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Absent reentry programs imbuing values and life-skills, released offenders too often crash and burn.
‘Straight-A-Guide’covers all the bases
As regular readers know, Paco is a severe critic of CDCR’s nearly non-existent re-entry programs–Inmates who enter the system devoid of basic life and social skills invariably leave in the same condition.
The infamously impotent “Parolee Handbook” is DAPO’s offering to the socially deficient hordes released to supervision each year. The 30 page pamphlet is lacking in useful information and what little direction it does offer is laughable. For example, here’s the sum total of DAPO’s wisdom on obtaining a place to live, followed by the agency’s advice on improving literacy
FINDING A PLACE TO LIVE, FOOD, AND OTHER SERVICES IN YOUR AREA
1. Many areas have missions that have meals during the day and shelter at night.
2. The Department of Social Services may have emergency housing. Get a hold of the closest office to be seen.
GETTING BETTER AT READING
If you want to get better at reading, you can get help at the library. Many people have become better at their reading with the help of local schools and libraries. Some offices also have Literacy Labs. Ask your parole agent about these things.
So it is, after years in prison, people who were lacking in the personal, social and ethical realms emerge no better prepared to function in society than the day they arrived at R&R. What a shame the State missed the opportunity to impart the basics on a once captive audience. Enter the “Straight-A-Guide” developed by federal prisoner Michael G. Santos.
Under the auspices of the Micheal G. Santos Foundation (MGSF) the Straight-A-Guide program is made available to BOP inmates on a strictly voluntary basis. The curriculum is outlined and linked below. I encourage you to click the links, then click through to read the answers of the various participants. In so doing, ponder why CDCR doesn’t offer offenders training clearly designed to instill personal accountability, self-improvement and life management skills…
Straight-A Guide Curriculum
Accountability
Communication Skills
Financial Literacy
Goals
Leadership
Life Management Skills
Relationships
Self-Improvement
Support Networks
Values
The Executive Director of MGSF is Justin Paperny, himself a former guest of the BOP who served 18 months for securities violations. Mr. Paperny makes a living these days promoting ethics in business through his firm Etika, LLC. Here, then, is another former offender who not only turned his life around but gives back by facilitating the Straight-A-Guide and promoting ethical behavior to his former peers in the financial world.
Following is an article by Mr. Paperny, published with his kind permission, wherein he offers advice to an offender preparing to perform a gate turn-in. READ IT:
Prison Consulting 101: Focusing on the end game
July 12, 2012
This morning I spoke with an older gentleman who is in a spot that I once knew. Byron is going to surrender to a prison camp in the next few weeks. His sentence will keep him confined for 5 years, after good time and the drug program. Naturally, he is anxious and worried about what the future holds. Like I once was, he is worried about things that in the end will not matter much. I will explain.
Before I surrendered to Taft Federal Prison Camp to begin serving an 18-month sentence for violating securities laws, I was a total basket case. Like Byron, I was overeating before my surrender, thinking the food in prison would be awful. It was not. I feared my job would be brutally hard and unbearable. It was not. Working in the dishroom for 6 months in prison reaffirmed how hard millions of people in our country work all day, every day. Even though I waited tables in college, I had forgotten “how hard” hard work could really be. In time, I liked the position, staying on 2 months longer than required. I assumed I would lose contact with my family, and that I would be forgotten. I was wrong. I wrote letters daily, called when I could, and visited frequently. I could go on and on.
A good bunk or job assignment helps ease an adjustment, but in the end it doesn’t matter much. The food in the chow hall is more than decent, and the items in the commissary would please even the pickiest eater. The only thing that really matters, I told Byron, is how he chooses to adjust on the inside. Rather than obsessing over the food, his job or bunk, I encouraged him to focus on the steps he could take to prepare for his life after his release. What time do you plan to wake, I asked him? What are you health and fitness goals? How do you plan to earn a living, now that you have lost your licenses? How do you plan to nurture your relationship with your wife and children? Do you think it fair that you are complaining about 5 years for a multi million dollar fraud when many of the good men who will be around you in prison are serving 20 years for non-violent drug crimes? How do you think that argument will go over in the chow hall?
Byron did not know the answer to these questions. Instead, he was focused on how many apples he could purchase per week, or how he could finagle his way into the best job or bunk or dorm or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is answering the questions I posed above. I was glad to receive Byron’s call. I look forward to working with him as he prepares for his surrender. With my tutelage I am convinced he will be in a better position to make the most use of his time away from his wife and children.
Justin Paperny
Pictured: Michael G. Santos, Justin Paperny and Rick Jaramillo
Now that’s sound, common sense advice–The kind of advice offenders tend to ignore when it comes from practitioners of our profession. Yet, it resonates when a reformed offender is the source.
The approach MGSF and Mr. Paperny take, in my estimation, parallels that of my friend and former offender Rick Jaramillo who operates RE-ENTRY Inc., a full spectrum treatment program designed to instill values in tandem with sobriety.
As Rick puts it, rehabilitation fails because, by definition, it seeks “to restore to a former capacity” — Offender/addicts are where they are for lack of the capacities in question. Thus, Jaramillo, Santos and Paperny seek to habilitate rather than rehabilitate–Habilitate: to make fit or capable.
Of course, the key to success in all programs is desire. As noted, Straight-A-Guide students volunteer for the program AND there is no good-time carrot or other incentive other than changing one’s life for the better, becoming a productive member of society and NEVER going back to prison.
Which is to say, Paco has no illusions any program is a panacea for the ill of criminality. Yet, the results speak for themselves. But if that doesn’t convince you, Santos, Paperny, Jaramillo and many other reformed individuals are speaking not only for themselves but others who need just a nudge and a valid course of study to begin their habilitation.
Until such time as CDCR focuses on promoting the skills and values reflected in the Straight-A-Guide’s curriculum, the revolving door will continue to spin unchecked. -