TM In Prison

 An 8 year old child saw her father murder her mother at the kitchen table.   Another girl was abandoned at the age of 2 and raised by grandparents.  She never met her mother until coming to prison.  Her mother is on death row.  Mother and daughter shout across the chain link barriers to bond with each other.

Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, guests. I’ve been a volunteer in prisons for 2 years.  I do 5 prison visits per week, mostly for gavel clubs.  In case you don’t know, a gavel club is just like a TM club except the members don’t pay dues.  I’ve come to know and like my gavel club members as much as I know and like my fellow toastmasters.   To me, both groups are like an extended family.

I used to be like everyone else.   I had a mental image of felons based on mug shots and reports of heinous  crimes, plus countless Hollywood crime and prison movies.  But now I learned that they are just people like you and me.  Within the confines of a gavel club meeting, and I want to stress that caveat, they look and act like any of us here today.

But I never ask about their crimes, and none of them have yet volunteered information about their crimes.  That’s as it should be.   They have family to love them, and  plenty of other people to judge them, to guard them, discipline them.  That is not my job.  My job is to sponsor and monitor gavel clubs.

A gavel club sponsor in prison doesn’t have to do much.  Mostly, I sit and listen.   When you listen carefully, you learn. I would like to share some things I have learned. 

• It’s certainly true that some inmates are mentally ill and extremely dangerous.  I’ll never meet them.  First, the states segregate the worst prisoners into separate prisons, partly to isolate them from non-violent prisoners.  Second, evil violent people are not attracted to join gavel clubs, nor are they likely to get permission to join gavel clubs from prison authorities.

• Many of these inmates went to prison as teen agers.  20-30 years later, they matured and are adults.  They, like most of us, are different people now than when they were children.

• Before joining gavel club many members figured out on their own that violence and evil are not the way to live your life.   Counselors and religious people probably helped them to make that choice .  I meet them in gavel club years after that change.  

• Therefore the purpose of gavel clubs is not to convince members to turn their lives around, but rather to provide them with useful skills to implement the resolve to be good 

• When I first started in prisons, I said that speaking and listening skills are critical to getting a job and keeping a job after release.  I was corrected by a man serving life with no parole.  He reminded me that the same skills benefit life inside the gates, so eventual release is not necessarily the motive to be good.   Many gavel club members become mentors and teachers for younger people still struggling.   Helping other people make life better is as rewarding to them, as it is to me.

• Incarceration is sometimes a rescue.  That was a jarring surprise when I first heard it.  I had always thought of incarceration as punishment and as a way to isolate dangerous people from society.   But then I heard an inmate say “All my friends that I hung out with are dead.  If I had not been arrested, I would be dead.”  I also heard the story of a prostitute who was beaten every day by her pimp and forced to take crack cocaine.  She said, “I would have been dead within months if I hadn’t been arrested and sent to prison.”

You’ve all heard of thankless jobs.  Well, as a gavel club sponsor, I have never been thanked more often and effusively.   I have also been told that gavel club reduces recidivism.   That makes me feel good, and makes me feel that I am aiding society by helping to prevent future crimes.

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