11 Amazing Prison Stories From 2013
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Arizona inmates saved 22-year-old female guard from jail cell attack.
Rachel Harris, a rookie detention officer at Lower Buckeye Jail in
Maricopa County, Ariz., was conducting a routine cell check in June when
inmate Bobby Ruiz allegedly jumped on her back and bit off a piece of
her ear,
Fox 10 reported.
According to Harris and jail surveillance video, inmates rushed
upstairs to aid Harris, peeling Ruiz off the 22-year-old guard. Inmates
Ricky Shillingford and Andrew Davis were the first to come to Harris’
aid.
"He had her in a chokehold, I saw the blood was coming from her ears," Shillingford, who broke his hand in the scuffle,
told Fox 10.
"I seen her on the floor, crunched over, hunched over. I snatched him
off of her, and then he took a swing at me and went back toward her,"
Davis
said.
Harris
told Fox 10
that she knew the inmates were there to help her. After the attack, her
ear wrapped in gauze, Harris thanked the inmates who rescued her.
"I just want to say thank you to those of you who did help me. I
really don't know if I would have came out with anything more if you
guys didn't help me, so thank you," Harris
said.
"Right is right and wrong is wrong," Davis
told Fox 10. "We make mistakes to get in here. But hey, if you can correct your mistakes, why not?"
Washington state inmates rescued three three boys from drowning in Salmon Creek.
KPTV - FOX 12
When three brothers fell into the cold water of Salmon Creek in
southwest Washington in January, three inmates from Larch Corrections
Center conducting supervised maintenance at a nearby park
jumped into the water to save them.
"Just 'cause we're incarcerated doesn't mean we're bad people," 28-year-old Jon Fowler, one of the inmates,
told KPTV.
"We made some bad choices in our lives, but we're still, we're just
like everybody else. We're just paying our debt for what we did wrong."
The boys, ages 8, 10 and 16, fell into the 45-degree water after
their canoe capsized. As soon as the inmates spotted the boys in the
water beside their overturned canoe, the three men dived into the creek
and fished out the boys one by one.
“I don’t think I was thinking at all,” 37-year-old Nelson Pettis, another inmate involved in the rescue,
told The Columbian.
The third inmate, 29-year-old Larry Bohn, made numerous trips into
the water, rescuing the oldest boy before diving back in to help Pettis
with the others. Once the boys were on dry ground, both Pettis and Bohn
wrapped their shirts around them to keep them warm until the rescue
crews arrived.
“He looked real bad,” Bohn
told The Columbian referring to the 8-year-old. “They were saying, 'thank you' repeatedly. They just seemed really scared.”
Along with the three brothers, two of the inmates were taken to a nearby hospital for mild hypothermia,
according to Chief Jerry Green of Clark County Fire District 6.
"I think we did something that any good person would do," Fowler
told KPTV. You see three helpless kids in a river, you help. That's what you do."
Exonerated prisoners started nonprofit detective agency to free other innocent inmates.
After serving almost 13 years of a Texas life sentence,
Christopher Scott was exonerated of murder after another suspect in the case confessed to the crime in 2009.
In an April
interview with WUNC-FM at the Innocence Network Conference in Charlotte, N.C., Scott reflected on his battle to prove his innocence.
“I think it’s the first time I actually cried, when [my lawyer] told
me I had a million-to-one chance to make it," Scott said. "I went back
to him the next day and I told him, ‘You gave me a million-to-one chance
to make it. I’m gonna be that one out of the million.”
While Scott’s case hinged on mistaken identity, others have been cleared by DNA analysis years after they were convicted.
Scott, now owner of his own men’s apparel store, Christopher’s Men’s Wear,
has united with dozens of
other exonerated former prisoners in Dallas County to launch the House
of Renewed Hope, a nonprofit amateur detective agency that helps free
wrongfully convicted inmates.
The House of Renewed Hope also lobbies Texas legislators for greater
compensation for ex-inmates who have been exonerated and increased
access to public services, including health care.
Tech-savvy Oklahoma inmates developed computer software that may save their state millions.
A handful of tech-savvy inmates at the Joseph Harp Correctional
Center in Lexington, Okla., got together to create data-collection
software that three state lawmakers said may save Oklahoma millions of
dollars a year,
according to The Oklahoman.
The program, which has been in place for the past two years, was
initially developed to prevent prisoners from receiving multiple meals
per dining session. Data collected by the system also showed that the
food vendor, Sysco, was charging varying amounts for the same product at
different facilities, which quickly became a point of concern for state
lawmakers,
The Oklahoman reports.
If the software was implemented in correctional facilities statewide,
the program could save the state almost $20 million every year, Bobby
Cleveland, an Oklahoma state representative and chairman of the state
House Public Safety Committee,
told The Washington Post in October.
“It’s a pretty neat program," Cleveland
told the Post.
"It’s all done by the direction of the supervisor, one of these guys
who’s kind of, what do you call it, thinking outside the box.”
Two of the three inmates, whose names were withheld by Oklahoma
Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie and state lawmakers, are
serving time for murder and sexual offenses,
according to The Oklahoman.
Washington state prison inmates prepared rescue cats for adoption.
14 News, WFIE, Evansville, Henderson, Owensboro
The Silver Star Unit at Larch Corrections Center in Washington state
offers qualified inmates one of two cat adoption programs in the
Washington State Department of Corrections,
14 WFIE reports.
As of February, the inmate adoption program, coordinated with the
West Columbia Gorge Humane Society, has hosted five cats, allowing
inmates to feed, care for and socialize maladapted felines until they
are ready for adoption.
To qualify for the program, inmates must undergo an interview with
prison staff, maintain a positive behavioral record with the Department
of Corrections and have no violent crimes or animal abuse in their
history.
One inmate at Larch Correction Center, Jerry Warfield,
spoke to 14 WFIE about Jinx, a skittish cat previously living with hoarders.
"In a situation like this, normally, typically you don't have a lot
of responsibility, so when you go back to the community, you're not used
to the responsibility, so it kind of overwhelms you," Warfield
told 14 WFIE.
"This, it kind of keeps you on track, gives you a sense of
responsibility. It helps build you and prepare you for your release.
“And of course they love you back and it’s always good to feel love. … They don’t judge ya,” Warfield added.
Paws in Prison program: Prisoners saved shelter dogs from death row.
In an effort to make dogs more adoptable and provide rehabilitation skills to inmates, nationwide programs like Arkansas’ “
Paws in Prison”
pair incarcerated individuals with dogs that would otherwise be
euthanized because of unmanageable or dangerous behavioral issues. The
training program tasks qualified prisoners with socializing rescue dogs
from shelters and teaching them basic obedience skills in preparation of
adoption.
“I’ve been looking for ways to just -- even if it’s small -- to give
back to society in some way,” James Dulaney, a Tucker Correctional
Facility inmate and Paws for Prison participant in Arkansas,
told The Associated Press in June. Dulaney is serving life for murder.
“The dogs have a remarkable impact on offenders, improving offender
behavior and giving offenders incentive to maintain excellent conduct
records,” George A. Lombardi, director of the Missouri Department of
Corrections,
told the AP.
All-prisoner fire crews in California helped battle the raging Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park.
Of the nearly 4,000 firefighters dispatched to battle one of the largest wildfires in California history,
673 were male and female state prison inmates.
California's
voluntary Conservation Camps program, begun
by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, allows inmates to serve
their communities while providing cooperative agencies with an
additional trained workforce for emergencies, including fires, floods
and earthquakes.
"They are in the thick of it," Capt. Jorge Santana of the corrections department
told NBC. "They work 24-hour shifts. They sleep in tents at base camp. They work side-by-side with other firefighters."
Inmates must undergo intensive two-week physical training in addition
to two weeks of fire safety and suppression techniques training.
"A lot of people think you pull that fire engine up and just pull a hose out and fight fire," Cal Fire Capt. Mike Mohler
told National Geographic.
"We're talking inmates who hike miles and miles just to get where
they're going to start, and then cut line all through the day."
Qualified inmates, who are meticulously screened, medically cleared
and must have no history of violent crimes, earn $1.45 to $3.90 per day
for projects ranging from fire breaks to flood protection, according to
the California Conservation Camps
website.
“Our inmate firefighters are vital to our fire protection system here in California,” Daniel Berlant, Cal Fire spokesman,
told Time magazine.
The California Conservation Program
saves state taxpayers an average of $80 million annually and helps inmates return to society when their sentences end.
“A lot of these guys come in and have never held a job, never had any
self-worth,” Correctional Lt. L.A. von Savoye, public information
officer at the Sierra Conservation Center,
told Time.
“Within a very short time their mentality changes. They take pride in
what they’re doing. They’re giving back to their communities. It gives
them purpose.”
There are currently 42 adult and two juvenile Conservation Camps in California, with nearly 4,000 inmate participants.
Inmates grew new lives through prison gardens program.
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Prisoners have been growing vegetables, fruits and flowers in
prison yards across the country, helping them gain vocational landscaping skills and a peaceful outlet for frustrations.
“We believe that everybody has a heart and everybody has a chance for transformation,” Beth Waitkus, director of the
Insight Garden Program at California's San Quentin state prison,
told ABC.
A 46-year-old career criminal named Bernard has been an active member
of Willard Cybulski Correctional Institution’s gardening efforts in
Enfield, Conn.,
according to ABC News.
“I get a sense of peace and a sense of serenity being that I’m in a
hostile environment at times and then coming out here to pick these
vegetables. It brings calmness to me,” Bernard, who, like other inmates
interviewed by ABC, didn't give his last name.
Dennis, a San Quentin inmate serving 22 years for burglary, told ABC
the program has had shocking effects on him, including reduced
aggression.
“I’m sitting next to this guy that I would have been fighting on some
other yard. It really amazed me that I could actually prune plants and
dig in soil,” the budding expert on soil composition
told ABC. “It really touched me.”
In Connecticut,
all 18 state prisons have
garden programs, none of which cost taxpayers a dime. In 2012, the
state’s prisons yielded more than 35,000 pounds of produce for
prisoners, which saved Connecticut taxpayers $20,000 in prison costs.
Surplus food from prison garden programs is
donated to charities.
“We give 25 percent of what we pick back to the community and that’s
the most fulfilling thing, that I’m helping someone,” Bernard
told ABC.
“Because in my life, I have taken in trouble. So, to me, it’s almost
like paying back a debt to be able to pick something and be able to give
back to others.”
“I’ve been in and out since I’ve been 15, and this is the first time
I’ve done something like this,” Rasheed, another San Quentin inmate,
told ABC. “I can connect spiritually with something as simple as garden. … To me that was different.”
According to Connecticut's
2011 Annual Recidivism Report,
recidivism of state convicts after their release from prison approaches
60 percent. But San Quentin garden prisoners see a recidivism rate of
less than 10 percent, and none of Connecticut’s garden graduates have
returned to jail since their release, Waitkus
told ABC.
The Last Mile prison program has been transforming inmates into tech-savvy entrepreneurs.
In 1995,
Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal
was convicted of possessing a firearm after two previous armed robbery
convictions. Under California’s three strikes law, he was given a prison
sentence of 25 years to life. Nineteen years later, California Prop 36
allowed him to qualify for resentencing. Leal was released from prison
in July, according to
Business Insider.
While imprisoned, Leal was one of dozens of inmates enrolled in
The Last Mile,
an entrepreneurship program that provides qualified inmates with the
technological skills they need to get jobs upon release. To qualify,
inmates must apply, provide peer recommendations and undergo
administrator review. The six-month program, founded by Silicon Valley
investors Chris Redlitz and wife Beverly Parenti, includes twice-weekly
training sessions on social media, which covers the basics of Twitter,
blogging and
Quora, a question-and-answer website that has allowed inmates to enter the world of social media through volunteer intermediaries.
"Before The Last Mile, I was going to be an electrician" if paroled, Leal
told Business Insider.
"But when the program came along, I realized there's a whole world out
there I wasn't aware of. When I was incarcerated, the Internet was just
starting to take off, so I didn't really get too much of an
understanding for it. Once I started taking classes through The Last
Mile sessions, all of those questions were answered."
Upon his release in June, Leal became a full-time intern at tech
company RocketSpace. After four months, he was hired as a full-time
operations associate,
Business Insider reports.
Since The Last Mile’s 2011 launch, six program alumni have been
released from prison and have secured employment. Currently, 30 inmates
are enrolled in The Last Mile, according to Business Insider.
Vermont inmates helped families of fallen war heroes.
WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
Harley Time, an eight-month class offered through the Vermont
Department of Corrections, teaches inmates vocational auto mechanic
skills, including how to strip, restore and customize motorcycles. Each
year, the inmates at St. Alban’s Correctional Facility in Vermont donate
their completed projects to charities as fundraisers.
"I'm an auto body technician by trade, so I can take that to the
table in here and share that particular skill with them," inmate and
program mentor Mark King
told WCAX.
In May, St. Alban’s Harley Time participants chose to donate two
Harley-Davidson motorcycles to Vermont Fallen Families, which supports
people who have lost loved ones in battle.
Marion Gray, the Vermont Fallen Families president, lost a son in
2004 to the Iraq war and was deeply moved by the inmates’ tribute,
sparking her first trip to a prison to personally thank the inmates.
"I wanted to hear in their own words why they chose us," Gray
told WCAX,
fighting back tears as she hugged each participant individually.
"They're wonderful kids regardless of the circumstances, in my book, for
wanting to do this."
The inmates custom-designed the motorcycles with military blue paint
and 42 gold stars to symbolize each Vermont service member lost in
battle.
"We know that your son, Jamie, is on here along with his fallen brothers and sisters. So God bless them," King told Gray.
Two Virginia Beach prisoners saved a fellow inmate from suicide attempt.
Virginia Beach inmates Antonio Tabron and Kwaku Acheampong were
eating breakfast one Sunday morning in March when they noticed fellow
inmate Donnie Bullard preparing to hang himself from a bed sheet in his
cell,
according to WAVY.com.
Tabron and Acheampong called nearby guards for assistance as they talked Bullard out of suicide.
"I remember getting up on the table," Bullard, who had been imprisoned for a month,
told WAVY. "I told one of them I was going to hang myself and he said, 'Not here.' Then, I went and got on my bed."
Tabron and Acheampong declined to be
interviewed, but Bullard spoke with WAVY to publicly thank the inmates who saved his life.
"I felt relieved that they had come," Bullard
told WAVY. "I thank them for what they've done, stopping me. It could have been worse.”
Bullard is incarcerated for simple assault on law enforcement and
driving while intoxicated. Acheampong is serving time for simple
assault on law enforcement, damaged property and disorderly conduct.
Tabron is imprisoned for rape.
Florida prisoners saved a 64-year-old prison guard from being choked to death by violent inmate.
This incident occurred in November 2009, but the exceptional actions of these inmates warrants renewed applause.
Deputy Ken Moon was the lone guard on duty at the Orient Road Jail in
Tampa, Fla., when he was violently attacked by inmate Douglas Burden,
as revealed by the jail surveillance
video.
Burden, jailed for drug dealing and drunk driving, placed the
64-year-old guard in what officials later called a “rear naked choke,” a
martial arts strangle that cuts off the blood to the brain.
Within moments, inmate Jerry Dieguez Jr., serving time for armed home
invasion, ran to Moon’s defense, punching Burden in the face. More
inmates flooded the room to help in Moon’s rescue. As some inmates
peeled Burden off the guard, others used Moon's radio to call for help,
according to the
Daily Mail.
Col. James Previtera, commander of Hillsborough County's Department of Detention Services,
told reporters that the inmates "saved the deputy's life," describing the attack as “fast” and “violent.”
“The response of the inmates in this case, I think, speaks volumes as
to the fact that we treat these men and women ... in our facilities
with a lot of respect," Previtera
added.
When reporters asked Previtera why the inmates rushed to Moon’s aid, he
relayed the inmates’ response: “He was a good guy and they liked him.”
Burden was placed in solitary confinement with added charges of attacking an officer,
according to the Daily Mail.
Moon was treated at a hospital for injuries, but was released the same day.
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