Yesterday I went to prison. No, nobody had to post bail for me to leave. It was part of a program that BU has with a group called Partakers. Partakers pairs an incarcerated BU student (BU offers classes toward a BA for incarcerated persons) with mentors who visit the inmate, primarily to discuss schoolwork and provide encouragement. The School of Theology shares visiting duties with one student. Don't worry Mom and Dad, we go in pairs. I went with a man named Brian who is studying to be a navy chaplain.
I'd never been to or inside of a prison before. We'd been warned that the guards don't like the education program (because inmates are getting a good education for free while the guards have to pay to go to college) and that we shouldn't expect them to answer questions for us, but I thought they were surprisingly helpful. It was obvious to everyone in visitor processing that we were newbies, and we got help not only from the guards, but from other visitors. (Interesting thing worth noting, we were the only white visitors I saw. All of the guards I saw were white.)
We filled out our visitation paperwork and they called us in in groups of 6-8 to a locked room where we were required to empty our pockets, strip off any excess layers (it's winter in New England) and take off shoes, put through a metal detector, and then searched by hand. The only thing you could take in with you was a locker key (where you'd stored all your stuff that isn't allowed inside, books, wallets, car keys), your paperwork, and a government issued debit card that you could use to buy snacks in the visitation room.
Then, re-dressed and re-layered, we were taken into another room where we waited for the group ahead of us to walk from visitor processing across the yard to the visitation center. Once they were inside we were allowed to exit and cross the yard to the visitation center. The vestibule to the visitation center is locked from the inside and outside. We de-layered again and left our coats in the vestibule, after which we were let into the visitation center. We handed over our paperwork and then were allowed to meet with our student in a large room with many other inmates and their visitors. Kids were everywhere. We spent the next two and a half hours getting to know our student.
He told us about his studies, family, how he ended up where he is, and his faith. He loves to write poetry, and is having some published. He participates in plays that the inmates put on and sometimes even write. He showed us photos of his kids and told us about their visits and discussions. He told us about his faith and the studies he'd done with various chaplains. The books he'd read. How the Spirit was working in his life and helping him talk to other inmates. We told him about what we were studying and what had brought us to BU. How our own various calls had worked and where we thought we were headed in future. We talked about books and music we like. Just general stuff, but also just enjoying each other.
There were two things I kept thinking about as I was sitting there.
1) The arts are so important for our humanity. We need poetry, literature, and music in order to be human, and yet these are the things that are being phased out of education. How is it that a prison can see the necessity of the arts, but public schools can't?
2) Most of what I've learned in school has no application to yesterday. It's great to have a specialized vocabulary, to know what council decided what orthodox belief where, to have a framework in which to interpret injustice, poverty, systemic racism, etc. but so little of that helps when you're sitting face to face with somebody who's had life land on them. Even when it's their own decisions that put them in a terrible situation, knowing about the hermeneutics of suspicion isn't helpful.
I was pretty nervous about going yesterday, and was worried that it'd take the whole day (which it did), but I signed up anyway because I know that there's a pretty good chance I'll have to visit a prison at some point in my career and I'd rather have a minimal amount of experience now. I'm so glad I went. I know he was grateful for our visit yesterday. I know we brightened his day. But more than that it was a chance for my eyes to be opened.
Prison and the sorts of lifestyles that often lead there are so far beyond my personal/familial experience. In the past I have been judgmental about people making the sorts of decisions that land them in jail, or with multiple kids from multiple partners, or any number of other things. Working at Gannett was the start of the end of that for me, of knowing that most people most of the time are doing the best they know how to do. Sometimes we simply screw up, but sometimes there are forces greater than us that put us in terrible situations. In those situations even our best possible decision is still sometimes a bad decision.
But even in the middle of a prison of our own creation grace is there, using the scars of our terrible decisions, the evidence of our failure, to speak words of healing and hope. I found myself yesterday in the middle of our conversation offering silent prayers of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving that even the worst things we do can be used and do not define us, that even in the midst of so much darkness the light still shines. That God hangs out in prison too. Isn't that just the best news?
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