I recently received an interesting proposal from Charles Zellers, Sr., a friend at the Buckingham Correctional Center near Dillwyn. I submitted it to the Daily News-Record earlier this week as a part of an op ed piece.
Charles gave his permission to include his name and this photo. Zellers is the second from the left, and the person behind him in the middle of the picture, Edward Stewart, is the one who recently died of an apparent heart attack (see 2/28/14 blog).
From Criminal Thinking To Technology Thinking
A friend at
the Buckingham Correctional Center recently sent me a thoughtful
proposal that would allow inmates to have personal laptops in
prison for educational purposes (without access to Wi-Fi and the
internet).
For some background, this person has been in prison for 21 years since entering an Alford
Plea in a case in which he was charged when he was in his
mid-twenties. He had been assured by his court appointed attorney that
if he would agree to a plea and serve some time as a model
prisoner, that he would earn parole within a few years.
But while this individual has consistently stayed out of trouble in
prison, and has been involved in all the classes and
programs that were supposed to help him earn parole, he is still
confined after over two decades, partly due to the Virginia Parole Board
having one of the lowest parole grant rates in the US. As the following
shows, he continues to envision a productive life outside of prison.
Here is a slightly condensed version of his proposal:
1. Permission to purchase laptop computers to be kept in the possession of the inmate as personal property (same as television).
2. Permission to purchase and install Microsoft Office Suite
software, a self contained teaching program that does not require WiFi
or use of the Internet. This would allow offenders to learn Word (a word
processing program), Excel (a spreadsheet/accounting program), Access
(a database program), PowerPoint (a presentation program), and Desktop
Publisher ( to create flyers, pamphlets, business cards, etc.).
Microsoft Office Suite software is utilized in businesses throughout the
world, and offenders could learn these complex skills at their leisure
in their assigned cells or dorms.
3. The Virginia Department of Corrections has contracted with JPay
to install kiosks in all offender living units. Once this has been
connected statewide, the VDOC could authorize JPay to offer free
programs for offenders to download on their laptops, such as Productive
Citizenship, Anger Management, PREPS, and GED preparation. Also, VDOC
could offer for sale approved vocational and educational programs that
could assist offenders when they are released from prisons and jails,
such as background training for Computer Assisted Drafting, Masonry,
Welding, Plumbing, Small Engines, etc. These are all tools offenders
could use to develop technical thinking instead of criminal thinking.
4. Require Virginia prisons to offer a basic computer class to all prisoners capable of gaining computer skills.
5.
Require all Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE) to have at least
one computer with Microsoft Office Suite installed in each department of
every shop as a part of the training process.
If correction is to be the primary goal of VDOC, as spelled out in
its mission statement, it’s hard to see any downside to this kind of
program. And not only should costs to taxpayers be minimal, but this could result in huge savings as more people are
released with skills to help them function as
productive members of society.
Presently prisoners who have spent years behind bars find themselves experiencing a Rip Van Winkle-like lack of
preparation for living in a world so different from the one they knew upon entering prison.
Programs designed to educate and rehabilitate our fellow
citizens should not divide us into liberal or conservative camps.
Regardless of our political leanings, we can no longer afford to waste
millions in simply confining people in iron cages where they spend far
too much time in mind numbing boredom and in learning ever more criminal
behavior from their peers.
At the end of a recent letter, my friend lamented, “I do not
understand why churches and other interested persons are not trying to
help us. Many of us are praying that we can be released on parole while
we are still able to get a job and take care of ourselves, while
Virginia is just waiting for us to die.”
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1 comment:
This comment is from Bill Winkler, a great student I had in an honors course at Eastern Mennonite High School years ago, and which I post with his permission:
As a senior HR professional and someone who has also worked for the local judiciary at the Circuit Court level for the pasts 15 years, and who served as the former Juvenile Crime Prevention Program Coordinator for a number of years, from my perspective Mr. Zeller's proposal has real merit. It is well known that those programs offered by VDOC for incarcerated citizens, including but not limited to training and education are wholly inadequate to rehabilitate, educate, equip and enable these individuals who paid their debt to society to return to mainstream employment.
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