Having Some Good-Time, Having Some Good-Time.

Hey, readers!

I've been engaging with the Edovo app as much as I can manage while here at Blessington, and I stumbled across a course by Michael Santos, titled Prison! My 8,344th Day (Text Version).

What's it about?

This person was given a 45 Year Federal prison sentence, of which he was required to serve 26 years of that time behind bars. He fell at age 21.

In the lesson, he says the following:

I've never liked the term "good-time" credit. It implies that a person must do something good to receive the credit. That's inaccurate. Administrators automatically apply the good-time credit to a sentence calculation if a person doesn't get caught violating prison rules.

A person could spend his entire sentence watching talk shows or playing cards. As long as the person didn't lose time from disciplinary infractions, the person would receive the same amount of "good-time" credits as a person that spent time preparing for success by participating in education or vocational programs.

In this quote, I encapsulate and confirm this problem with the system as it stands. I get as much Gain Time (our system's name for "Good-Time") as the guy laying abed, doing pills, and remaining supine for weeks and months on end while doing nothing beyond eating, watching TV, occasionally showering to avoid a DR, and going to pick up his pills.

For comparison to the above, my day contains up to six hours of vocational learning in a woefully under-provisioned classroom five days a week (frequently, it is around four daily hours as our census counts can, and frequently DO take 1-3 hours each at this state camp), plus two days a week of Faith and Character Based Programming and its associated homework, and a weekly Buddhist Study and Congregation (plus my planning time for it).
This doesn't factor in unofficial things like help with writing coherent arguments for people, being like a big 'brother' to a resident that's over a decade younger (which helped him reel in much of his outbursts and anger), and reading whatever I can lay hands on to pass time.

The Angle

I find it a mite perturbing that someone who just lays around, passively doing time, or someone who manages to stay under the radar with the things they are really not supposed to be doing gets as much Gain Time as I do, for a notable difference in effort expenditure.

It isn't right action, as far as I'm concerned, but...

The Twist

The plot twist is, I am more perturbed at the confluence of factors that contribute to this.

What FDC Can Do

First, let's look at Pell Grants, which are now available to some prisoners for the first time in about two decades.

It would be amazing to have access to schools that will take Pell Grants, and work with incarcerated individuals to obtain their degrees.
Right now, the amount of schools available to us seems to be one, at least here at Blessington.

Next, remove that artificial barrier to education called a sentence.
Because I have more than ten years left to serve, I am ineligible to attend our only offering here, Ashland University, at this time. This leaves hands idle, wanting and waiting for education instead of working to solidify our opportunities for success beyond the wire fences when we get to walk free.
It also harms those whose permanent address will be the prison system, by continuing to kick them when they are down.

Ride along on my thought train for a moment:

Imagine a dorm of 96 residents, a mixture of short timers, long timers, and lifers.

Right now, with a lack of education and vocational opportunities, most are layabout. A new guy comes in, has five years to burn, and enrolls in college level courses. He's struggling to learn, has no access to search engines or other tools a free worlder has for learning. No one in the dorm has the education enough to help him. Frustrated, he gives up because he's in over his head and drowning.

Now, let's add a sprinkling of long timer and lifer college educated residents to the mix -- let's use 8 (incidentally, 8.3333% of the dorm) as the number. Same new guy comes in, enrolls in those same courses, has the same struggle. ... But now, he has the start of a supporting network, people to aid and bolster him as he tries to become more than he was before.

What if this were the case in every dorm on the compound? On every compound in the state? It starts a positive tipping point, swinging the pendulum back from meat warehouse to a redemption arc.

I find it interesting that I found this quote in a December 2022 copy of College Inside that I had not even read until I was already deep in the well on this post:

But recidivism alone does not fully capture the benefits of prison education. Studies have also shown the value of providing education to people who won't ever go home. People serving long sentences often become role models and mentors to others.

This is the honest truth. I've made acquaintances with a few long timers or lifers here. They saw I wasn't on the youthful :poop: track like a lot of other new guys in prison: I kept to myself, kept my nose in books or writing letters, avoided drama, and the folks I got to know liked people like that, and got to know me.

Ultimately, the moral of this story is simple:

Right now, the prison system in most states is a broken machine.
We need more Second Chance Pell schools, need Departments of Corrections nationwide to embrace these and technology used to enable them, need to remove artificial roadblocks like sentence lengths or charge types from the entry barricades.

The proof is out there. Education has a positive impact on recividism, on life inside prison, and can even be used to divert those on the outside from coming inside.

Here's a prime opportunity to improve America.
Cash this check, y'all -- it won't bounce, but when I leave these fences for the last time, I know I will.

Until the next time! :wave: