It’s about seeing them as a whole person, not just their biggest mistake
This year, Red Press will celebrate American Black History Month with the publication of Breaking Out in Prison by Babita Patel. Breaking Out in Prison introduces you to 15 men who were locked out of society long before they were locked up. Men who got an education inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and used it to break out of the cradle-to-prison pipeline. Today, they are role models for young men in their communities. We sat down with Babita to talk about the need to put a human face on effective solutions to ending the epidemic of mass incarceration in America today.
How did you become interested in what’s often called the “cradle-to-prison pipeline” and the criminal justice system in general?
Years ago, Hudson Link, a nonprofit that brings college degree programs inside prisons in New York State, needed a photographer for a new annual report they were putting together. When I opened the email describing the assignment and time commitment, I was going to turn it down because I was frankly just too busy. But I haphazardly clicked on their website before sending the rejection email.
That’s where I learned that while the national recidivism rate is above 60% and NYS’s recidivism rate is above 40%, Hudson Link’s recidivism rate was only 1% at the time. With success rates like that, I knew their program was a game-changer and I had to take the assignment.
Why are you writing this book? How did you find your subjects?
A few years ago, I was driving around upstate New York on the way to photograph inside a prison with Hudson Link’s Executive Director, Sean Pica. We started talking about the arc of his life. Despite being a female, minority, New York City liberal with no personal interaction with the criminal justice system, up to that moment I believed in capital punishment.
On that drive, Sean told me if New York State still had the death penalty at the time of his crime, he would have been eligible for it. Everything stopped for me. I realized if Sean had gotten the death penalty, he never would have gone to school while serving his sentence, changed his values, come home, met his wife and have the family he has with her. Nor would he be running an organization that has already changed the lives of hundreds of incarcerated people in New York, thousands of their family members, and hundreds of thousands of citizens in the communities they come from, all while saving millions of taxpayer dollars.
My views on capital punishment flipped simply because I met someone and heard his story. I realized I was not the only American who could benefit from such an experience — challenging preconceived notions about someone by looking him in the eye and hearing his story.
Through my work with Hudson Link, I met a lot of currently and formerly incarcerated people. Some have developed into meaningful friendships.
When I began forming the story arc of the book, I knew a few of the men I wanted to talk to simply because I knew a little bit about their stories already. The Alumni Coordinator for Hudson Link at the time helped me create a list of men who had interesting stories who I did not know. HL put me in touch with them and helped frame the reason why I wanted to talk to them. From the men I did not know personally, the response was always “Anything for Hudson Link because Hudson Link changed my life.”
In the conclusion of the book, you write “After spending many hours together talking, one of the men commented that I probably knew more about him than even his wife.” What was it like gaining the trust of these men?
I started each conversation with either “Who was your hero growing up?” or “Who was your best friend growing up?” Because I was genuinely interested in their formative years. Rahson had laughed at my first question, saying that’s not what he expected me to ask. When I asked what he was expecting, he said “Something about my crime.”
Rahson had laughed at my first question. When I asked what he was expecting, he said “Something about my crime.”
I think that while other people are interested in “What did you do to land in prison?” and “What is prison really like?”, I wanted to understand their full story — growing up, inside prison and now that they are home. Despite the trajectory of these men’s lives, I felt that others would have empathy if they understood and related to their motivations.
From the onset, the men knew I was interested in them as a whole person, rather than their biggest mistake. Ironically, my focus on their thoughts and experiences made them trust me with the parts I was not focusing on — their darkest moments.
As a humanitarian photographer, you probably have a lot of exposure to how different interest groups and political players speak about the issue of incarceration. Why is it important to you that we hear directly from formerly incarcerated people?
“Ex-con. Felon. Inmate.” These words and others are used by people who have not been incarcerated to talk about the incarcerated. They are reductive, inhumane labels that stick because of their connotations. And these labels last a lifetime.
I learned this from people who have spent time inside. They prefer to use the terms “incarcerated” or “formerly incarcerated” because they are adjectives that describe a person’s circumstances — it removes some of the implicit blame and sense of permanence a term like “ex-con” assigns.
The most informed voice to speak about a community is the community members themselves. These are not my stories. They are their stories. No one else could tell their stories for them. For this reason, I very intentionally made sure the stories were told in their voice, including their diction, their slang, their grammar.
What stood out to you about the way the men talked about receiving higher education in prison?
For the majority of the men, not all, this was the first time they paid attention in school. Growing up, school was not a stepping stone towards the future. Most did not see college or a job as a next step. When I asked Markey what influence his guidance counsellor had on him, he asked: “What’s a guidance counsellor?”
My family are immigrants and while my parents were educated in their home countries, their experiences did not prepare them to navigate the college admissions process in America. My sister and I were fortunate to have a high school guidance counsellor who worked with us from freshman year on with picking our classes, SAT prep and college applications. Without Mrs Susan Curry, it’s hard to imagine how our family would have navigated building a future for my sister or me. When I explained my experience to Markey, he quietly commented, “Yeah, we did not have anything like that.” I was shocked that his school did not have an advocate for him. For what can be expected of a student without proper resources?
Something I found fascinating and inspiring about education in this context is that the students are not competing against each other. Like every other school, there is peer pressure. But in the context of the prison classroom, it’s inverted. When a guy gets a B, the other guys get on him, asking him why he did not get an A. They rally around him, helping him study and improve to earn the A. Instead of just wanting to be the best in the class, they see themselves as a team. If one succeeds, they all succeed.
Schools educate towards the middle of the spectrum, forgetting how different kids are motivated differently. Or simply not having the manpower or the resources to make sure kids don’t slip through the cracks. Hearing about what worked for these men as motivations to learn really underscored that reality for me. As Danny put it, “when you have a criminal mindset, you think differently.” You figure out the scam, the angle. For everything. Jerome turned his education inside into a game for himself. After getting two A’s the first semester, he set out to out-perform himself to see how many A’s he could earn the next semester. And the next. And the next.
One recurring theme you notice in these stories is the idea of young people who emulate what they see around them not because it’s a path they really want for themselves, but because it’s what they know; or, as Chris puts it in the book, “you don’t do what a person says, you do what they do.” Can you talk about that?
My Indian, immigrant, suburban community had certain expectations of their American-raised daughter. But those I spent my days with influenced my desires in ways the adults in my life never could. The classmates I admired were in student government, they joined the yearbook staff and cared about school spirit. Extracurricular activities that were foreign concepts to my parents. But that did not matter to me. I ran for class treasurer, became editor of the yearbook and a cheerleader.
It’s easy to see why I did the things I did based on what I saw around me.
The same is true for these men. They were surrounded by people relying on violence as a form of communication, selling drugs, not planning for a hopeful future. They emulated that which they saw. Same as me. Same as many other young people across the country.
Another theme is the experience of reentry. What stood out to you about their experiences trying to assimilate back into society and find work?
Because of my work in this field for the past decade, I was not surprised to hear the difficulties the men faced with assimilating — whether it was finding a place to live or obtaining a state-issued ID or even the first time Lawrence saw the internet. Each man had completed his punishment as dictated by the state when he walked out of prison. But I know society continues to dole out punishments by not providing tools or opportunities for the formerly incarcerated to create a new path.
Maintaining bonds with those on the outside is also a challenge, which of course affects their lives when they are released as well. Tayari Jones perfectly captures the difficulties in staying connected with loved ones on the outside in her book, An American Marriage. The system treats visiting family members terribly by making them wait for long periods of time outside the visitor’s hall, turned away for no reason, making assumptions or comments about the kind of women who are married to incarcerated men, and sometimes living hours and hours away from the facility where a loved one lives. All of these microaggressions test the faith of a loved one in staying connected and present in the lives of the incarcerated family members.
Did listening to these men’s stories make you feel more hopeful or more despairing about our progress as a nation on issues around mass incarceration?
I am more hopeful than what is portrayed in the press. As a humanitarian photographer, I am a solutions-based person. While I see the scale of the issue, I also see the work being done to change the trajection. Most of these men now work as social workers in prison reform, re-entry work or with at-risk youth.
After talking with a class of students at an NYC public school about making smarter choices, Sean was approached by a young man. The boy shared he was getting bullied and he brought a knife to school that day to exact revenge. He asked Sean to take the knife from him because he did not want to make a mistake. Sean’s presence in the classroom that day saved two lives: the kid who would have been attacked and the kid who brought the weapon to school.
I have to believe that these powerful stories are loud and strong enough to create change.
What steps need to be taken to create change?
80% of incarcerated men and women in New York State come from just 7 communities: the 5 boroughs of New York City, Buffalo and Syracuse. It shows how deep the issue runs in concentrated areas. And changing the prospects in these few communities would greatly alter the state’s prison system. 80% of the men in the book come from these 7 communities and even more returned to them as assets or credible messengers to put a stopgap in the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
The biggest policy idea that could affect system-wide change is bringing back Pell grants for higher education inside prison. Pell funding was taken away by President Clinton in the 1990s as part of the political stance of being “tough on crime”. Education inside prison dried up around the country, eliminating the possibility of gainful employment upon release. Without the hope of financially supporting themselves, the recently released are at higher risk of re-offending and thus back in the system, perpetuating the cycle of incarceration.
