Stephen Sinclair has replaced Dan Pacholke as the Assistant Secretary for the Prisons Division with the Washington State Department of Corrections. With the new position, he has graciously accepted serving as Co-Director for the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP). Stephen has already shown himself to be a knowledgeable and capable leader for SPP, and we are thrilled to have him on board.
Steve Sinclair and Joslyn Rose Trivett emceed SPP’s Statewide Summit, a two-day meeting in April, 2015. Photo by Karissa Carlson.
Stephen takes over as Co-Director for SPP from his esteemed predecessor, Dan Pacholke. Dan was one the founders of SPP, and his inspiration and creativity have helped make SPP what it is today. We have no doubt that Stephen will continue to rally WDOC’s sustainability culture; he is dedicated to a more humane and sustainable way of running prisons.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dan Pacholke for his tireless years of service and dedication to SPP. We are grateful Dan will continue to be involved in SPP, now as a Senior Advisor. We warmly welcome Stephen Sinclair to his new role as Co-Director for SPP. Thank you to you both!
Steve Sinclair presents on SPP’s future to more than 100 DOC, Evergreen, and program partners. Photo by Joslyn Rose Trivett.
Written June 11, 2015
Joey Burgess, SPP Conservation Nursery Coordinator and Graduate Research Assistant
All photos by Joey Burgess
A horticulture student in the Skill Builders Unit at Washington Corrections Center (WCC) tends to native violets in the prison’s new seed beds.
My first two months working with the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) was characterized by collaboration and progression, both of which I consider keystone concepts for sustainability. At Washington Corrections Center, a men’s prison near Shelton, WA, we partner with Centralia College, Washington State Department of Corrections (WDOC) staff, and inmates with cognitive impairments to raise Viola adunca (early blue violets) for seed. The project holds novelties for everyone involved and it has flourished thanks to flexibility and open minds.
A horticulture student carries a rack of early blue violets that are ready to be planted.
Because of precautionary protocols, making infrastructure changes within the walls of a correction facility is not a speedy process. However SPP, WDOC, & Centralia College have truly united and the effect has been excellent. After only three months the violets are flowering, and we have already started harvesting seed. Our success is not limited to the health of the violets; it is also evident in the mental health and progression of the inmates.
Another member of the class-and-crew hand waters violets.
An interest in horticulture is an inmate’s ticket to the project, but dedication keeps him there. Whether it’s planting, watering, cultivating, or harvesting, we focus on one skill at a time. We encourage each person to find a connection to the work. This holistic approach has created an atmosphere of personal and community development. Inmates are brimming with questions about the broad scheme of SPP, and how they can find similar work upon release. Also, it has been surprisingly common for WDOC officers and administrators who are not involved in the project to ask how they can help, even going out of their way to arrange for our 9,000+ violets to be watered over hot weekends.
SPP partners weed and care for the violets as a team.
Although in its infancy, the Viola adunca project has created an unlikely community. The original goals were to raise violets for seed and provide inmates with valuable skills. However the project has become a platform for more than that: proof that under a common goal, even stark boundaries can be blurred.
One of the horticulture students discovered a Pacific chorus frog among the violets. Looks like the SPP logo!
A gardener at Airway Heights Corrections Center (AHCC) harvest carrots from one of the gardens on the campus.
Airway Heights Corrections Center (AHCC), located near Spokane, Washington, has abundant vegetable gardens. There is a huge main garden, and nearly every living unit has its own courtyard garden. Inmates tend these gardens, and send the produce to the prison’s kitchen; their harvest goes to inmate-dining halls.
Nearly every living unit at AHCC has a courtyard garden, growing produce in the eastern Washington sunshine.
Volunteers from the nearby community support and enhance the gardening program. Two community volunteers work with the K-Unit (a living unit) Seniors in the K Unit garden. A Washington State University (WSU) Spokane County Extension Horticulture Specialist, Jeremy Cowan, makes presentations to all inmates active in the program, and consults on every garden at the prison. DOC staff Kraig Witt, a Recreation Specialist, and Lt. Leonard Mayfield also are integral to operations, and do a wonderful job of coordinating all the gardens.
Cooks process vegetables grown on-site, preparing them for inmates’ dining hall.
Many thanks to all involved for their dedication to the gardens. The bring nature inside and healthy, delicious food to the menu.
Update June 29, 2015
The gardens at AHCC are thriving, and on track to out-produce last year. Here are photos from only a few days ago:
Welcome garden is in bloom!
The prison’s main garden is showing acres of healthy crops.
A living unit garden and surrounding grounds are lush and green.
By Samantha Turner, Butterfly Technician at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women
I have had a negative impact on many things throughout my life. As much as I hate to bring to light all my defects, I would have to say that I have had more negative than positive influences in the past.
I find myself today actively changing this pattern. I strive to do what is right. Being a part of the Sustainability in Prisons Project’s (SPP) Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly program has given me a huge opportunity to make an impact in a majorly positive way. I’m learning so much in this program and all the while I find my life is comparable to the cycle of these butterflies’ lives.
I’m shedding my old skin to morph into a new person.
Technician Samantha Turner works with a postdiapause larvae bin. Photo by Lindsey Hamilton
Samantha is diligently taking notes in order to track each individual butterfly through its transformation. Photo by Jody Becker-Green.
This program is fighting to keep the Taylor’s checkerspot alive. Along with saving their lives, I am fighting to save mine. So, the SPP program is majorly impacting not only the butterflies’ lives, but my life, and preserving a fighting chance at a future for both of us.
Checkerspot larvae are social insects. They often follow each other around and eat together. Photo by inmate technician
Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women butterfly technicians posed by a garden where they grow food for the caterpillars. Photo by Lindsey Hamilton
Thank you for this program and I look forward to all the possibilities.
We recently hired two new inmate technicians that bring exciting new skills to the Frog and Turtle Program! Inmate technician Anglemyer is an aspiring journalist and inmate technician Boysen has skills in plumbing and mechanics. Both technicians have already proven to be great assets to the frog and turtle program by improving the frog and turtle tank structures. Under their care, the Oregon spotted frog tadpoles are strong and healthy and the western pond turtles are doing great!
Anglemyer and Boysen in the turtle facility. Photo Credit: Sadie Gilliom
Here is an excerpt from Anglemyer’s cover letter that expresses his dedication to the frog and turtle program:
With his interest in journalism, we hope to hear more about his experience with the frogs and turtles in the future! We are excited to see what both Anglemyer and Boysen continue to bring to the program!
This blog is the second photo gallery from my visit to the Sustainable Practices Lab (SPL) at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla (see part one here).
Roy Townsend runs the wood shop, and when he describes his work he lights up like he’s singing. The shop fixes desks, chairs, and guitars. With donated/reclaimed wood, they also build beautiful chess boards, train sets, and other specialty pieces that become valuable auction items for non-profit fundraising.
The Roots of Success classroom is housed within the lab and the program serves as a ten week job interview for the SPL. Four days a week for ten weeks, students spend the morning in the classroom and the afternoon in various sustainability positions. About 70% of the 127 graduates so far have been offered jobs, and no one can recall anyone turning down the opportunity. It’s a great model for turning theory into practice.
Kieth Parkins is an exemplary spokesperson for the lab, and knows its programs inside-out. Robert Branscum, the corrections specialist who oversees the SPL, stayed with us throughout the tour, but Kieth served as the primary tour guide. Throughout the tour, I was struck by the inmate technicians’ investment in the programs, and their eloquence in presenting them.
We met Ray Williamson in the SPL’s sign shop, and he spoke passionately about his investment in peer-led programs. He said that when inmates run programs, they feel ownership, and that they listen to each other in a way they would never listen to staff. He expects to be in prison for life, and considers it his life work to help rehabilitate other inmates so that once they are released they never come back.
The sewing area is colorful and hopping with activity. They produce quilts, upholstery, and teddy bears for non-profit auctions. They see their teddy bears as their ambassadors.
Nearly all the materials for the sewing area are donated–the only costs are the sewing needles and the teddy bear eyes, shown here.
Here is another view of the SPL sewing area. Some favorite pieces are displayed on the wall.
Gus started the teddy bear program. He said to me, “Never in my life—and I’m 60 years old—never in my life wanted to get up and go to work until I got this job.”
That seems to me the perfect last word on the Sustainable Practices Lab.
In late November, I had the pleasure of touring the Sustainable Practices Lab, or SPL, in Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The SPL started up only two years ago—a large empty space save for 15 sewing machines. Today it is a hive of activity and productivity. The lab houses numerous sustainability programs fixing and repurposing all kinds of donated and reclaimed materials. The SPL employs 139 inmates and has donated to more than 88 community organizations in the area. Astounding!
I will share a photo gallery of the first half of my tour in this blog, and the second half in a week or so; there is too much to cover in one posting.
The exterior of the Sustainable Practices Lab (SPL) provides little hint of the bustle and color it contains.
This is the SPL Learning Center. All the prison’s televisions are repaired here (saving about 12 TVs a month from the landfill), and the resident TV shows TED talks. Mr. Thang is the self-taught electronics technician; Rob Branscum, the corrections specialist who oversees the SPL, says Mr. Thang can fix anything!
An inmate started an aquaponics program in spring, 2014. Now they are in the “proof of concept” stage, aiming to raise 700 heads of romaine lettuce each week. Waste water from the fish tank filters through a bed of tomatoes and pumpkins where ammonia turns into usable nitrogen…
…then the nutrient rich solution passes through the roots of hundreds of lettuce plants. These romaine are only a few weeks old; by 6-8 weeks they will be ready for the prison kitchen.
This is the bike and furniture repair area of the SPL. Technicians repair and customize chairs for hundreds of corrections staff, saving thousands of tax payer dollars every year–technicians throughout the SPL told me with pride that they are motivated to save tax payers as much money as possible.
A collection of wheels will be put to use to refurbish reclaimed bicycles; once the bikes are fixed up they will go to children and adults in the outside community.
An inmate technician who goes by the name Turtle renovates signs for state agencies. He said, “We are much like this wood. We have our issues…the SPL is going to take the time to bring the good out, invest the time. Return us back to society in better shape than we came in.”
Another quote from Turtle: “The Sustainable Practices Lab is an avenue; it gives us the psychological tools to choose to do the positive.”
The SPL vermicomposting program hosts 9 million worms. They compost one-fifth of the prison’s food waste: 2,500 lbs every week is transformed from garbage to the highest quality soil amendment.
An inmate technician in the vermicomposting program hand sifts worm castings.
Thank you to Rob Branscum for starting the SPL, and for hosting the tour. I suspect that the lab’s success can be credited to Mr. Branscum’s belief in inmates’ abilities and creativity (and, of course, that he has the support of many others in WA corrections). Incarcerated men have been given a workplace in which they can thrive!
SPP’s Conservation Nursery continue to thrive at three facilities in Washington State: Stafford Creek Corrections Center, Washington Corrections Center for Women, and Shotwell’s Landing Nursery. Since 2010, we have delivered almost 1,000,000 plants for restoration and habitat enhancement projects on Puget lowland prairies— just 33,000 more plants and we’ll be there! In 2013 we provided 375,000 plugs for prairie projects (see the table below); this is a 14% increase over what we produced the year before. We achieved the increase by adding nursery capacity at Washington Corrections Center for Women, plus increased support from the dedicated prairie restoration crew from Cedar Creek Corrections Center.
This was the first season for nursery production at Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW). The crew of five inmate technicians carefully cultivated and shipped 80,000 native prairie plants. They were particularly success at growing blanket flower, Gaillardia aristata, a species that in past years showed low germination and growth rates. The warmer conditions in the propagation hoop houses at WCCW proved to be just the environment that allowed this species to thrive. The Conservation Nursery program benefits enormously from having a new site with an enthusiastic crew of technicians and staff.
WCCW Conservation Nursery Crew loading Gaillardia aristata to be delivered to Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Photo by Bri Morningred.
The delivery truck is almost full with 400 trays, a load of 39,000 plants. Photo by Bri Morningred
Though we came up just short of the magic number of 1,000,000 in the 2013, we feel confident that in 2014 we will blow right past that goal, and on to our next milestone!
Americorps volunteers planting out SPP-grown plugs on the prairie at Glacial Heritage Reserve. Photo by CNLM staff.
By Brittany Gallagher, Education & Evaluations Coordinator
In July, I had the honor of spending two weeks at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, for the UN’s annual Graduate Study Programme (GSP). I was excited to represent SPP and Evergreen in an international group of graduate students and to learn all I could about international civil service.
Brittany Gallagher, center, at the UN Graduate Study Programme.
This year’s GSP theme was “Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.” My classmates were students from every continent; representatives came from China, Rwanda, Germany, Mali, Morocco, Australia, Italy, Slovenia, France, Russia, Bolivia, Trinidad & Tobago, and the US, to name only a sample. Many were studying international relations, law, human rights, or similar topics. There were a few psychology and public health students, but I was one of only a few studying the environment. However, thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of Evergreen’s Graduate Program on the Environment and my background in international development, I didn’t feel out of place in education or experience.
We each introduced ourselves to the large group and described our work, studies, and interests. I was impressed by the level of engagement and the diversity of experience in the room. After my brief presentation, I entertained a slew of questions about SPP. These questions continued between classes at the UN office, over lunch, on the tram on the way home, and at the lake on the weekends. In addition to talking frog conservation with my peers, the speaker from the United Nations Environment Programme was especially interested in what SPP does! I was reminded of how innovative our project is – people were fascinated by the concept and the practice. After two years with SPP, I have become accustomed to our mission and daily activities, but I forget that many folks have never heard of conservation programs involving prison inmates.
Representatives from UN agencies visited to present their organizations’ work on gender equality. I went through two notebooks taking copious notes. UNOG photo.
During the two-week program, our class heard from representatives from a variety of UN agencies about their work on gender equality. We also split up into five working groups and tackled case studies related to the theme. Each working group was mentored by a UN staff member from the relevant agency; they advised our work and challenged us to create high-quality “work plans” addressing current real-world issues related to gender. I chose to work in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) group, and we were given the freedom to select a topic. We designed a country program for addressing sexual and gender-based violence in camps for internally displaced people in Haiti. Our report is nearly finished and will be presented to the ‘real’ UNFPA in September.
I am enormously grateful to SPP and Evergreen for supporting my attendance at the GSP, and to the UN for providing students like me with this extraordinary opportunity. Check out the links in this post and the UN-GSP Facebook page if you want to learn more about it!
As in Olympia, newcomers to Geneva complained about the weather (but, as in Olympia, the weather in July was gorgeous). They also have a Mountain that, like ours, hides on cloudy days. The view from the UN office is great even on an overcast day.
by Bri Morningred, SPP Graduate Research Assistant and SPP Coordinator for Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) conservation nursery
photos by Shauna Bittle
Heading out for a tour of SPP programs, passing the gorgeous gardens at WCCW
It was a beautiful day in Gig Harbor, WA, perfect for the celebration of the amazing sustainability programs at Washington Correction Center for Women (WCCW). We had prepared for the celebration for months, and it was gratifying to share with partners and the public the many contributions offenders have made to a sustainable prison community.
Restoration and Conservation Coordinator Carl Elliott describes the SPP conservation nursery program at WCCW
The tour began with introductions from the superintendent of WCCW, Jane Parnell, and from Carri LeRoy and Carl Elliott of SPP. The tour’s first stop was the Conservation Nursery hoop houses at the minimum security campus. Attendees had a chance to watch the conservation nursery crew at work, walk through the carpet of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja hispida) that was beautifully in bloom, and speak with the SPP staff and offender technicians about the conservation nursery program.
Outside and inside of one of the hoop houses in the conservation nursery
Scott Skaggs, Construction and Maintenance Project Supervisor and WCCW manager of the conservation nursery crew, demonstrates monitoring for insect damage on Indian paintbrush
SPP Graduate Research Assistant Bri Morningred enjoys a high five with an offender technician in the conservation nursery
Indian paintbrush thriving in the conservation nursery
Next up was the community gardens on the way to medium security campus. This leg of the tour was led by Ed Tharp, who runs the Horticulture Program at WCCW. These gardens are in the courtyard area of the minimum security campus and grow a variety of foods that are harvested for the prison’s kitchen.
Ed Tharp, Tacoma Community College, runs the horticultural program at WCCW
The final tour stop was in the concrete courtyard of the medium security campus. Located next to the education building—which houses the horticulture classroom, the floral program, and many other wonderful educational programs—there are various garden beds growing onions, garlic, and strawberries.
Enjoying the strawberry beds at WCCW
Assistant Superintendent for WCCW David Flynn, the champion of many SPP programs for the facility, talks to the group about recent activities
The tour visits gardens in the close custody area of WCCW; Audrey Lamb, Conservation Assistant at the Center for Natural Lands Management, in the foreground
We ended with a poster session and awards ceremony in the gymnasium. We ate prison-grown salad and strawberries and cupcakes decorated with prairie flowers. Attendees toured informational tables for many of the sustainable programs at WCCW, including the Prison Pet Partnership Program, Mother Earth Farms, the Horticulture Program, Food Services, the Recycling Program, Sustainability in Prisons Project, and Center for Natural Lands Management.
SPP’s Carl Elliott receives fresh garden salad at the poster session
Melissa Johnson, publicity and outreach for WCCW, admires the horticultural program display at the poster session
Best cupcakes ever! SPP’s Bri Morningred collaborated with a local bakery to produce native plant-decorated cupcakes for the celebration. They also tasted great!
Jane Parnell, Superintendent of WCCW, presents an offender technician with a certificate of appreciation at an awards ceremony
An offender technician on the conservation nursery crew shows a certificate of appreciation recognizing her dedication to the program
It was wonderful to get to recognize the amazing things happening at WCCW. The prisons community is taking great strides toward sustainable living and it is inspiring to work with them towards that goal.
