A special 2-part program about Sing Sing Prison in New York. This program is Bruderhof Radio #51 (July 17 2000) and Bruderhof Radio #52 (July 31 2000).
Producer: Andrew Zimmerman Uploaded by: Andrew Zimmerman
Never before in the history of the world have so many people been incarcerated under one flag. This year, the United States' prison population exceeded 2 million, with increasing numbers serving time for nonviolent drug-related offenses. But while politicians strive to be "tough on crime", funding for programs that are truly rehabilitative has been on the decline. Today's so-called "correctional facilities" are focused more on warehousing humans than on any kind of corrective action. And with higher and higher rates of recidivism, things will probably get much worse before there is a decision to overhaul the system. Still, it didn't always used to be that way. At its inception, the typical state Department of Corrections was an institution committed to producing changed people. And even today, in the small number of facilities still permitting some form of rehabilitation, the success of these efforts remains high. In this two-part program, Bruderhof Radio presents one such effort.
For the past 18 years, approximately 15 inmates from across New York State have transferred to the infamous Sing-Sing Prison for a year of intensive study administered by the Manhattan-based New York Theological Seminary. Upon completing the coursework, the inmates receive a Masters of Professional Studies degree, equivalent to one year of traditional theological seminary. To find out more about the program, we traveled to Sing-Sing where we met with participants in this year's master's degree class. Seated around tables in a nondescript classroom somewhere in the heart of the prison, the seventeen men spoke at length regarding society's attitudes to incarceration and rehabilitation. They discussed how the program started, and how participation in the program affects their relations with other inmates and prison staff. Although by no means novel or unique, their opinions are significant because they come, as the inmates told us, from the belly of the beast.
Bruderhof Radio is a semi-monthly production of the Bruderhof Communities, www.bruderhof.org. Bruderhof Radio is provided free of charge to all public, progressive, and community radio stations. For more info, see our website at www.freespeech.org/bruderhof or contact the producers at (800) 778-8461ext 239 or redzim@bruderhof.com
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