My Time Inside Prison
How I found humanity in an environment designed to extinguish it.
During my junior year, I took a senior seminar class with Professor Kathy Fox, Soc 262: Criminal Justice. Towards the end of the semester, after we had learned about the criminal justice system in the US, my class conducted focus groups inside of prisons in Vermont. The next year, Professor Fox asked me to be the TA for her Inside-Out Prison Project class - a class made up of "inside" and "outside" students, taught inside the Vermont Women's Prison. As the TA, I held weekly office hours inside and got to know each and every one of the inside students. One woman, whose name I will not share, was inside for the murder of a man and the attempted murder of his girlfriend. The woman was sentenced to a minimum of 26 years inside at some point during the semester, but she never showed any anger, only sadness. She was one of the smartest, kindest students we had in the class, and I truly mean that.
After Tom's accident, the inside students wrote me little messages inside a beautiful card.
Inside the card was a note written to me by the woman I mentioned earlier, the one convicted of murder and attempted murder. It read: “Dear Sarah, I am so sorry to hear about your brother. I am praying for him and your family every day. Thank you so much for everything this semester. You have been so kind and taught me so much. I am so grateful. Your brother and your family will be in my thoughts.”
LESSON 4: ALWAYS BE KIND, TO EVERYONE YOU MEET. PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS SURPRISE YOU AND, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, KINDNESS WILL BE RETURNED.