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The first and only wedding I ever attended was in prison, when an inmate I knew only in passing invited me to serve as his best man.

Why would this virtual stranger invite me into one of the most personal moments of his life? Instinctively, I knew that his asking me suggested more about the walls inmates set up around our private lives than it did about any personal relationship I had with him. The truth is, Dee (at the time I only knew his nickname), was looking for someone who wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his family. Someone who wouldn’t talk about prison stuff all day — like who is snitching, or who owes who, or how corrupt the system is.

In fact, here in prison, family is off-limits. Many incarcerated men, when they receive mail, immediately rip off the return address and flush it down the toilet. If you see someone on the phone, the unspoken rule is that you never approach them for any reason. If you see someone you know in the visiting room, you should wait for them to make eye contact with you to see if it’s acceptable for you to approach, because they are in the presence of their family. It doesn’t matter if this is a prisoner you’ve known for 20 years. Family is off-limits.

So prison becomes a strange blend of intimacy and emotional distance. When you share a four-by-eight cell with a person, you get to know him pretty well, but only in certain ways. My cellie likes to get up about 4:30 a.m. to read while the building is still quiet; he’s passionate about politics — our most heated argument came when I made a dismissive remark about Bernie Sanders. He loves grilled-cheese sandwiches with ice-cold milk.

What I can’t tell you is if he has kids. Or if his parents are still alive.

When I arrived at Dee’s wedding, I was immediately overwhelmed — the smell of cologne in the visiting room was overpowering. The hundreds of incarcerated men in the small space had clearly attempted to drown out the stale prison odor.

The visiting room itself was bracingly loud with the squeal of children, and the joyful, foreign sound of women’s laughter.

I carefully stepped to where Dee and his family were seated.

I’d seen Dee plenty of times in the yard, but we ran in different circles and had never really conversed. He was in his mid-20s but didn’t carry himself like a lot of the other youngsters. Perhaps it was his slender build, or his state-issued glasses with the black plastic frames, or the way he always seemed to be headed somewhere.

But at the wedding, within minutes, I was learning that Dee is actually Daniel. He has a little sister who will begin her first semester of college very soon. She’s interested in social activism. Her love for her brother was clearly capable of trumping her fear of being in a prison for the first time. She adoringly caressed his hair.

And Daniel: gone was the weary, wary look and the body language that is universal to the incarcerated male. In its place was an attentive, respectful demeanor that left no doubt his mom ran a tight ship. He was polite and humble, and his eyes shone a light that you never really see in prison.

Suddenly, I realized that around the visiting room, that same, rare light was everywhere: genuine smiles, open expressions, intimacy.

The wedding itself was brief. I expected a state bureaucrat with a certain grudging efficiency, the type who is impatient with anyone who doesn’t already know the routine, to lead the ceremony with one eye on the clock. Instead, a retired military chaplain came in and within moments said something that blew me away.

“I can tell that you two really love each other,” he said, with a kind smile.

Most state employees, or free people who come into prison, can’t see past our state-issued uniforms. They rarely look us in the eye, and usually don’t say anything to us at all.

But this chaplain hung out with us as we took pictures, ate microwaved buffalo wings from the vending machine, and laughed and joked as we did. And not once was there a disapproving glance at the bride-to-be for marrying an incarcerated man.

Occasionally, as the couple said their vows, one of the incarcerated men in the room would see me gazing his way, and immediately his walls would snap back into place.

What exactly are we so on guard against, I thought? Was it that soon enough someone would be sympathizing with you, and then demanding that you help them out with a few things, like commissary? By now, didn’t we know that each of us was basically alike, a person just trying to get through the day so that one day we can get home to our family?

But that final level of trust eludes us.

As Daniel and I re-entered the yard after his marriage, he lightly touched my arm to get my attention, then looked me straight in the eyes. “Thank you,” he said. I wanted to tell him that he had given me a far greater gift than I had given him. But as I searched for the words, I felt the prison environment washing back over me.

“It was nothing,” I replied.

One of my cousins told me he could not wait to come to prison. That statement caught me off-guard, and I asked him what he meant.

He told me his friends told him that only real men go to prison and survive, and one was not considered a man if he did not go to prison. I was shocked.

I have six immediate uncles, my mother’s brothers. Four of them I heard about only from stories because they were always in prison. I met my Uncle Rodney only once, and he told me that prison was not a good place to be. A few months later, he attempted a robbery and found himself back in prison. He died right here in San Quentin.

My uncles Larry and Michael are uncles I only met a few times, and they told me about how bad prison was, and how they did not want to see me go there. So how did prison get glamorized?

There are certain books and shows, styled “urban,” that make it seem like crime and prison are rites of passage, and that only “the real” go to prison, only to get out and make it big. While it is a world of hope that success can spring from being in prison, one does not have to go to prison to be successful. Does that make sense?

One can be successful without having to hit rock bottom. It is very easy to go to prison but very difficult to come out.

I have been incarcerated nearly 10 years, and I had the idea that my manhood would be tested thoroughly. The other side of that glamorous prison life is the idea that inmates are killing and raping each other. I have seen a bit of both, but it is not a frequent thing.

I was 27 when I fell this time, and I never believed that prison was the place to be. Ever. Do not misunderstand me: Without this time, I would have been killed in the street, either by a past or present victim, or by the police. That does not mean that I could not have changed my life without going to prison. I did not have to get locked up to learn to love myself, and neither does anyone else.

One of the biggest struggles in prison is dealing with modern-day slavery. We work for pennies on the dollar, most of us doing work some people believe is beneath them. Guards talk down to us, some of them anyway, and they seem to forget that one bad choice can land them behind these walls.

Some people point to Tupac for glamorizing the “thug life,” but songs where he rapped about killing or crime, at the end of the song he was either in jail or dead. Prison sucks. It is not at all like the movies or music. Imagine watching your children grow up through pictures instead of being there with them, or your siblings growing up without you.

I’ll say this: Coming to prison saved my life, though only because I was too stubborn to listen to my parents, my family, my friends or my own instincts. I can admit that freely, and I can admit that I had to come to prison to free myself from the chains of mental slavery and to see the face of oppression and racism in a clear and present sense.

I do not recommend tearing yourself away from your loved ones in order to get your life together. As long as one has family and friends, one can succeed. Communicate. Listen. Learn.

Attribution: This article originally appeared on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange on October 12, 2016.
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Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Prison University Project graduate and community mentor Sam Vaughn recounts how a program offering radical interventions of love and support to the most violent young men has dramatically reduced the homicide rate in one of the most dangerous US cities. Sam is a TEDMED 2015 speaker and Neighborhood Change Agent in the City of Richmond, California. 

A person can have a healthy heart and diseased lungs, or a healthy brain and kidney failure. Would you consider that person healthy? Society is quite similar. Until we create a culture of health that is inclusive of all citizens, we cannot consider ourselves a healthy society. Thus, we cannot create a healthy society until we deal with issues of personal security, like crime and gun violence.

As I mention in my TEDMED talk, at the Office of Neighborhood Safety, we identify individuals who are most likely to be perpetrators or victims of gun violence. We work with them through a program called the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, a seven-step process to help them become self- and socially-aware of their roles in society, and to affirm their God-given and Constitutional rights to happy, safe and successful lives. Perhaps most importantly, we meet and accept them where they are, with no judgement, and recognize the social, structural and strategic injustices that they have faced most of their lives. We challenge them to accept that, despite those injustices, they still have a responsibility to themselves, to their families, and to their communities to do better.

The first step of the Fellowship, and one that is vital to our success, is for us to build a relationship with these individuals. Most young people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. Once trust is established, we create a LifeMAP with them, helping them see that a different future is possible by showing the changes that others have made. We help them envision a future as bright and fulfilling as they can possibly imagine, and we connect them to resources and service providers that can help make that dream become a reality. We connect them to mentors and coaches, a group we call Elders, who are older successful men of color who have successfully made changes in their own lives, and are now reaching back to help others.

[pictured] Sam Vaughn, Devone Boggan, and Fellows on a retreat at the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun, Mexico City.

Additionally, in a step riddled with great risk but even greater reward, we take the Fellows on trips around the globe, to help them see how good life can possibly be and get them addicted to living. The catch to this amazing travel opportunity is that they must travel with someone from what would be considered a “rival community.” As they begin to see themselves, and the world they live in, in a different light, they start to see each other differently as well.
Because we believe hard work should be rewarded, we provide a stipend to our Fellows, a practice that is seen as controversial by some. Critics frequently disparage this, claiming that we are paying criminals not to commit crime. Let me counter that by saying that, when I was young, my parents would give me $5 for every “A” I got on my report card. Were they paying me to go to school? Absolutely not– they were rewarding me for working so hard. We aren’t paying these young men for what they aren’t doing. We are rewarding them for what they are doing.

Our final step is to introduce our Fellows to mainstream society and the workforce through subsidized employment. In this stage, they develop a strong work ethic, effective workplace communication and the skills of being a team player. Eventually, they become employable by their own means, without subsidy.

Frankly, our goal is to provide these individuals with what every young person in this country receives when they grow up in a healthy, nurturing community. We’ve been successful. Of those who have participated in our Fellowship, 94% are alive, 84% haven’t been injured by a firearm, and 79% have not been suspects in new firearm-related crimes. During the period of our interventions with these youth, the city of Richmond, California has experienced a 66% reduction in firearm assaults and a 55% reduction in firearm related homicides between 2007 and 2015. By attending to these young men who are and have been traditionally underserved and abandoned by the mainstream services platform, the City of Richmond is creating a culture of health in a once dangerous city that is today a much more desirable place to live, learn, work and play.

You can watch Sam’s TEDMED talk here.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

I believe image-conscious Apple Computer’s hastily retracted announcement on an outright ban forbidding workers with felony convictions from working on the construction of its massive new 2.8 million-square-foot Cupertino headquarters building does not go far enough.

As an inmate at San Quentin State Prison who will be paroling soon to rebuild my life, my question to Apple is: What do you suppose people with a felony conviction do to earn a living?

I will need the community to support me, not turn its back on me, as a formerly incarcerated citizen. While there is little hope I will be among the 15,000 employees who eventually will work for Apple at Campus 2, banishment from construction and service trades, which historically hire workers with criminal records, leaves me with not many alternatives for employment.

Apple’s flawed policy does two things: It disenfranchises a segment of society from earning an honest living; and, it will drive up crime rates by pushing people back into criminal behavior just to survive.

Apple’s dubious edict tells me that the company holds out no forgiveness for ex-offenders like me and ignores the facts of criminal rehabilitation.

For years, I, like many of the men here at San Quentin, have been preparing to re-enter society. I’ve earned a college degree, taken many offender rehabilitation programs, and will graduate this week from a first-of-its-kind program in computer coding skills. Yet, to Apple, none of this matters.

I am also part of an entrepreneur training program, The Last Mile, which has hosted dozens of entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley technology companies. When these business leaders come to speak to prisoners, almost every one of them has something in common: a previous failure and the tenacity to get back up and reinvent themselves. Steve Jobs (whose picture with the words “Think Different” is hanging in our prison classroom) was the embodiment of this philosophy. Apple needs to follow Jobs in thinking differently about the plight of ex-offenders.

Everyone deserves a second chance. And if Apple truly believes in “opportunity for everyone,” as Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock said in a statement, it would reconsider this policy, which is discriminatory on its face.

In 2011, 4.8 million Americans were on parole, probation or community supervision, according to a recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. If other American companies were to follow Apple’s lead, then what would be the fate of those individuals’ and my employment prospects?

There is a certain irony in a tech company — Apple in particular — not supporting those who have fallen down and managed to pick themselves up.

Everyone in the world knows the compelling story of a failed and virtually bankrupt Apple Computer rising from the brink of collapse. What if investors, banks and the community didn’t give the company a second chance? Would the company be the global giant it is today? Probably not.

When Apple was at its worst, it did get a second chance. Ex-offenders are only looking for the same treatment.

“Reviewing workers criminal history on a case by case basis …,” as Apple claims in its attempt to backtrack on a tragically flawed policy, is a start toward doing the right thing. But if Apple’s interest is to keep the community safe and prevent crime, it would not prevent people from earning an honest living.

Attribution: This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 17, 2015.
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Life as an inmate is a rough existence. For prisoners, being housed in a vastly negative environment, surrounded by the worst of the worst, going underfed, and being treated inhumanely becomes the norm. With all of the negative aspects associated with life as a prisoner, it sometimes makes rehabilitation a daunting task and a secondary concern to some inmates. However, mechanisms exist that make rehabilitation possible.

My first step to rehabilitation was the willingness to make necessary changes in my life. This step required outside help to facilitate a transition into true rehabilitation. Being in contact with supportive people eases the loneliness of incarceration. The highlight of my day comes when my wife tells me how proud she is that I am doing excellently in college. These experiences with supportive friends and family help drive my desire to succeed and push me to keep my nose

in my books and my behind out of trouble.

Having access to higher education has changed my life in many ways. I came to prison as a high school dropout, with limited opportunities to attain a well-paying job. However, after attending courses through the Prison University Project, a lot of doors have come open for me. The Prison University Project is a non-profit organization that offers college-preparatory and credit classes leading to an Associate’s degree at San Quentin State Prison. PUP faculty are volunteer instructors from universities in the Bay area.

PUP has enabled me to gain greater insight into the world that we live in and the thoughts and events that have shaped our society. My Ethics, Sociology, and American History courses have helped me to better understand history in context.

They have also exposed me to great thinkers such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Aristotle, and A. Phillip Randolph. Being exposed to these thoughts and theories helped reshape my own thinking. The requirement to write and apply various theories of ethics helps inmates place their moral compass in juxtaposition to others, providing deeper insight into the effect of their own choices.

I am halfway toward my goal of attaining an Associate of Arts degree; however, I have employable skills right now. By the time that I graduate from PUP, I will have received more quality skills that are applicable in today’s society.

PUP’s staff and volunteers have given me one of my greatest gifts while incarcerated: they have treated me with basic human dignity. The hardest part of doing a prison sentence is the constant inhumane treatment by staff. Arbitrary punishment is the norm in life as an inmate. An inmate may not reap benefits from their good behavior, but will be negatively impacted by another’s bad behavior.

On countless occasions, I have been strip-searched and made to get completely naked outside for all to see, because two inmates got into a fight on the opposite side of the yard. Strip searches are supposed to be utilized if staff has a reason to believe an inmate is hiding dangerous contraband on their person. However, staff routinely use strip searches as a form of humiliation or intimidation, stripping away not just an inmate’s clothes, but their dignity, as well. Furthermore, inmates are stripped of their personal identity and relegated to a number. While this tactic of assigning inmates numbers to make two or more inmates with the same name easier to identify is effective and logical, the result of an inmate’s loss of their name has psychological effects.

PUP’s volunteers treat inmates like regular humans and refer to us on a first-name basis, and we in turn refer to them as we would our peers. In the prisoner/staff member dynamic, that is almost unheard of. This restoration of basic human dignity has many positive effects on inmates.

I now prefer to spend my time in class or at Study Hall surrounded by the positive environment PUP provides, than to spend time on the yard surrounded by negativity and a misguided understanding of masculinity. All of my friends, either on the yard or in my outside support group, recognize the positive influence the college program has had in my life and commend me on my progress.

PUP is one of the few options that an inmate in California has available to earn a college degree. Moreover, PUP is the only college program that I am aware of that provides inmates lucky enough to participate in the program with in-class instruction; other programs rely on correspondence. These differences in structural operation are important because interacting with instructors allows for students to ask questions on challenging material and the positive feedback from college instructors gives inmates a boost of confidence. This enables students to get the most out of their educational experience, while also helping students achieve better success in the classroom, which directly translates into higher levels of self-confidence. Without a sufficient level of confidence upon release, inmates are susceptible (likely?) to stick to the rivers and lakes that they are used to, meaning they will revert back to criminal activities.

My experience at PUP has been invaluable because I have been provided the educational tools to enrich my life. If members of today’s society are truly interested in what type of educational programs are working to cure the problem of recidivism, the Prison University Project is a wonderful example. PUP not only provides inmates at San Quentin with a quality education, but treats the inmates like human beings, which is conducive to their rehabilitation. The quality of education, along with the formula with which the PUP program operates, should be duplicated in prisons nationwide.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.