated. But I'm here to tell you that close to 95%, if not more, of people who are incarcerated are coming home. Whether it's six months from now or 30 years from now, they're coming home.

So my question is You want a person who has committed a crime in our society to come home better, rehabilitated, or worse than he was when he came in. 

Michael Lee: Let's set up this argument between you and the folks you've had this argument with, because it sounds like You've had this argument multiple times with multiple people, is that right?

Brian Howard: Correct. 

Michael Lee: So, take us through your arguments, and then we'll, we'll figure out the counter arguments too. So, your arguments in favor of a pro social environment for a pro [00:03:00] rehabilitation program in prison are what? 

Brian Howard: So, the basis of my argument is that our environment influences our choices. Right? And so we can look at, uh, high crime areas are always, uh, lack of resources, jobs, and low economics.

And those that, in our commu and community that has, uh, abundance of jobs, uh, lim unlimited resources, the crime rate is low. So that tells me that the environment plays a, a role. Major part in our decisions, you know, ultimately it's all, it's the person's decision deciding to do whatever they did, but I believe environment influences that.

So why not create a pro social environment that creates the environment to help people make better choices? 

Michael Lee: And what else would your, this curriculum include? A kind of pro social, rehabilitation focused program. 

Brian Howard: [00:04:00] Building a person's character. Uh, building a person's moral compass. Um, building a person's ability to make better choices.

In life, feeling good about themselves. 

Michael Lee: Mm hmm. So, let's take a hypothetical person who comes from a low resource environment, who's made a mistake. They find themselves in prison. What are the kinds of lessons you would teach, stories you would tell, resources that you would point them towards to engage in character development?

or to develop this moral compass as you call it. 

Brian Howard: So here's the thing, um, I went to prison at the age of 17. And so hearing all the stories about what prison is like, and when I got to prison, and some of those stories had looked to be true. It was a real hostile environment. Uh, violent, uh, people being jumped on, raped, robbed, um, even killed.

And so my first inclination is to get me a whole main knife, [00:05:00] right? Yeah, that was my choice to do that. But I based that choice on the environment that I was in. And it wasn't a few years later after that, somebody came to me and said, why are you carrying that knife? But it's a prison. That's what you're supposed to do.

Well, why don't you think of this place as a college, a place of learning, instead of a prison? And when I begin to think, even though that physically my environment didn't change, but my environment and my mind. Uh, view where I was at, begin to change, I started to make better choices. 

Michael Lee: You felt like in that moment you could shape your surroundings, at least in part, by your mental orientation towards your surroundings.

In other words, if you thought of this place as a violent prison, guess what it was going to be? 

Brian Howard: Exactly. Exactly. And so, uh, not a lot of people can do that. Right? So it's easy to help people do that if you already create the environment they want to see. Uh, I think Gandhi, [00:06:00] the famous, uh, quote by Gandhi, you know what I mean?

Be the change of what you want to see. And so some pe a lot of people can't do that. So why not create the environment that would be conducive for learning and making a person better? 

Michael Lee: And what are the kinds of things you did after you made that kind of mental shift from, um, This place could be a place of learning instead of just a place of violence.

Brian Howard: So I started changing my thoughts and, and, and decisions and ultimately that changed my behavior. So I was no longer doing the things that I was doing that led me to prison in the first place. And throughout the years, uh, officials starting to recognize how, how I have changed. And so a lot of those COs became wardens.

And so when one particular, um, officer became a warden, he had a vision to create a character based, um, unit within the institution. And so he came to me and with four other guys, [00:07:00] how are we going to develop this character based, um, unit? And so we began to develop that. And it turned into the whole institution becoming a character based institution.

And right now, today, Allendale Correctional Institution is listed as the character based institution for South Carolina Department of Corrections. 

Michael Lee: And you, with four other people, helped develop the curriculum. The character curriculum, essentially. 

Brian Howard: I was one of the initial four, and then we added four more, so it was eight of us in the beginning that took and started developing, um, this idea for a pro social environment and creating character development with a whole host, a plethora of classes to go along with it.

And, I mean, it changed my life. It gave me a whole new perspective. Purpose. Um, I'll give you another example. We had a, a, a pet program where we rescued dogs and cats that came [00:08:00] and rehabilitated them so they can be adopted. So our caviar to that was that these, these animals come in, we rehabilitate them so they be eligible for parole.

Being adopted by a family and that kind of rehabilitated guys who've been in there 20 30 years that have not touched a cat or a dog and It's just something that you have to see the humility and the humanness that came back into people's lives because they was able to Connect with these animals 

Michael Lee: And it's almost like who's doing the rehabilitation.

Right. It's kind of 

Brian Howard: hand to hand. 

Michael Lee: The human through the animal and the animal through the human. It is this kind of bi directional, mutual process of rehabilitation. Exactly. And that's just one example of the curriculum, within the curriculum that you and these four or eight others helped create. 

Brian Howard: Right.

And so, you know, and um, and you know, the basis of it is [00:09:00] character development. You know what I mean? How's your character? You know what I mean? Doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking. Right. And so that, that's a kind of hard thing to do when you, uh, lived a life of crime or lived a life of making bad choices or lived in an environment where that is so hostile that I think the need that I have to do certain things in order to survive.

And so once, and not only that, once we create that environment, because the prison environment without being pro social is a hostile environment. So you go in when you wake up, you, you got to survive through the day, you know, you don't know if you're going to survive through the day or not. So this is how you have to live.

So that gives little room, a little time to work on yourself, you know, so creating this pro social environment to where you, you come into the dormitory and make it a college like scene. You got books [00:10:00] on, in the public area, you got different positive quotations on the wall. You got. Uh, character development quotes everywhere.

So everything that you're seeing is, is pro social and you're learning these soft skills along the way. Um, I can give you tons of examples, but one example is, is, is this Ola guy, uh, he lived a life of crime all his life. Uh, he's doing life, uh, now, um, and he just been stubborn, you know, he in the seventies, No, I've been doing this and this, I'm doing it, but on the, on the, on the, on the strength of me, the respect that he had for me, he came into the program and I told him just do the bare minimal.

Okay. So he did the bare minimal for, for months and then he found his self. When he was leaving the shower, he left some trash in the shower, left the shower, [00:11:00] got to his cell, and remember he left the trash and this automatically went back and pick up that trash and bring it and put it into the appropriate area without giving it a second thought, and then he realized what he'd done, like, Whoa.

Because the norm is just to leave your trash and everything in the, in the shower. And the person who's responsible to clean up the shower, they'll take care of that. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. It's like this is a prison who cares about the environment we live in. Right. 

Brian Howard: Right. And so because of the pro-social envi, uh, environment and the values that we was creating, Mm-Hmm.

even though he resisted and did the bare minimal, it began to change the way, uh, he thought and perceived things. 

Michael Lee: It was a small act, but it felt significant to him. Let's take the other side. What are the arguments you would encounter against the pro social curriculum that you developed? 

Brian Howard: Oh, when you commit a crime, you shouldn't have that type of treatment.

You need a, uh, punishment because, you know, by, uh, the basis [00:12:00] of our 13th amendment, um, emphasizes that, uh, you can be put back in slavery through the punishment of a crime. And so, Uh, for what decades now over a century, as we view people who commit crimes, we view that there should be punitive damages or punitive actions towards their behavior.

And that may be so on some level, but it also should have some rehabilitation. towards that as well. 

Michael Lee: You're not necessarily arguing that you're anti punishment. You're arguing that there has to be a kind of balanced approach. 

Brian Howard: Well, I'm gonna say this, and this might develop another argument. I'm anti punishment, but pro accountability.

So what I mean by that, if I do something, right, I need to be held accountable for [00:13:00] what I've done. Right. And so I'm being held accountable and that might turn to sentence me to prison for a number of years, be it so. But don't look at it as being punitive. Look at it as being accountable. I'm being accountable for the decisions that I made.

Michael Lee: It's a good distinction. Do you think that the folks, if you could put thoughts to their words, the folks who disagree with your approach, funding or spending time on pro social curricular development in prison for those who have been incarcerated, do you think that they think that punishment is rehabilitation?

In other words, the only way to get somebody to realize the error of their ways is to punish them so much that they feel like they have to change. 

Brian Howard: Yeah, I, I, I do believe, I believe that because you know, as a, uh, children growing up, your parents kind of punish you when you did something wrong and did something that they told you not to do and so you'd be, um, punishment.

That didn't work for me, [00:14:00] right? Um, I would rather get the punishment than be held accountable for what I did, right? Because the punishment a way off. You know, I mean, was it a beating or a restriction for a couple of days or a week, couldn't go outside or whatever. All those things will pass, right? And I'll be right back doing the same things, but I've been held accountable for what I've done and have some correction action took place.

Right, I would probably would have had a better thought pattern, right? Better choices. 

Michael Lee: What's your hope for the future of? Rehabilitation programs for those who have been incarcerated either in this state or in this nation. 

Brian Howard: Oh My hope it is far fetched and it could lead to another argument Can you imagine a society without prisons and so to counter argument, and it's probably right, we will always [00:15:00] have a need for prisons.

So if that argument is right, and it probably is, so why not create the prison that has pro social environment, has character development, and some moral ethics and values in place there. That when somebody goes and, and the person being released, he's a better person, better human being than he was when he came in or she, I don't want to sound Brian, 

Michael Lee: thank you so much for being on When We Disagree.

Brian Howard: Thanks for having me. 

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagree at gmail. com