Category: Uncategorized

  • The 2016 Election at JCI by Roger Caplan

    Teaching a class, “The 2016 Presidential Election: The Fight to Vote in American History,” in the JCI Scholars Program presented me with a unique opportunity to view the recent election through the eyes of a forgotten voting block – the incarcerated. The experience was a rich and rewarding one. Students were well prepared for class and demonstrated a deep understanding of the candidates and issues. They had strong opinions and did not hesitate to voice them, all the while adhering to the agreed upon guidelines that discussions be conducted respectfully and supported with facts.

    To put the 2016 election into perspective, we read Whistlestop, in which author John Dickerson writes about some of the more colorful presidential campaigns of the past. In discussing the book, the class concluded the Clinton-Trump contest we witnessed this year was without precedent. Like most of us, the students did not anticipate a Trump victory, however they were able to identify some of the key reasons for his victory.

    The class expressed particular interest in the purpose of the Electoral College. They had a spirited discussion on the pros and cons of deciding the presidency based on the vote of the Electoral College versus the popular vote.

    What impressed me most was the students’ willingness to ask questions. They were not hesitant to ask for clarification or confirm the accuracy of information when they were confused about an issue or something the candidates said. I feel confident they have the interest and the skills to be well-informed voters upon their release.

  • We are a Second Chance Pell Recipient!

    We are a Second Chance Pell Recipient!

    The Department of Education has selected us to participate in the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program!

    I wrote about this a bit before last year here and here. There will be much more news in the days and weeks ahead. We have heard that our partnership with the University of Baltimore is one of four such programs in the state of Maryland, but we don’t even know the names of the other schools!

    Thanks to Secretary Moyer and Warden Webb for their support!

    Thanks to our own Andrea Cantora who led the effort and will be shepherding the credit-bearing courses into being. Dr. Cantora came to us with plenty of experience working in prisons, but in her criminal justice courses she saw students who are deeply curious and hard-working taking classes without credit or recognition, and so she’s put an immense amount of time and effort into giving them what they deserve!

    Thanks to all out faculty and outside students from Loyola, MICA, and Georgetown!

    Thanks especially to our inside students, who deserved this so hard we had to make it real!

  • Newsletters from the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Course

    On Tuesday, my class “The Inside Out Prison Exchange Program: Criminal Justice Issues”, met for the final time at Jessup Correctional Institution. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is a national program developed by Temple University in 1997, and offered in prisons across the country and internationally. This was my third year offering Inside-Out at JCI. For 12 weeks University of Baltimore students met with 16 JCI students to study crime and social justice issues. Each week we intensely discussed the difficult questions of why crime occurs, how to prevent it, what is the purpose of prison, and what alternatives might work better at seeking justice and accountability. The last three weeks of this course students worked on developing newsletters on a specific issue related to incarceration. Five newsletters were developed and presented during our final class yesterday. I am so proud of these students for putting so much effort and passion into creating these newsletters. These newsletters will be displayed at UB in the Criminal Justice Program office, and will also be available here: http://www.ubalt.edu/cpa/faculty/alphabetical-directory/andrea-cantora.cfm

    Please read and share them with others!

     

  • April 19: Timmy Aziz

    April 19: Timmy Aziz

    Guest Post by David Houk (Tree)

    IMG06673The class on architecture was interesting because I’ve worked construction almost my whole life, and I have experience working with terracotta tile black (clay). I can’t believe it takes almost eleven years to learn this career. But I guess it really does, to learn all that it takes to build an entire building.

    It was nice to know that Timmy did so much research into the local materials and what else was there, to build his mom’s house. I look at architecture as art that lasts more than a lifetime. Most of the greatest architecture IAA9769around the world is still here after all these years. Only the things that were destroyed by war and man’s stupidity are lost to newer generations. I believe that if there is a record of a great building or structure that was destroyed, it should be rebuilt just because great things should be remembered and admired.

    I guess it is every man and boy’s dream to build his parents a house, or do something for his parents for putting up with them for 18 plus years and probably college as well, so building a house for your mom is the greatest way to show your love and respect for her. I am curious that Timmy used his memory to get the house as close to what he could remember. Using the open screen walls and scupper holes in the walls was very ingenious, and also super-smart IAA9771because it helped with hearing and cooling. But then he said that dust became a big problem, not to mention the rat incident!

    All in all it was a good class, and I believe Mr. Aziz to be a good teacher, and maybe one of these days I will get to build a house for my parents. I might give him a call for some help if I get stuck! Thank you for coming in to teach such an interesting class. I wish you success in your future endeavors, and I will check you out when and if I get out of here.

  • Doug Arey R.I.P. (1948-2016)

    Doug Arey R.I.P. (1948-2016)

    Today, JCI Scholar Vincent Greco and I attended the memorial service for Doug Arey. Here are some things that come into my mind when I think about Doug:

    • His loud, irrepressible, unmistakable laugh.
    • His inability to call me anything but “Professor Brottman,” even when all the other men call me by my first name, even when I asked him many times to call me Mikita, though when I told him it made me feel really uncomfortable to be called “Professor Brottman.” But he was too old fashioned. He just couldn’t do it.
    • The way he was both assertive and shy at the same time.
    • His lumbering gait,
    • The fact that he always kept extra pens in his front pocket in case anybody needed one.
    • How readily he would begin recounting some account of social, legal, or personal history, and how many times I would have to interrupt and rein him in.
    • How he would always respond with a mumble of apology.
    • How much he loved the song “Beasts of England” (sung to the tune of “My Darling Clementine”) from Animal Farm. In fact he liked it so much, he told me, that he used to sing it aloud to himself when he was cleaning his cell.
    • The way he could look dignified even when his glasses were held on with a piece of string.

     

  • In Memory of Douglas Scott Arey

    I had some very sad news while traveling on Monday, March 28th.  I learned that one of my favorite students in recent memory – Douglas Scott Arey (September 26, 1948 – March 27, 2016), a 67-year-old inmate at Jessup who served 43 years of a life sentence – died the previous day.  Doug took my Summer 2015 course on Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.  He was a steady source of good humor, common sense and civility, and always showed a lot of respect for the views of others.  He was cheerful and dedicated to learning despite being caged for almost half a century for a crime of which I’m told he always maintained his innocence.  I also gather from my friend and fellow Jessup instructor Joshua Miller that Doug won many appeals, most recently in 2007, due to procedural malfeasance surrounding his conviction.

    I was pretty upset when I had some time alone at home to reflect on a blurry photograph of Doug that Dr. Miller shared.  I know nothing about Doug’s arrest and conviction beyond a cryptic account I found online.  It’s always my policy while teaching at Jessup never to inquire about these things.  Perhaps ironically given the circumstances, I don’t regard it as any of my business.  More importantly, it’s not relevant to what I am there to do as an instructor and fellow student.  And I know nothing about the status of Doug’s family or other personal relations outside Jessup.  They’re really none of my business, either.  But as I sat with Doug’s photo, I found myself wondering how many grieve for him now that he’s gone.

    The sheer volume of the U.S. prison population is staggering.  We have the highest incarceration rate in the world.  Knowing someone like Doug personally, having been endeared by his generous personality, remembering the kind things he said about my teaching – once in class, he remarked with some bewilderment that I treat him and the other prisoners like equals: like all my experiences at Jessup, my brief acquaintance with Doug makes the incarceration of millions of my fellow citizens emotionally intelligible to me.

    Being agnostic as I am about Doug’s background circumstances is an odd, mixed luxury.  My grief over his death is not only from great distance given how briefly and how little I knew him, but it’s mediated by my total ignorance of defining elements of his past.  One consequence is that I can hardly be said to have known the man, and I don’t want to give any other impression.

    Still, my experience with Doug deepens the impact teaching at Jessup has had on me since I began going there in 2013.  It makes me feel ashamed of my privilege at not having police crosshairs branded into me because of my race.  It makes me feel disoriented by the sheer mass of humanity, perversely anonymous on such a scale, circulating through a system for warehousing human beings, each as fallible, irreplaceably unique and mortal as Doug.

    Like most of my students at Jessup, Doug taught me much.  I don’t much see myself as a religious person but somehow Matthew 25:36 has never been far from my mind when I’ve visited Jessup—“I was in prison and you came to visit me.”  Above all, my acquaintance with Doug makes me grateful for the chance to learn so much from those visits.

  • Douglas Scott Arey (September 26, 1948 – March 27, 2016)

    Douglas Scott Arey (September 26, 1948 – March 27, 2016)

    A memorial service for Douglas Scott Arey (September 26, 1948 – March 27, 2016) will be held on April 7, 2016 at 10:00 a.m.

    Here is the location:

    St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church
    5203 St. Barnabas Road
    Temple Hills, MD  20748

     

  • Guest: Dr. Christine Manganaro

    Guest: Dr. Christine Manganaro

    Guest post by Michael Whittlesey, in response to guest lecture by Dr. Christine Manganaro

    The origin of my family genealogy dates back to mid 10th Century England. We were Whittles — the makers of swords and knives. The Whittles that resided upon hill crests, by the English term “ey,” were called “Whittlesey.” The Whittles who resided by coastal areas were called “Whittlesey.”

    Thereafter, the Whittlesey name does not significantly appear again until 1368 when William Whittlesey became the Archbishop of Canterbury. My father was so happy to see the engraved name in stone of William Whittlesey on the outside wall of Westminster Abbey that he took a photo of it and mentioned the Archbishop proudly at his conversations at the poker table.

    The genealogy of my family ancestors is much more of interest than I had imagined before my investigation. Apparently, my great-grandparents on both sides were of 100% English origin. How many more generations before them were English to my knowledge is unknown to me, but some interesting accounts have surfaced from my investigation.

    First and foremost, the Poles and Romanians (especially Transylvanians) do not inter-mix well within their communities. Both ethnic races have a long line of purity in my mother’s ancestors until my grandfather (Louis Parat) married Marie Katich. Instead of embracing their children’s marriage, my great grandparents basically considered both of them as outcasts within their family and community circles. The specific reasons for their abolitions are unknown to me.

    Secondly, my great-grandparents on my father’s side of the family were of pure English origin. It was not until an Irishwoman (Erin McGuire) married an Englishman by the name of James Whittlesey II that the inter-ethnic mixing occurred. Thereafter, my English heritage began its percentile decrease until my bloodline was a mere 12.5% English descent.

    Technically, I am now more of a Gypsy than an Englishman, after the conclusion of my investigation. I now wonder if i shall be living in a trailer park or an English mansion upon my future release.

     

  • Lecture: Dr. Ruth Toulson

    Lecture: Dr. Ruth Toulson

    Guest post by Donald Gross

    (R.I.P Douglas Scott Arey)

    Wow! This particular lecture had to be one of the most, if not the most informative lectures that I have ever had the pleasure of participating in. I would never have guessed in a hundred years that a Q and A during the lecture would be so diverting, especially since the field of inquiry was basically about death, in particular the death transitions and rituals that are conducted in Singapore.
    It wasn’t just the lecture itself, it was the lecturer too. She wasn’t at all pretentious about anything. She avoided no questions, and answered them all with an acceptable response. It takes a very unique and special person to occupy the position that Ruth holds, and to be a female makes it even more special. She gave a very informative and interesting exposition. It was a very eye-opening learning experience to talk about the beliefs and customs of different cultures as they apply to the diverse parallels that lie between life and the afterlife.
    services-box-img-lppljwo0y2njfcs9v1i58j4vmyhphed168psofxir2    Ruth was truly the personification of someone who came to give a good lecture on Death’s rituals and customs. From her black attire to her mysterious tones and emphases that she used to describe certain events, she really came prepared to give a lecture on the subject of making the transition from life to afterlife. I’ve never hear the subject of death be described so eloquently. Ruth’s presentation was conducted so well that it actually seemed rehearsed, even to the asking of our unsuspecting questions. She presented us with Singapore’s complete traditions and rituals in detailed descriptions, beginning with the death of the person straight through to the embalming process. She also spoke somewhat discontentedly on the government-ordered ten-year exhumations.
    I also found the ceremonial rituals fascinating, especially when she was explaining the traditions regarding the Mardi Gras-like entertainment during the funeral, the color definitions, and the forty-day-long time frames of some of the funerals. I still don’t get the thing about why, if the ritual is performed incorrectly, the decedent becomes a hungry ghost.
    Even the personal tidbits that Ruth shared with us were very informative as well as enchanting. It was the first time I have heard there should be no charge for a child’s funeral. I enjoyed how she shared her family’s involvement in the business, along with her being the only white person to ever be employed by the African American Staff of March’s Funeral Home. That was the icing on the cake.
    In closing, I really enjoyed this lecture. I would really like to participate in a course based on Ruth’s book.

  • “My Kids.” Poem by Day-Day

    “My Kids.” Poem by Day-Day

    March 22, 2016

    My kids I wonder where your mind are
    I hope missing daddy from afar

    My kids I know I made promises in the past
    That’s before I get my GED and now attending a college class

    My kids I say to you that I are all grown up
    So you can stop worrying about me my time almost up

    Day-Day