LETTER
TO A PRISONER
Hal
Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
June
18, 2012
I just returned from the 14 International Conference
on Penal Abolition, June 12-15, at the University of the West Indies, St.
Augustine, Trinidad. The lead organizer,
Catherine Ali, was founding director of the national mediation service. She invited me to design and lead a workshop
on mediation for three hours the first afternoon of the conference at the
prison in Santa Rosa. The last day of
the conference, we met at the national prison officer training academy.
The following
is an excerpt from a letter to a friend who is in the “security housing unit”
of the Indiana prison system. We have
corresponded for around a quarter century.
I wrote him about the upcoming workshop, including a copy of the story
of prisoner/guard conflict that prison officers had made up. It was important to me that the role play of
the beginning of a mediation be grounded in the role players’ reality. It turned out that the story itself became
irrelevant after prisoners and staff all got into the act of asking each other
questions and responding. Here is the
end of the letter I wrote to my Indiana friend Billy today:
….The mediation workshop and follow-up session went
great. In a room at the prison for the
workshop, 25 prisoners, about 15 staff, the warden, 2 local mediators and I did
the role play. Once those playing guard
and prisoner (chosen by their peers—a real prisoner facing a real guard. After they had both started looking at each
other in the eye, I went back and forth from the prisoners (sitting on one side
across the aisle from staff) to raise hands and volunteer to ask those on the
other side any questions they had, and respond to what someone on the other
side had just said. They quickly got to
the here and now about issues they had with each other. I was like “wow!” One of the mediators told
me that everyone in the room including the warden spoke except one guard by the
time our time ran out. We had
refreshments and I asked prisoners first and then staff how they liked the
mediation idea. Most of the guards and
all the prisoners were enthusiastic, as was the warden. Folks on both sides said this was the first
time they had been able to raise real issues face to face with anyone on the
other side.
On Friday at
the training academy for guards, the mediators who had been at the mediation
and I talked about the possibilities for mediation. One of the mediators, a woman known for doing
more state-sponsored mediation than anyone else on the island, came back at the
judge lined up to introduce us, with a detailed list of guarantees that would
need to be built into the national mediation act. The conference organizer had invited the
judge who is in charge of court ordered mediation services. He led by delivering a short clear and cogent
paper he had written promoting expansion of mediation, and when we were done,
he gave me his private email, was about to read my book, and said I might be
invited to do more mediation instruction, online or perhaps by returning to Trinidad. (Yes, I do have enough ego to feel very
flattered.) The prison was a new one
just set up in a warehouse for guys about to be released only (which happened
to be across the highway from the veteran member’s neighborhood, on whose
association board she sat), but as the judge put it in his introduction, it is
better to start with the easy cases (or settings) than not to start at all.
I never
thought I’d see the day when guards, their superiors, community activists, with
judicial blessing, all were enthused by the idea of creating mediation in their
own ways as diverse as victim-prisoner, prisoner-prisoner, staff among
themselves, prisoner-staff singly or collectively…I don’t take for granted all
the coincidences that made this moment so magical. With a little further good fortune, the
energy that built in and around the workshop will indeed let prison-centered
mediation soon become practice, perhaps in ways unprecedented in prisons
worldwide, and I am oh so thankful to the warm, welcoming and creative
Trinidadians who made this experience so memorable for me.
What are you
up to these days? Let me know if you’d
like more books.
Love
and peace,
Hal
Pepinsky
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