MJ-Way

Mathew 6: 25-26

.Our garden began producing immediately after being planted. In the first year we delivered vegetables on a regular basis to the prison chow hall for both officer and inmate meals. Our immediate community food banks could not believe the amount of produce we were donating to them. I thanked my coworkers who were more than happy to make deliveries for us so that I could continue teaching and supervising my students as they worked in the gardens. Our Food Technology program Instructor would make different vegetarian meals from the produce we delivered to him. My students would try things like “green fried tomatoes,” “egg plant parmesan,” and “sweet potato fries.” Many growing up in the “urban desert” where McDonalds and Burger Kings were the meals of choice (many their only meal or they had nothing to eat) were amazed on how the vegetarian meals tasted.

.Fresh vegetables some of my students never ate. Having these types of meals prepared for them “farm to table” was a great learning experience. I could give them the macro nutrients and micro nutrients of everything they consumed from the garden. I had shown them what they were doing here today (creating gardens) was being replicated in urban environments across America. Once released form prison, they could contribute in a positive way promoting and working in a community gardening project. I was informed by my tutors of my student’s success once they returned home. Not all were success stories. Some unfortunately returned to old habits and were either gun downed or returned to prison on new charges. They just refused to change and payed the price for that decision. Some of them felt invincible. I called it “the fastest gun in the west syndrome.” Some one was always willing to lay claim to that title at the expense of the one carrying it.

.Making a fast buck in an urban environment without having to work hard for it was their “modus operandi.” That philosophy was what usually brought them back to prison. Being a positive influence in the community was not at the top of their priority list. Being king of the “crack house” was. In the drug trade: ” heavy is the head that wears the crown.” It usually has a target on it. All the teaching in the world couldn’t change their “money talks and bullshit walks” perspective. I knew I couldn’t reach some of them, but for those I could reach out and change that convoluted perspective, it helped in their continued future success. As we began harvesting the garden my students enjoyed the weighing and packaging of all the produce we would donate. The facilities chow hall would always have first choice of what we grew and then we would offer produce to our schools’ Food Technology program. When both of their refrigerators were filled, we then donated produce to our immediate community, and they were vey happy to receive it. I was always amazed at the poundage we harvested. I was sure to thank the good Lord, and a barn that provided eight dump trucks of “gardener’s gold.” It made a big difference for increasing our present and future yields. For my students, it was a healthy way to reconnect with the community.

To Be Continued….

It took us three days to complete the manure excavation. We filled eight dump trucks and I was able to empty them without incident into what would become the main prison garden. What I learned from the maintenance mechanics who had been involved in the construction of the prison was that the developers took all of the topsoil when they cleared the land for development. They then filled in the areas with sand and clay. I would spend the rest of my career filling all of the gardens with top soil and organic matter. My students would learn valuable lessons on land renewal. My helper graded and leveled the area we had removed all the manure from. The journalist was ecstatic. I thanked God for us completing this work without incident of accidents or injuries. I was always worried a mishap could send the barn crashing down on us, but my coworker assured me it would not be a mistake he would make. He proved my worries needless. Our opposite personalities worked well together on this collaboration. At the time, I did not realize there would be more.

My students and tutors began working the prison garden with a renewed vigor, and my coworker used the tractor to spread the manure turning the ground over as he went. From the furrows he created in the ground, my students made beds for the vegetables plants they grew from seed in the greenhouse. They were able to plant the full garden using topsoil we combined with the compost making raised beds. Almost an acre of land was planted with vegetables. It amounted to well over ten thousand plants. I expected a good continued harvest if the weather permitted it throughout the spring, summer and fall. The garden being next to the school could only be accessed through the school. This unfortunately would change in the future, but for now only my students and tutors had access to the garden. I also set up garden plots for my students. The stipulations were that they had to pick two other students to work in their garden, they had to agree on what they planted, they had to all take time to tend to it, and finally, the yields from their harvest were to be divided amongst them according to the work they put in.

One of my assistants tracked the time they worked in their gardens and the time they worked in the classroom garden labs. The hours worked were tracked as part of the classroom requirement to graduate, and many exceeded that requirement. They loved working in the horticulture labs, and I was hard pressed to make them leave when class was over. They often wanted to return, but were sent back not having a detail (official permission slip) to be there. The garden area was marked with out of bounds signs. This meant that only detailed students and workers could be there at the designated times working. Anyone else caught in the garden without a detail would be written a major out of place ticket. In the beginning this seemed to work. With my students and helpers having sole access to the garden area we were able to increase our annual yields. The warden was happy to be getting letters of thanks from the foodbanks we delivered our product to. The warden shared the letters with me and I made sure to share them with my students. It was a very important lesson for my students. Even though they were incarcerated, they could still contribute to society in a positive way. For some of them working in the garden and contributing in a positive way was a sorely needed redemption. TO BE CONTINUED…

This is my last post for Black History Month. My African American students enjoyed the stories/movies I would show them in my classroom about the positive contributions their ancestors made in America. The following music and video is a great contribution as well for the trying times we all find ourselves in and to celebrate the month: Philippians 2:3

We had agreed that we would need to get the facilities dump truck and back hoe tractor to do the excavation. I would let the warden know what are plans were and get his approval for use of the facilities equipment. We figured that it may take us about 3 days to complete the project, and I was concerned that the barn wasn’t in the best condition. We would need to be careful when excavating. My helper was very confident he could remove all the manure and dump it into the truck without damaging the barn. My job would be to get all the approvals from our supervisors, secure all of the equipment we would need, and finally, get the wardens approval of our plan to excavate the barn. Driving a dump truck full of manure to be dumped into what would become the prison garden was the easy part. So I thought.

The warden when I spoke to him was all for our plan and he had total confidence in our ability to accomplish it safely. He signed off on us using the facilities equipment which would be useful when requesting the equipment. Our supervisors knowing the warden had signed off on the project gave us their blessings. We set a date and I called the journalist to make sure it was a good date for her as well. She was happy to hear it was going to happen. I assured her that all the manure would be removed in a matter of three days, and my helper would grade the inside of the barn making it level again. She agreed on the date, and the amount of time we would need to have access to the barn. I was able get our facilities Director to give us access to the equipment. The equipment was a tractor with a back hoe attachment and our dump truck. We would pick them up by 7:00am and bring them back before we left for home at 4:00PM. If we had any problems we were to notify the control center immediately.

We picked the equipment up as planned in the morning of our first day. Our maintenance mechanics made sure everything was in working order and both had full tanks of gas. We planned to go straight to our job cite by way of a country road which was more like a two lane highway with gravel shoulders on each side. We would drive the shoulder all the way to the farm. My helper headed out with the tractor and had his emergency lights on. I followed behind him with my emergency lights on. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the barn. Once we reached the property the journalist made sure the horses were secured in another area of the farm and would not hinder our operation. With the back hoe he made quick progress starting in the furthest corner from our entry way. The manure itself was compacted in between layers of hay and would be a gold mine for the garden. The first day we filled two dump trucks and the barn was only a quarter completed. Some areas had as much as three feet of this compacted gold and I wanted to get every bit of it if possible.

To Be Continued…. In honor of Black history month I can think of no better way than to post a song I heard in concert by Motown’s one and only Stevie Wonder. The lyrics are most relevant for today’s world.

Mathew 22: 36-40

The journalist finished the interview and the Warden was happy. The article would appear in our metropolitan paper later in the week. I made arrangements to visit her farm. Once that was done, I would let the warden know what I thought we could do to get the manure for our garden. We said our goodbyes, and I informed her I would meet up with her later in the week. I also informed the warden that I needed to get back to the school. I had an idea of someone who I thought might be able to help me out with this project and I needed to run my ideas by him. He would need to get permission from his supervisor to help me, and we would have to look at the barn later in the week to see what was feasible. The warden let me know he trust my judgement and would support what ever I decided to do. I knew I would need equipment. I just didn’t know the logistics. That would have to be decided after I spoke with the person I thought could help me.

That person had a lot of experience with the kind of logistics I would need to maneuver and operate the heavy equipment I would be requesting to use. I also considered him my mentor in the DOC. He had never failed to give me good advice, and I appreciated his honesty. I had what psychologists’ called a “type A personality” and he was the complete opposite, “type B.” This defined our working relationship for the next 20 some years in the DOC. We had some very interesting experiences working together and I appreciated his mentoring. When I mentioned to him what I was planning on doing he laughed. I explained that we would have to view the property first, but that if we could get this manure it would be great for the prison garden. At the same time we would be making a citizen of the immediate community happy as well. He left it up to me to make the arrangements to visit the property and he believed his supervisor would not have a problem approving his help with this project.

The arrangements to visit the property were made and I couldn’t wait. When we arrived on the property there were a couple of horses in the pasture who couldn’t run up to us quick enough for what they probably thought was a meal. I patted their snouts and seeing I had nothing to feed them ran back to the pasture to feed. The barn was tilted to one side and looked as if a strong wind could blow it over. It was old. The barn wood was all weathered and in some areas the sunlight shown through the deteriorating wood illuminating what would be our work area. The opening to the barn was large enough for our tractor but not the dump truck. We would have to excavate and then shovel the manure into the truck. A two step process. My concern was the risk and I knew I had to find a way to minimize that calculus. My helper was all in. He had taken a shovel and determined that in some places there was more than three feet of compacted manure. This was a gardens gold mine. He believed he would not have a problem excavating the manure. He would fill the dump truck and I would take it back to the prison to be dumped in our garden. “The easy part,” He said. To Be Continued….

Psalms 103

.She was a free-lance journalist for one of our leading metro newspapers, and she wanted to speak with me about the Horticulture program. I was called to the Warden’s conference room in the Administration Building, and that was not viewed by any of my colleagues as a good thing. A page overhead for an employee to report to the “Warden’s anything” usually meant bad news for the employee. I signed myself out of the school building and headed to the conference room reviewing in my mind the people met earlier in the day. Did I piss somebody off, and is that why I am being called to this meeting? I was relieved once I entered the conference room to see the Warden smiling. He introduced me to a journalist and began to tell me why she was here. It seems she lived in the area and had been raising horses on a farm not far from the prison. She did a story recently on an agency we had been donating produce to and she couldn’t believe the amounts she was told we were donating. She wanted to do a story on us, and she had a proposal. I looked skeptical at her when she mentioned “proposal.” The Warden seeing my reaction asked me to hear her out.

.I was relieved to know that’s why I was called up here , and not anything I imagined I might have said to piss somebody off. Diplomacy and states man ship were not qualities I could claim. If someone pissed me off they were immediately informed of that fact. I didn’t use tact. I didn’t mince words. I used language that got their attention, and that usually meant someone would not be happy. Especially if they seemed to over hear what I thought was a soliloquy. Anyway, I was glad to inform her that the Warden was responsible for the success of the Horticulture program. and because of his constant support we were able to grow the amount of produce we donated. I emphasized “constant” because his underlings were constantly finding fault with the program when he wasn’t at our facility and my boss was at the other prison school. I quit telling them both of his deputized assistants giving me a hard time. Especially, my last assignment. It wasn’t worth the aggravation. The journalist’s proposal was simple. She lived down the road and she was living at her families house. The family had raised horses. They had more than a dozen horses at a time but had failed to clean the barn for the past five years.

.They decided that horses were no longer going to be raised at their farm. ( I think the local health department had a hand in that decision) She was curious. Would we be interested in looking at the barn the horses stood and shit in for the past 5 years (my words not hers) and find a way to remove the 5 year old compacted horse manure? My mind went into over drive as I started calculating how many times horses shit a day, times 12 horses, times 365 days a year times 5!!!! I asked her for the size of the barn and if she new the size of the area they were kept in. She gave me the size of the barn and she informed me the horses were kept in half of it on one side. This was a gold mine of nutrients for our prison garden, and I thought I had a way of getting all of it. I informed her she could begin the interview. I believed I had a way of getting the manure. I needed to run the plan by our Warden and I would call her for a time to look at the barn. She was glad to know I was interested and began the interview. TO BE CONTINUED…

Isaiah 7: 14, & Mathew 1: 18-23

Earlier in my teaching career I had a run in with a deputy and her assistant. She and her assistant had tried to stop the warden from approving my plans for landscaping the prison grounds to no avail. What I didn’t realize then was that they viewed me as a threat. This was told to me by the maintenance mechanic who installed our greenhouse. He had to do some work in the deputy suite and all he heard was our deputy complaining about the prison looking “too soft” with all the flower gardens, and “what more would I create given card blanche from our warden.” It was a sobering revelation because I thought this all had been resolved in the first year of our greenhouse being constructed, and my plans being accepted by our warden. Three years forward and I was still hearing about pushback from the upper prison echelons who believed the horticulture class was not good for prison security. It was a tough group to convince and I didn’t have the time or energy to school them. However, they had some schooling for me and when the warden or my principal was at another facility they became master disrupters of the program.

The siren was blown and the school was emptied of all students and tutors. We were on lockdown. The school closed. This meant that custody became our immediate supervisors and our new assignments were based on what ever prison administration thought the need was. That meant we could be assigned to search prisoner cells in the housing units, help run the prisoner housing units, giving a break to custody officers so they could get lunch, or do other tasks, like helping out in the mess hall, serving lunches or delivering lunches depending on the severity of the lock down. It always depended on what caused the lockdown as to where we would be assigned. Sometimes it was just a regular monthly drill where all non custody employees were gathered in one area of the school and accounted for. Once accounted for they would be delivered to the Administration building’s visitor room for further assignment. That assignment would depend on the current administrations feelings toward you. If they loved you, or feared you, you got to sit in the think tank and do absolutely nothing in the wardens conference room. I heard the donuts and coffee were to die for.

If they hated, or feared you but not enough to be afraid of how they treated you, you can rest assured your assignment would be one for the record books. I had quite a few of the record breaking assignments and my colleagues often shook their heads when I informed them of where I was assigned. So on this historical day I was the only non custody employee who got assigned to do strip searches of prisoners. With the help of our school officers I was trained in the proper way of conducting the searches referred to as “nuts and butts.” Our school officer couldn’t help but notice I was the only non custody employee assigned here. “It’s obvious”, he chirped. ” Our deputy hates the flowers and you keep expanding the gardens.” I had to inform him that I don’t consider them gardens. They are my laboratories, and with the help of God we have been very successful with our classroom/greenhouse experiments. The landscape spoke of that success. ” Well than, Welcome to our circus,” he said laughing. “With your continued success it looks like you’ll be joining us on a regular basis!” That was understated and he was absolutely correct. I was going to have to figure this out quickly or I would begin being assigned to some very difficult areas every time the siren blew. Being singled out for some” Special High Intensity Training,” by our current prison administration gave me even more motivation to continue expanding our gardens. So I did just that, and I also developed a plan for the next time the siren was blown and I was reassigned. TO BE CONTINUED…

Isaiah 9:6, John 3:16

.After all the craziness with the contraband and the need to change my curriculum away from the distribution of house plants, I took new inspiration from a woman I met at a correctional teacher’s conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her name was Elanor Jositis and I could identify with her struggle to bring opportunity to a community so lacking of it. What I admired the most was her efforts to bring vocational training to an area marked by civil unrest. She was a key note speaker at the conference and she made the Correctional Teachers and Instructors feel appreciated. She spoke highly of her students who had come to Focus Hope from being incarcerated. She felt many of them where prepared having their GED’s and/or vocational certifications. Her staff found them willing and motivated and she thanked us for that. It was a breath of fresh air hearing her say that. Before Mrs. Jositis spoke, we were berated by another key note speaker for not doing enough to prepare our students for the world once they left the prison system. It was nice to hear that someone felt we were making a difference. Especially a leader in the community whose organization was known for providing vocational training and employment for a population lacking the opportunity.

.I began to steer my students who would be paroling to the city to Focus Hope. I was trained to give the General Education Development exams. and to those students receiving their GED’s, if they were paroling to the city, I would direct them to contact Focus Hope. I had a list of apprenticeships for the skilled trades to offer my students, but I always felt that they were capable of becoming skilled machinists. If they could divide an eight ball of cocaine, (many of them being in the drug trade), they could read a micrometer and blue prints. Focus Hope would provide the training and the students would have to show motivation by learning the material then applying it. Focus Hope has state of the art equipment and a genuine environment for training adult learners. I became a conduit for my students to seek them out if they were returning to the city. The demand for good machinists was strong and Focus Hope’s reputation was well known in the manufacturing sector for producing them.

.I would reconnect with Focus Hope on a regular basis. Myself and a colleague would make the trip on an annual basis to visit. The staff were always welcoming and would provide us an update of their latest’s technologies. They were also expanding and included a new child care center and food pantry for their students. After the demise of the house plant business at the prison, it was a welcome relief to hear of the successes this organization was making in the city with our returning citizens. I would be approached on a regular basis by my students or their friends to make copies of the flyers and pamphlets published by Focus Hope which hung in my classroom. I was told over the years of my students who had found success there and became machinists. I was eternally grateful when I had heard this and continue to this day to support this organization. In the world we live today this organization and its’ message is ever the more relevant. I was glad to help my students reconnect with their community through Focus Hope. It was also a new way for me to reconnect with the community having given up on the house plant business. I was refreshed in a sense, and would look for even more opportunities for my students to display their skills. TO BE CONTINUED…

Isaiah 9: 1-3, Mathew 4: 12-17

.So after three long months of investigations and my program being put on hold I was informed by our school officer that a cell phone, 32mm magazine clip (missing 2 bullets with 5 bullets remaining in the clip) and a buck knife were discovered inside a plant container. An ounce of Marihuana was also discovered under a locked cabinet in a supply room. The same room the officers had been meeting each other on regular basis for their rendezvous. I wondered why the current school administration had not informed me of this, and I brought this subject up at our staff meeting. My colleagues were in shock when I repeated what our school officer said was found in the plant container. The colleague I had been admonishing for being myopic informed me that the phone contained a video as well, and was purchased by one of the officers he had seen leaving the supply room a little disheveled. Our new school secretary who was anything but professional blurted out, (to the chagrin of our new school principal) “it was a sex video!” From the secretary’s exacerbated tone and our new principal’s laughing acknowledgement I felt ill at ease.

.Now I was completely befuddled by these revelations. For how long was this known? I was on the administrative hot seat for the past three months and no one from our current administration had informed me of these findings. Our school officer being in the same position as me because of the contraband informed the group that he was just made aware of these facts a week ago and had informed me of the contraband found in the planter. He was just informed today that the video was a ménage a trois between the two officers often seen in the supply room together and a prisoners’ wife. The officers in the video both resigned before an investigation could be conducted on them. One of the officers had risen in rank and was seen as a department “golden child.” The ramifications of liability for the DOC were evident. The school principal informed us that the bullets missing from the 32 mm clip were found and that a gun was not smuggled into our facility. At the time I found this hard to believe. The motivation for the contraband was never discussed formally. The why, what, and when were left to speculation. In the DOC set ups occurred on a regular basis and it was assumed that’s what happened with these officers.

.I remembered what the instructors at the academy had taught us in new employee school. We would have more problems with staff than we would with prisoners. I was skeptical when they made this point. I began losing that skepticism the longer I taught for the department and began seeing staff compromised. I was made a Chief Union Steward by default ( nobody wanted the job) and I had volunteered. I began representing people who had been compromised far beyond my help. I would inform them to contact a lawyer and hope the department doesn’t prosecute. They didn’t appreciate the advice. All terminations could be grieved, but in light of the DOC’s willingness to prosecute, most defendants just resigned. I was a lousy union representative when it came to terminations. I told my employer they would eventually get someone killed. They waited until they had more than enough evidence that an employee was compromised and I informed them that in so doing, another innocent employee could be hurt. They wanted to “make their case” was often the response. In the ten terminations I had to represent while being a steward, not one fought to get their job back. The incriminating evidence was overwhelmingly not in their favor. I think the officers figured that out quickly, and left without letting the door hit them where the Good Lord split them. I don’t know what the department did in their case. The information was never shared with me. I just knew the house plant business I started 10 years ago was no more. My bubble burst. I would look for other opportunities to show case what my students could accomplish by completing the class.

To Be Continued…

Luke 1:31-33

The officers came out of the supply room with the evidence of their dalliance being a little disheveled. They tucked in their shirts and straightened out their uniform pants as they exited opposite ends of the school building. This had been reported to me by a colleague who had witnessed them leaving the supply room before. I had been admonishing my colleague to watch what was going on around us and not to be too myopic when dealing with our environment. It was easy to do. We have so many hours of classroom instruction, our facility reports, tickets written to prisoners for not attending school, evaluations of our students, and our school utilization reports were burdens that our current administrators thought were justifications for their high paying employment. With our work load I failed to understand what my colleague was trying to tell me. The ramifications of that observation would effect my program in the most negative way later in my career. For now, we were operating at full capacity. Seven classroom hours a day left little time for writing reports. Unfortunately, I became myopic with the demands of this work load. The very same thing was happening to all the educators in the school. We all had unmanageable work loads and were chastised for not turning reports in on time.

I continued to focus on Horticulture. We had over three hundred house plants in our greenhouse propagated from cuttings by my students. We developed a program of donating those plants to our local community hospitals, senior citizen centers, nursing homes, and all the offices in our facility that wanted them. Our warden made sure that his office, his assistant’s office, our lobbies and visiting areas all had hanging houseplants or large floor plants. Sometimes both. We exchanged plants when needed, and doctored those that needed immediate attention before sending them back healthy again. We could replace them immediately with new plants when needed and our staff often visited the greenhouse looking for new plants to replace the ones they “over loved.” Too much water and not enough light as evidenced by our long cold winters had us replacing plants on a very regular basis. Even though I would instruct staff that house plants don’t need as much water during the winter months but we would still have to try to revive the drowned brought back to our greenhouse. It was a thriving business model and would go on for many years. The joy it brought our immediate community was evidenced by letters of thanks sent to our warden who in turn shared them with us on a regular basis. It was uplifting and my students appreciated the accolades.

As in life, all good things must come to an end. “Toutes les bonnes choses ont une fin” Ten years into the house plant business contraband was found in a house plant container on a secretary’s desk in one of the administrative school building suites. My program was completely shut down and searches began in my classroom, and greenhouse. The plants in my room were emptied into the middle of it. (Thank God I asked they not carpet my room when they carpeted the other classrooms.) Books and videos were pulled from the shelves and thrown throughout the room after being searched. The same search was conducted in the greenhouse. The staff who had acquired plants from our program were asked to search their plant containers for contraband. I would be on pins and needles for the next three months as a much less friendlier education administration took control over the school

This incident would make the current education administration less promotable, and could keep them from reaching the next step in their career ladders. They were not happy with me. In the beginning I was not informed of what the contraband was, or what I was being suspected of. The tutors I had working for me were assigned to different areas not in the school. I was allowed to keep two of the six I had working for me because they had only begun working for the school a short time. Two of the six were transferred to other facilities, and I decided at that point the house plant business was over. After three months of investigations, turmoil and stress, I felt it was in my best interest to eliminate that part of my curriculum My students would till be taught how to produce and care for house plants but on a much smaller scale. The plants made a very interesting compost pile as I emptied the greenhouse. I was finally informed by our school officer the details of what the contraband was, and it shocked me. I was not prepared for what was told to me, and I wondered why our new school administrators had not been the ones to inform me. I felt betrayed and did not view them favorably. I am sure my feelings were mutual. I again began to question why was I working here?

TO BE CONTINUED …

Psalms 91:1-16

After my two new tutors tested positive for opiates, the school principal had asked our warden to conduct a search in the greenhouse and my classroom. My students would not be allowed back into the classroom or greenhouse until the search was completed. The school principal wanted to make sure nothing was being hidden in my classroom or greenhouse and had requested the warden to have the State Police bring in drug detecting dogs to scour both areas. Our principal had all the students removed from the school. We went into our conference room for a staff meeting with our warden and then our school principal asked that every room in the school be searched using the dogs as well. It was an interesting day. The dogs actually found one marihuana seed wrapped in cellophane thrown into a trash can. I was impressed. Our warden informed us that he felt the marihuana seed was a setup perpetuated by a disgruntled worker I had fired earlier in the year. The worker had access to the area it was found in. The ex-worker was then transferred to another facility. No other drugs were found in the school or greenhouse. The gardens were also checked and the dogs found nothing there as well.

Our warden informed us that the dogs would be used routinely to search out contraband and cautioned us to be alert. This was all new to me. I felt that we were all suspect, and rightly so. The prison staff were all possible contraband vectors. This was the reality right up to my retirement 25 years later. The prisoners would, could and did find mules to bring them whatever they wanted on a regular basis. This was a dangerous game and staff fell victim to it as well as visitors. I could not understand this, but it was an inherent part of doing business in the prison. I was ever cognizant of what was going on around me, and questioned if I was being distracted purposefully so as not to see what was happening elsewhere. It lead me to arrange my classroom so that my desk was in the back of the room, and my students’ desks were facing the front of the classroom. It was much easier for me not to be distracted having a view of them at all times as well as the hallway. I could respond quickly to any interruptions this way. It worked for me while class was in session but when class was over and students exited into the hallway it was much more difficult to monitor.

I was told later in the month that one of the tutors who had tested positive for opiates was released from prison after winning his freedom on an appeal. He had been incarcerated for over 25 years. A month later I was informed by one of his friends that he died of an opiate overdose. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time I would hear of opiate overdoses and deaths. The “opiate crisis” would wreak havoc in communities across the United States affecting friends and families of many citizens including those returning to their communities from prison. The Narcan pen had not been developed yet, and overdosing was very common. What I began seeing in the prison with opiates was the same thing I saw when “crack cocaine” hit the streets in the neighborhoods around the medical centers I worked. Crack cocaine junkies became scrappers and began to take apart their communities one house at a time to get the money needed for their crack habits. Gangs wreaked havoc in communities as they fought for control of this very lucrative trade. Fire bombings and drive by shootings were the methods employed for intimidation and control. The prison was a microcosm of those communities. Stabbings and beat downs were the methods used to settle territory disputes. This is real!

To Be Continued…

Isaiah 25:6-9