My Personal Prison Project

I am on a quest to make a change in this world. Inequality, injustice, and inhumanity exist around us, and we need to open our eyes to it.

Last year, I joined a club at my university called the Prison Project. Each week I travel to the Northampton County Prison and tutor inmates on a variety of subjects, helping them to prepare for their GED. I love knowledge; I feel that it is what makes life worth living. If someone is locked up, the ability to learn should never be taken away from them. Volunteering my time each week allows me to give one of life’s most precious gifts to another human being.

Knowledge opens our hearts and minds up to new ideas, thoughts, and opportunities. Although the people I tutor are locked up right now, there is a future where they are back in the community and will need to serve as a functioning member of society, with a job, bills, and maybe even a family. I see this time now as training for the unknown future.

Although tutoring helps to an extent, the sad reality is that many of these inmates will return back to prison in a year or two. Why does this happen? And what can be done to change this system?

Over the course of the next two months, I will be interviewing people who have a connection to the prison system. I want to understand the system fully by learning each person’s different perspective. I will unravel the mystery, confusion, and injustice surrounding the so-called “justice system.”

One day I want to live in a world where people are no longer caged up like animals for their mistakes, a world where everyone is treated with respect and given the opportunities that all humans deserve, so that when they leave prison, they still have hopes, dreams and plans for a better future.

Did you know that the US has 5% of the world population, but holds 25% of the world’s inmates? It’s a sad and scary thought to know that many of these people will return to jail because they aren’t prepared for the necessities of everyday life, it’s not designed to help, the prison system is designed to make a profit.