you have to hear it if you want to
experience a reaching out work within
meeting that has the power to transform
lives reaching out from within is a
self-help program for incarcerated men
and women in every Kansas prison the men
and women who choose to participate meet
weekly and they will file into a bear
room with plastic chairs the women are
wearing long cotton pants and a t-shirt
with a number and the men wear blue
jeans and a blue shirt and they wear a
number and they all are carrying the
blue book ah dah the blue book was
created by a man who was serving a life
sentence and he wanted to understand the
roots of violence in his life so he
asked if I could find some people that
would come to the prison and talk about
child abuse spouse abuse sexual abuse
substance abuse addiction anger
management conflict resolution
communication skills a lot of other
topics and everybody that I invited went
to the prison and gave a workshop and
Greg remembered everything they said and
he started teaching of course the thing
is that he came up with is after every
paragraph that had some information on
these topics he would ask a question and
in the blue book there printed in
italics and every question in italics is
the kind of question that a psychiatrist
would ask but there is no therapist in
the room they only have each other to
heal themselves
each other so if you are not absolutely
determined to examine the core of your
being don’t come to one of these if you
are not willing to be brutally
vulnerable to share your deepest fears
and regrets don’t show up this program
is not for people who lack the courage
to an effective program in prison is
measured by recidivism recidivism is a
word that’s used to describe the process
of when somebody is released and then
they have to come back in the national
recidivism in this country is between
fifty and sixty seven percent between
fifty and sixty seven percent of all
people who enter the prison and are
released I’m back in again but reaching
out from within the people who attend
this program the recidivism data is
between eight and twenty two person
volunteers like myself who attend these
weekly meetings sit in silent awe of the
discussions that are so raw real and
relevant I’ll give you an example I was
at a meeting one evening and the word
atonement came up and someone said well
what what is how do you define at only
and somebody else said well we don’t get
to define it’s society does if you
commit a certain crime you will spend a
certain amount of time and then somebody
spoke up and said but we all know people
who serve their time and they never
atone for the
crime and then somebody else said and we
all know people who atoned a long time
ago and have never been released the
member of reaching out from within who
was facilitating this discussion noticed
that there was a man sitting in a chair
and he was in agony he was squirming he
he could tell that there was something
really going on so he walked over and he
said to Damien Damien what’s going on
with you
I can see that you’re you’re really
upset and Damien said I can never atone
when I was 18 I killed a man who was 18
and it doesn’t make any difference what
I do or how long I spend here I could
never bring him back to life and there
was silence in the room and CJ walked
over stood in front of Damien and said
Damien I destroyed two people’s lives I
killed a woman and I kept a
seven-year-old daughter from having a
mother he said for decades I wallowed in
my guilt and my shame I was just
consumed with what I had done
and one day I looked in the mirror and I
said I’m still here my life has been
spared what am I going to do to deserve
this life that I have he said I thought
to myself about all the people in this
prison who were in pain and I thought to
myself if I could just get out of myself
forgive myself and be available to other
people I could deserve this life he said
Damien if you decide that you want to
forgive yourself and become of service
to others you know where my bunk is come
on over I’ll be available to you 24/7
another story members of reaching out
from within who are in minimum security
at Lansing are given permission to leave
the prison and talk to juvenile
offenders in Olathe and the staff of the
juvenile offender facility says that
when the inmates come and interact with
those kids it is the most effective
thing that happens for those kids so
they are also allowed to go to high
schools and talk to students as long as
it’s in Kansas so three of our members
came to Shawnee Mission North and j-dub
got up and j-dub said well I mean tell
you how it was when I grew up my parents
both worked full time I was pretty much
on my own all the time one day I went to
my parents and I said could I have a
dollar for a dollar I could get a soda
pop a bag of chips and a candy bar that
sounded pretty good to me and my mother
and father said no you can’t
so I went out got locked in the front
yard and I looked up the street where I
always looked and I saw all those guys
with jewelry and fancy cars and
girlfriends and I thought that looks a
lot better to me
and where I am and so I went up and I
became part of that group and I started
selling drugs he said but I got caught
and they sent me to prison said I got
out but the only thing I knew how to do
to survive was to sell drugs so I got
caught I went back to prison again
that’s what got out third time when you
do it three times you’re in prison for
25 years said I’ve already served 20 and
I’ve got five more to go and a student
raised his hand and said j-dub don’t you
think that’s terribly unfair that you
have to spend 25 years in prison for a
victimless crime and j-dub went over to
him and he said my crime was not
victimless I sold drugs to people like
your parents those parents that I sold
drugs to spend all their money getting
high and paint me they were not
available to their children those
children are my vyd
one more story if you want to become a
member of reaching out from within
you usually recruited by somebody who’s
already a member and you can come to a
meeting and sit three times and never
say a word except at the beginning of
every meeting you have to join in the
beliefs and goals which says we are
committed to non-violence we will find
alternatives to solve problems without
using violence and then you give a
positive thought and then you can just
sit but if you want to at the fourth
meeting you have to give an icebreaker
so you have to stand up and you have to
tell something about your life something
about your family your history your
crime how long you’ve been in prison how
long you’re going to be in prison so
this young man I was he’s in his early
50s that’s pretty young to me because
I’m 85 so 50 looks very young to me so
he stood up there and he said when I was
8 years old my parents got a divorce now
my father was never around so that was
no big loss but my mother was an
alcoholic so Social Services put me in
foster care and in those days the
philosophy of foster care was you could
only stay with one foster family for
nine months because if you stayed much
longer the foster family might grow to
like you they might even love you they
might want to adopt you
and then that family wouldn’t be
available to take foster children so
every nine months James was sent to
another foster family and to another
school and no male figure in any of
those homes ever reached out to him
tried to make a connection I’m sure they
all felt well he’s gone pretty soon so
no sense in trying to bother this went
on year after year after year he was a
lonely isolated in the families that he
stayed with and in
school when he was 16 he got sent to
another foster family got sent to a new
school he walked in and a game came up
and invited him joy he was thrilled he
said I never had anybody invite me to
belong to anything I I couldn’t believe
it it was so wonderful he said what I
didn’t know was that there was going to
be an initiation right that I was going
to have to be involved in and there was
going to be a murder so I came into
prison when I was 16 and I’ve handled
prison the same way I handed on the
outside
I have no social skills I’ve been alone
all my life two years ago a 16 year old
boy came into prison and I looked at him
and I saw myself and he said whenever I
could I just went over to his bunk and
he would talk and I would just listen
and I listened and I listened and he
said two weeks ago he got released and
before he left he came over to where I
was and he took my hand and he said I
want to thank you for making a
difference in my life and James said I
have never made a difference in
anybody’s life never made a difference
in my own life but I have heard that in
this program reaching out from within
you make a difference in each other’s
lives
I want to have that feeling
I have been doing these weekly meetings
for 35 years and I have changed as
dramatically as all of those people in
reaching out and within I have learned
to be much less judgmental I never want
to know anyone’s crime I don’t want to
know something that might keep me from
loving them the way I do sometimes as
part of a meeting somebody will confess
to something that is very painful for me
to hear and they only do it because they
think it might be best for somebody and
that will they could learn something
from the confession but I think that
even if I did hear it at the very
beginning I might still be able to love
them because I’m in the presence of men
and women who want to become a value
they want to change so they can go back
to their families and they can be better
children they can be better parents they
can be more loving spouses they want to
be of value how can I not love people
who are making that journey so the
second thing I’ve learned is that I
believe that everybody is redeemable I
believe there is an angel and a beast in
each of us and I believe if we don’t
take the effort to face the demons out
of us we won’t be able to nurture that
angel I have learned about resilience
I have watched human being after human
being transcend becoming a number losing
their identity facing daily in Justices
and they still have hope for the future
they still believe they have something
given to this world
and when I go home in my car I ask
myself the questions that are in italic
two months ago I had an opportunity to
go to Germany and to go to a prison I
had seen a television program that
showed prisons in Germany that are so
humane it was unimaginable I decided I
had to see it I went the head of the
prison gave me his card
eriell Brimley it doesn’t say warden it
says social pedagogue a pedagogue is an
educator a teacher the German prison
system believes that the minute you
enter the prison their whole purpose is
to help you leave in a way that you can
be productive and come into society and
fit and become all that you ever needed
to be so you wear your own clothes you
have a little room that’s kind of like a
dorm room but you have a key to your own
room at the end of one hall there’s a
little mini kitchen because they want
you to learn how to cook so you’ll be
able to survive at the other end of the
hall there are social workers that are
there to help you deal with your issues
the guards who are not called guards
they’re called pedagogues have no guns
no billy clubs they carry no weapons and
the inmates don’t fear them they look up
to them because they’re trying to help
them become productive cessful it isn’t
can you imagine this kind of humane
system coming to this country can you
imagine that this country that is so
committed to punishing and dehumanizing
people who enter that it could ever
change and be that way it will never
happen in my lifetime but it could
happen in yours if some of you if all of
you in this audience would think about
using your life your energy having a
passion to make this world a safer place
the recidivism rate for murderers in
that prison is five its proves its
success we just need people who will
make policies like that that could be
you please do whatever you can to make
this world play thank you very good
[Applause]
experience a reaching out work within
meeting that has the power to transform
lives reaching out from within is a
self-help program for incarcerated men
and women in every Kansas prison the men
and women who choose to participate meet
weekly and they will file into a bear
room with plastic chairs the women are
wearing long cotton pants and a t-shirt
with a number and the men wear blue
jeans and a blue shirt and they wear a
number and they all are carrying the
blue book ah dah the blue book was
created by a man who was serving a life
sentence and he wanted to understand the
roots of violence in his life so he
asked if I could find some people that
would come to the prison and talk about
child abuse spouse abuse sexual abuse
substance abuse addiction anger
management conflict resolution
communication skills a lot of other
topics and everybody that I invited went
to the prison and gave a workshop and
Greg remembered everything they said and
he started teaching of course the thing
is that he came up with is after every
paragraph that had some information on
these topics he would ask a question and
in the blue book there printed in
italics and every question in italics is
the kind of question that a psychiatrist
would ask but there is no therapist in
the room they only have each other to
heal themselves
each other so if you are not absolutely
determined to examine the core of your
being don’t come to one of these if you
are not willing to be brutally
vulnerable to share your deepest fears
and regrets don’t show up this program
is not for people who lack the courage
to an effective program in prison is
measured by recidivism recidivism is a
word that’s used to describe the process
of when somebody is released and then
they have to come back in the national
recidivism in this country is between
fifty and sixty seven percent between
fifty and sixty seven percent of all
people who enter the prison and are
released I’m back in again but reaching
out from within the people who attend
this program the recidivism data is
between eight and twenty two person
volunteers like myself who attend these
weekly meetings sit in silent awe of the
discussions that are so raw real and
relevant I’ll give you an example I was
at a meeting one evening and the word
atonement came up and someone said well
what what is how do you define at only
and somebody else said well we don’t get
to define it’s society does if you
commit a certain crime you will spend a
certain amount of time and then somebody
spoke up and said but we all know people
who serve their time and they never
atone for the
crime and then somebody else said and we
all know people who atoned a long time
ago and have never been released the
member of reaching out from within who
was facilitating this discussion noticed
that there was a man sitting in a chair
and he was in agony he was squirming he
he could tell that there was something
really going on so he walked over and he
said to Damien Damien what’s going on
with you
I can see that you’re you’re really
upset and Damien said I can never atone
when I was 18 I killed a man who was 18
and it doesn’t make any difference what
I do or how long I spend here I could
never bring him back to life and there
was silence in the room and CJ walked
over stood in front of Damien and said
Damien I destroyed two people’s lives I
killed a woman and I kept a
seven-year-old daughter from having a
mother he said for decades I wallowed in
my guilt and my shame I was just
consumed with what I had done
and one day I looked in the mirror and I
said I’m still here my life has been
spared what am I going to do to deserve
this life that I have he said I thought
to myself about all the people in this
prison who were in pain and I thought to
myself if I could just get out of myself
forgive myself and be available to other
people I could deserve this life he said
Damien if you decide that you want to
forgive yourself and become of service
to others you know where my bunk is come
on over I’ll be available to you 24/7
another story members of reaching out
from within who are in minimum security
at Lansing are given permission to leave
the prison and talk to juvenile
offenders in Olathe and the staff of the
juvenile offender facility says that
when the inmates come and interact with
those kids it is the most effective
thing that happens for those kids so
they are also allowed to go to high
schools and talk to students as long as
it’s in Kansas so three of our members
came to Shawnee Mission North and j-dub
got up and j-dub said well I mean tell
you how it was when I grew up my parents
both worked full time I was pretty much
on my own all the time one day I went to
my parents and I said could I have a
dollar for a dollar I could get a soda
pop a bag of chips and a candy bar that
sounded pretty good to me and my mother
and father said no you can’t
so I went out got locked in the front
yard and I looked up the street where I
always looked and I saw all those guys
with jewelry and fancy cars and
girlfriends and I thought that looks a
lot better to me
and where I am and so I went up and I
became part of that group and I started
selling drugs he said but I got caught
and they sent me to prison said I got
out but the only thing I knew how to do
to survive was to sell drugs so I got
caught I went back to prison again
that’s what got out third time when you
do it three times you’re in prison for
25 years said I’ve already served 20 and
I’ve got five more to go and a student
raised his hand and said j-dub don’t you
think that’s terribly unfair that you
have to spend 25 years in prison for a
victimless crime and j-dub went over to
him and he said my crime was not
victimless I sold drugs to people like
your parents those parents that I sold
drugs to spend all their money getting
high and paint me they were not
available to their children those
children are my vyd
one more story if you want to become a
member of reaching out from within
you usually recruited by somebody who’s
already a member and you can come to a
meeting and sit three times and never
say a word except at the beginning of
every meeting you have to join in the
beliefs and goals which says we are
committed to non-violence we will find
alternatives to solve problems without
using violence and then you give a
positive thought and then you can just
sit but if you want to at the fourth
meeting you have to give an icebreaker
so you have to stand up and you have to
tell something about your life something
about your family your history your
crime how long you’ve been in prison how
long you’re going to be in prison so
this young man I was he’s in his early
50s that’s pretty young to me because
I’m 85 so 50 looks very young to me so
he stood up there and he said when I was
8 years old my parents got a divorce now
my father was never around so that was
no big loss but my mother was an
alcoholic so Social Services put me in
foster care and in those days the
philosophy of foster care was you could
only stay with one foster family for
nine months because if you stayed much
longer the foster family might grow to
like you they might even love you they
might want to adopt you
and then that family wouldn’t be
available to take foster children so
every nine months James was sent to
another foster family and to another
school and no male figure in any of
those homes ever reached out to him
tried to make a connection I’m sure they
all felt well he’s gone pretty soon so
no sense in trying to bother this went
on year after year after year he was a
lonely isolated in the families that he
stayed with and in
school when he was 16 he got sent to
another foster family got sent to a new
school he walked in and a game came up
and invited him joy he was thrilled he
said I never had anybody invite me to
belong to anything I I couldn’t believe
it it was so wonderful he said what I
didn’t know was that there was going to
be an initiation right that I was going
to have to be involved in and there was
going to be a murder so I came into
prison when I was 16 and I’ve handled
prison the same way I handed on the
outside
I have no social skills I’ve been alone
all my life two years ago a 16 year old
boy came into prison and I looked at him
and I saw myself and he said whenever I
could I just went over to his bunk and
he would talk and I would just listen
and I listened and I listened and he
said two weeks ago he got released and
before he left he came over to where I
was and he took my hand and he said I
want to thank you for making a
difference in my life and James said I
have never made a difference in
anybody’s life never made a difference
in my own life but I have heard that in
this program reaching out from within
you make a difference in each other’s
lives
I want to have that feeling
I have been doing these weekly meetings
for 35 years and I have changed as
dramatically as all of those people in
reaching out and within I have learned
to be much less judgmental I never want
to know anyone’s crime I don’t want to
know something that might keep me from
loving them the way I do sometimes as
part of a meeting somebody will confess
to something that is very painful for me
to hear and they only do it because they
think it might be best for somebody and
that will they could learn something
from the confession but I think that
even if I did hear it at the very
beginning I might still be able to love
them because I’m in the presence of men
and women who want to become a value
they want to change so they can go back
to their families and they can be better
children they can be better parents they
can be more loving spouses they want to
be of value how can I not love people
who are making that journey so the
second thing I’ve learned is that I
believe that everybody is redeemable I
believe there is an angel and a beast in
each of us and I believe if we don’t
take the effort to face the demons out
of us we won’t be able to nurture that
angel I have learned about resilience
I have watched human being after human
being transcend becoming a number losing
their identity facing daily in Justices
and they still have hope for the future
they still believe they have something
given to this world
and when I go home in my car I ask
myself the questions that are in italic
two months ago I had an opportunity to
go to Germany and to go to a prison I
had seen a television program that
showed prisons in Germany that are so
humane it was unimaginable I decided I
had to see it I went the head of the
prison gave me his card
eriell Brimley it doesn’t say warden it
says social pedagogue a pedagogue is an
educator a teacher the German prison
system believes that the minute you
enter the prison their whole purpose is
to help you leave in a way that you can
be productive and come into society and
fit and become all that you ever needed
to be so you wear your own clothes you
have a little room that’s kind of like a
dorm room but you have a key to your own
room at the end of one hall there’s a
little mini kitchen because they want
you to learn how to cook so you’ll be
able to survive at the other end of the
hall there are social workers that are
there to help you deal with your issues
the guards who are not called guards
they’re called pedagogues have no guns
no billy clubs they carry no weapons and
the inmates don’t fear them they look up
to them because they’re trying to help
them become productive cessful it isn’t
can you imagine this kind of humane
system coming to this country can you
imagine that this country that is so
committed to punishing and dehumanizing
people who enter that it could ever
change and be that way it will never
happen in my lifetime but it could
happen in yours if some of you if all of
you in this audience would think about
using your life your energy having a
passion to make this world a safer place
the recidivism rate for murderers in
that prison is five its proves its
success we just need people who will
make policies like that that could be
you please do whatever you can to make
this world play thank you very good
[Applause]
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