By Christian Betancourt , Student and Teaching Assistant at Grays Harbor College

Christian Betancourt was one of the first speakers during the day-long Pathway to Reentry event at Stafford Creek Corrections Center (learn more about the event here). He graciously shared his speech for publication on the SPP website.

Like most, it took me quite a while to finally attain my GED. From the day I started taking my pre-test to the day I finished my final test, I was a nervous wreck…It had been so many years since the last time I had done only academic studies that I was unsure if I could actually attain my GED…Thankfully, I had a patient and understanding teacher…

What also motivated me to succeed were my children. I didn’t want them to come to a crossroad in life where school seemed too hard and they want to drop out like I did…How could I convince my kids the importance of education if I, being their father, could not do the same?…I wanted to show them that no matter the adversity, all things are possible…To show them their futures are worth investing time into…

I remember a conversation with my two youngest, that I was taking a couple of classes to better myself…Do you know what they said? They said, “Dad you’re old; why are you going to school?” I explained to them that even though you grow up in life, your mind doesn’t have to become stagnant…Education continues on in life…That there is knowledge and educational value in all facets of life…

There is something I ask my kids at night prior to bed…I ask them, “So, what’s the goal for tomorrow?”…They will both say, “to learn something, Dad.” You see, I want school to be exciting for them…I want them to remember to be receptive and to learn even just one thing, because you never know when said information will become useful.

Eddie “Truck” Gordon once said, “If your actions are not in line with your beliefs…then stop lying to yourself.” How could I tell my kids about the importance of continuing education if I neglected my own educational responsibilities…

I need to leap over my hurdles

I started the BT One class…we covered a lot of information I believed to be useless…I didn’t take the class seriously…I thought, “What’s the point of all this book work?”

Slowly but surely the class stared to peak my interest…It covered all types of important information…The type you knew, for one, needed to be written down or else you might forget what you just learned…For two, you knew that even if you didn’t do what you learned for a profession, you could utilize what you learned on your own home…

You would be surprised how quickly class went by for me…However, I was ready to do other things…still not taking my situation seriously…I tried all that I could to not take any more classes. Regardless of my non-acceptance of this class, I was none-the-less enrolled… I made up my mind to do the bare minimum

When I started the BT 2 Class, I met my instructor, Mr. Kelly Richters…He had a very different way to instruct his students…He allowed us to be creative when it came to our capstone project and our modules…He promoted individual creativity and then for us to come together for a collaborative project…Mr. Richters asked me if I wanted a job as a TA…I stand here in front of you today having been roughly two years major infraction free…I have been TA’ing for close to a year now…I still learn new things each and every day…I won’t say it’s been easy…I’ve never been a people person…I truly don’t like giving big speeches…But, to head where I want in life, I need to leap over my hurdles. Change is scary, but truly worth it, if we apply our whole heart and soul into our tasks.

No one is meant to know everything, but if you continue to focus on learning all that you can, you’ll be able to maneuver around this life with relative eases…There will still be up’s and down’s, yet if we are better equipped for these days, we can break the cycle of recidivism…

We want to have the right tools to push our little ones, our younger relatives in the correct direction…that way they can succeed and have a fighting chance in this world…Aside from ourselves, they are the ones we should be doing this for…helping the next generation be great.

So, I say again to those gathered here today: “What is the goal for tomorrow?”

Text by Bethany Shepler, SPP Green Track Program Coordinator

On April 16th, Stafford Creek Corrections Center (SCCC) hosted a re-entry event called Pathways to Reentry. This event was different than most for two reasons: 1) it was open to everyone regardless of their release date, and 2) it featured several guest speakers and experts who were previously-incarcerated. While every presenter was clearly welcome and appreciated, there’s no question that stories and guidance from the previously incarcerated were the most impressive. Their pathways to re-entry were the most resonant and relevant.

The event highlighted two successful pathways: education and employment. We invited re-entry navigators from across the state, second-chance employers, re-entry resources, justice-involved college students, Washington State Department of Corrections education leadership, and college coordinators to share about the work that they do. The event was a beautiful example of collaboration and we’re so excited to co-host more events like this in the future. Thank you to everyone involved in this event!

Below is a photo journal of the day. Enjoy!

Text by Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager
Photos by Joslyn Rose Trivett and Bethany Shepler

Note: please be aware that three individuals featured in this story have victims who are concerned about re-victimization; any sharing or promoting of images should keep that risk in mind.

In May, we celebrated the third class of the full Roots of Success (Roots) curriculum at Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton. Eight incarcerated gentlemen completed the fifty-hour course. Each sounded pleased to share in what he had learned and what he appreciated about his peers, the instructor, and the staff who support the program. Gratitude seems to be a key element of Roots; as visitors to the classroom or a graduation event, we are steeped in their gratitude….it’s pretty wonderful!

All present took turns addressing the group and reinforcing mutual recognition. One graduate told his class, “Every single one of these guys valued my opinion, and that was awesome.” Instructor Grady Mitchell, one of the state’s most experienced teachers of the course, beautifully paraphrased Nietzsche to tell his students:

“I have left the house of scholars. Too long I have sat hungry at their table…I have not been hungry at your table.”

As testimony to the content of the class, a student said his thinking had shifted, from What programs are the best programs? to What do we need to learn to become good human beings? He and others suggested that Roots had helped them to learn about being with people, how to make decisions, and how to turn knowledge into action.

Our thanks to the staff who have kept Roots alive at WCC. After several years of supporting the program, Kathryn Shea is promoting to a new position outside the prison. She told us that she never got to give Roots the focus she wanted it to have — like most program liaisons, she took on Roots administration on top of her regular duties. We are grateful that she kept the program alive and well.

Thanks to everyone’s efforts, the future of WCC’s program looks bright. At the end of the formal celebration, graduates, instructor, and staff chatted over cake and shared promising plans for building the program bigger. We all plan to stick with Success.

By Stacy Chen, a first-year undergrad at Duke University. Ms. Chen took an interest in SPP’s work after attending a talk by Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, in which she described bringing her sustainability research projects into prisons.

A newly-graduated first-generation college student was incarcerated for accidental manslaughter at a party (Brown, 2009). During his 4 years at Cedar Creek Correctional Center, he read about 1000 books and authored his first scientific journal article along with an accomplished ecologist (Brown, 2009; Ulrich & Nadkarni, 2008). Within 5 years of his release, he completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and is now a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine (“Craig Ulrich,” n.d.).

How did Craig Ulrich do that? He conducted ecological research in prison.

We have to stop assuming that human resources outside of academia are scientifically-handicapped and incapable of expanding the global pool of scientific knowledge. Sadly, scientists rarely look for research assistance outside of their expertise, believing their projects to be too lofty for the unschooled (Nadkarni & Morris, 2018).

A high school education is hard to come by for most prisoners, but that didn’t faze ecologist and entrepreneur Nalini Nadkarni (Brown, 2009). It wasn’t until she pioneered the Moss-in-Prisons project did the millions of marginalized inmates in American jails and prisons receive attention as potential contributors to conservation ecology (Nadkarni, 2019).

Today, 2.3 million people Americans live behind metal bars. Among them, around 60,000 are released each year, but more than half return to those cages within 3 years (N. M. Nadkarni & Morris, 2018). The recidivism rate isn’t so shocking after all. How are prisoners expected to make a living after years of idle incarceration, without any means to establish themselves as contributive, knowledgeable, and resourceful members of society?

In search of help for her research in ex-situ cultivation of epiphytic mosses—species essential for forest biodiversity and nutrient cycling—Nadkarni looked where no one else dared to (Ulrich & Nadkarni, 2009; Gotsch, Nadkarni, & Amici, 2016). The goal of her study was to develop a method to artificially-grow and commercialize mosses to protect those that would otherwise be stripped from forests and sold in the long-exploited million-dollar florist trade (Muir, 2004; Nadkarni, 2008). Nadkarni was looking for “fresh eyes and minds to spot innovative solutions” (Nadkarni, 2008, p. 248) and decided that those inmates, like Ulrich, constituted the most “needful” and “desirous” population when it came to environmental education (Nadkarni, 2019). Incarcerated adults did not go in completely illiterate on the subject either, for many of them come from the Northwest where they have already been acquainted with the beauty, diversity, and dynamics of nature on their hunting and fishing expenditures (Nadkarni, 2019).

Nadkarni gave the inmates free rein. These budding scientists engineered moss flats to shelve the specimens and did their own pen-to-paper data collection and calculations. After two years, this collaboration developed a water treatment method for the cultivation of mosses and discovered potential for commercial farming of 3 species of mosses (Ulrich & Nadkarni, 2008).

Several inmates co-authored the research paper that came out of the Moss-in-Prisons project, with Ulrich being the primary author (Ulrich & Nadkarni, 2008). Some of these inmates left Cedar Creek and became horticulturists (Nadkarni, 2008, p. 250).

In the end, this project not only enhanced scientific knowledge and forest biodiversity preservation at large, it also provided inmates better candidacy for jobs upon release, created a synergetic relationship between the scientists and prisoners, and fostered a better attitude toward the undereducated populations (Nadkarni, 2019). Nadkarni considers withholding nature from prisoners a “punishment”, claiming that bringing these mosses into these correction centers “encourage[s] not only prisoners but also their jailers to value the healing qualities of nature” (N. M. Nadkarni, 2008, p. 247).

Taking a step back, the Moss-in-Prisons project piloted by Dr. Nadkarni was only a spark that led to the countless environmental education programs and sustainability projects in prisons across the State of Washington. Out of Cedar Creek Correctional Center, Nadkarni co-founded the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP), an organization engaging inmates in butterfly-breeding, honeybee-keeping, and prairie restoration projects today (“Sustainability in Prisons Project,” 2019). It’s encouraging to see similar programs starting up in many other US correction centers; however, most of these start-ups are concentrated in the Pacific Coast, Midwest, and Northeast areas, whereas the Southeast is missing in action (“SPP Network Programs,” n.d.).

What would it look like for government funds to go toward educating inmates? Perhaps it would reduce the whopping 52% recidivism rate (Nadkarni & Morris, 2018). Perhaps it would reinvent our view of prisoners: Instead of seeing them as convicts deserving of punishment, we would see them as potential propellers of science—people who are desperate for a second chance and scholars who yearn for contact with the outside world. Just like how mosses depend on trees to grow, prisoners require interactions with nature to thrive.

References

Brown, V. (2009, February 24). The Ecologist and the Prisoners. Retrieved April 20, 2019, from Pacific Standard website: https://psmag.com/environment/the-ecologist-and-the-prisoners-3928

Craig Ulrich [University]. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2019, from Nevada Center for Bioinformatics website: https://www.unr.edu/bioinformatics/contact/craig-ulrich

Gotsch, S. G., Nadkarni, N. M., & Amici, A. (2016). The functional roles of epiphytes and arboreal soils in tropical montane cloud forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology; Cambridge, 32(5), 455–468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S026646741600033X

Muir, P. (2004). An Assessment of Commercial “Moss” Harvesting from Forested Lands in the Pacific Northwestern and Appalachian Regions of the United States: How Much Moss is Harvested and Sold Domestically and Internationally and Which Species are Involved? [Report to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center]. Retrieved from http://www.forestharvest.org.uk/pdfs/MossHarvestProjectFinalReportAugust242004.pdf

Nadkarni, N. M. (2008). Between earth and sky : our intimate connections to trees. Retrieved from https://find.library.duke.edu/catalog/DUKE008470535

Nadkarni, N. M. (2019, March). Science in Prisons – Bringing Conservation Biology and Environmental Sustainability to the Incarcerated. Presented at the Science & Society Classroom, North Building 232, Duke University. Science & Society Classroom, North Building 232, Duke University.

Nadkarni, N. M., & Morris, J. S. (2018). Baseline Attitudes and Impacts of Informal Science Education Lectures on Content Knowledge and Value of Science Among Incarcerated Populations. Science Communication, 40(6), 718–748. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547018806909

SPP Network Programs. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2019, from Sustainability in Prisons Project website: http://sustainabilityinprisons.org/spp-network/spp-network-programs/

Sustainability in Prisons Project. (2019). Retrieved May 1, 2019, from Sustainability in Prisons Project website: http://sustainabilityinprisons.org/

Ulrich, C., & Nadkarni, N. M. (2008). Sustainability research and practices in enforced residential institutions: collaborations of ecologists and prisoners. Environment, Development and Sustainability; Dordrecht, 11(4), 815–832. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10668-008-9145-4

By Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager, The Evergreen State College

In early January, we welcomed Master of Environmental Studies graduate student Carly Rose to the Sustainability in Prisons Project team at The Evergreen State College (SPP-Evergreen). Her position, and now her presence, fulfills a long-held dream: that someone on our team could be solely devoted to coordinating, creating, and improving educational materials.

The position creates a new focus on organizing and cataloging SPP’s existing educational materials and capacity for developing new materials that are in high demand. Three funders have made this possible. Via our Evergreen colleague Scott Morgan, we are delighted to host our first Sustainability Fellow, providing for about five months of the one-year position. Sustainability Fellowship positions at Evergreen are funded by a generous, anonymous donor. Matching that, we have a recent, very helpful gift from the Herb Alpert Foundation. With these two donations, there was only a small funding gap remaining and we were able to use funds provided by another anonymous donor from the Seattle Foundation to support Carly’s time for a full year.

The ability to add the position could not have come at a better time. In SPP programs, the demand for more educational content is higher than ever. Also, we have new allies in curriculum development, both within Washington State Department of Corrections prisons and in outside organizations. All these factors provide a tremendous opportunity and we’re so pleased to be able to make the most of it.

Our good fortune continued with Carly Rose’s application. She brings an optimal mix of environmental and social interests and expertise. She has a B.A. in Sociology from Western Washington University and professional experience from a variety of social service settings, including supported employment, foster care, and transitional aged youth mental health. An ideal complement comes from her studies in Evergreen’s Master of Environmental Studies program and her self-led exploration of organic farming, native plant identification, and other elements of sustainable living – she can easily relate to the students’ desire to learn more about such topics!

With SPP, Carly’s first priority is to coordinate efforts to create a peer-led gardening curriculum that is tailored to the particular interests and capacities of incarcerated gardeners. In her first four months, she has connected with the many partners and stakeholders in the effort, including two teams of incarcerated students, the Institute for Applied Ecology, University Beyond Bars, and Oregon Food Bank’s Seed to Supper program. Again, Carly appears to be made for this work; she shows a partnership mindset with every contributor, carefully considering their input, limitations, and needs. When the curriculum is completed, SPP plans to work with partners to make it broadly available—matching interest we’ve heard from allied organizations across the country.

As envisioned, Carly is also making strides to catalog SPP-Evergreen’s existing educational files. She is developing templates for learning guides in all of our ecological conservation programs. Our unwieldy collection of articles, presentations, and handouts is beginning to take the shape of an accessible and powerful library.

With both efforts, SPP’s ability to offer meaningful, empowering education to people in prisons expands. We can better support staff turnover on our team, giving each new program coordinator ready access to a wealth of educational materials. This fall, we can support students and staff inside prisons as they try out the new gardening curriculum, and then still have capacity for gathering their suggestions for improvement. Carly sums it up well:

“I am so excited to contribute to and grow with the SPP team; a multi-disciplinary team that includes Evergreen’s SPP staff, Washington State Department of Corrections’ SPP staff, community supporters and partners, and most importantly the incarcerated technicians and students who invest their time and hearts into these sustainability programs.”

We are so grateful to the three donors who have made this position possible. With their combined contributions, we were able to take on this important work. Education is the most effective way to reduce recidivism, breaking the cycle of incarceration. The investment in Carly’s work has significant positive impacts on SPP’s ability to deliver empowering education to benefit people, communities and ecosystems.

By Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager

In 2019, every prison in Washington State has gardens. Most prisons boast extensive plots of food and flowers, some cultivated for their beauty to pollinators and humans, others for verdant rows of herbs and vegetables. These gardens are a source of pride and solace; they are islands of beauty and vitality in an institutional environment.

For as long as Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP)’s Evergreen employees have visited gardens in Washington State prisons, we have heard incarcerated gardeners ask for more information to refine their gardening skills. They want information on plant cultivation, healthy soils, garden placement and sunlight, beneficial insects, and pest management, and many other topics that would help them be better gardeners.

A relatively small number of gardeners are also formal garden students—they get horticulture instruction from Centralia, Peninsula, or Tacoma Community College—and those opportunities are highly prized. In other cases, mostly in other states, volunteers from Master Gardeners or other non-profit organizations (e.g., Insight Gardening Program, Lettuce Grow, Rikers Island GreenHouse) bring gardening education into the facilities. These classes are sought after and celebrated by gardeners.

There are many more gardeners whose needs and interests aren’t yet met—they haven’t been able to get into a class, their prison is too remote for volunteers, or they already received a class and they want to learn more. Not only in Washington, but across the country, there are staff and incarcerated gardeners who crave more information and instruction.

We know from the successes of peer-led education in other SPP programs, like Monroe Correctional Complex’s composting certification, technician-led workshops, and Roots of Success, that peer-to-peer education can work. Given proper preparation and support, peer education can be very effective and empowering.

A new collaboration has emerged to try and meet the requests of incarcerated gardeners, by working together to develop a gardening curriculum based on a peer education model. SPP has found kindred spirits in the Institute for Applied Ecology and the Oregon Food Bank. Even more valuable, incarcerated individuals and staff at two prisons in particular, Monroe Correctional Complex and Stafford Creek Corrections Center, have volunteered to help write, review, and pilot the new curriculum. These incarcerated gardeners offer their technical gardening expertise, their lived experience in the prison system, and their insight into what incarcerated gardeners need to teach and learn. Their input is integral to creating a successful peer-led curriculum.

With so many authors and stakeholders, forward progress can be slow; it takes a lot of work to create and finalize plans, and to review and finalize products. The huge upside, though, is that the collective may produce a program that can be used across the state and across the nation.

To give the many partners and steps involved the recognition their due, we will write a series of stories on the gardening curriculum. We want to cultivate something practical, useful, and appealing—a curriculum worthy of a gardener.