At the heart of prison reform lies the notion that murderers, pillagers, vehicular homiciders, arsonists, big-time thieves and rapists can be forgiven if they hold themselves accountable to society and do their time. Yet this is a core tenet in human nature that many “woke” Yalies don’t understand. Namely: that men and women and every gender in between can make grave, grave mistakes in life but still be forgiven and amend themselves in very profound ways. Just because someone commits a mistake in one moment doesn’t mean they cannot be good in the next. It’s time that Yalies tattoo this mantra on their forearm and scribble it into their textbooks. 

I started to dabble my feet in prison reform when I befriended some roughened characters who had done time behind bars. I studied the lives of these ex-inmates and compared them to my own: what went wrong in their stories? When did their life collapse, take the wrong turn, become destroyed? Soon enough, I started to talk to many prisoners and ex-prisoners on Reddit, then by email, then eventually on the phone, to the point where now I entertain meeting up with many in person, at diners across the East Coast and in my hometown of Washington itself. 

“Normal” people have a lot to learn from the incarcerated population. Many prisoners I speak to took the wrong turn in life because something broke them during childhood or adolescence: whether it was an uncle who molested them, a father who beat them, a father who abandoned them or a mother who pushed a drug habit onto them — which would make them sell on the streets. Moreover, men, women and every single gender in between who mess up in life — be it beating someone up to the point where bruises and broken bones materialize or stealing millions of dollars — sometimes, if not oftentimes, do these things out of pure desperation. They are desperate for money, they are in some kind of thwarted psychotic break from reality, or they make this mistake because a caregiver touched them the wrong way. It’s rare that children are born monsters, but people can be made monstrous if other people inflict monstrous acts on them. This is something that many “woke” Yalies don’t understand — that people screw up in life because they were dealt an excruciatingly bad hand, either in their family or in the chemical structure of their brain. 

Yale as an institution has taken great strides to address prison reform. The Yale Prison Education Initiative teaches a select group of inmates a range of liberal arts classes behind bars, at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. Graduates of the program will earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Haven. 

Interestingly, in my conversations with ex-felons, I hear them both laud and complain against programs like YPEI. They laud it because classes act as a focal point of their prison career, and greatly heighten their spirits while in jail. But then they complain about YPEI because felons have a difficult, if not impossible time, accessing prestigious white-collar jobs due to their criminal record, despite having taken upscale Yale classes. Now it’s high time that congressional legislation mandates that felons can expunge their records so they can better access white-collar opportunities after release and reintegration into society. 

Some more insights start to trickle in from the formerly incarcerated. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, some convicts miss prison: they miss the routine of waking up, working a low-level job, having yard time, reading in the library, watching TV and then going to bed. They miss the fact that prison is a leveled playing field where most inmates hold the same amount of power as each other. They miss the fact that they don’t have to pay rent. When these inmates reenter the real world, they are suddenly faced with big crowd sizes, bills that are due and heightened levels of anxiety. Paradoxically, many inmates complain about being free again. After having been institutionalized for years, freedom in real society seems like somewhat of a burden. They even complain about going to things like baseball games, where thousands of people swarm around them. They complain about having to wait in the convenience store line. They complain about the sheer amount of options available to them at food stores, cafes and markets. They don’t know which cereal box or car part to choose from. 

Yet others don’t complain, and speak of a “sensory deprivation” in jail. This means that behind bars, inmates can have no sex, eat rather sordid food, exercise less and have less access to sunlight and beautiful scenery. Out of jail, they speak of “sensory enlightenment”: I often ask them what first meal they ate after release and which loved one they were first to see. They usually describe these experiences in avid detail. 

I engage in all of these conversations with inmates because I fervently believe that most Americans have an outdated, antiquated and wrong view of crime. Many citizens automatically think that those who have committed serious crimes are bad people. But often they are not. Men — and women — who join the criminal justice system were often raised in difficult circumstances and put into pressure cookers that led them to make an error. But they are humans just like us. 

Often, criminals develop a self-fulfilling prophecy in their minds in which they convince themselves that they are bad people and should do bad things. Americans who didn’t have to deal with hardships early on in life don’t understand that this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy can exist. They can’t internalize what it’s like to carry silent rage on their shoulders because of wrongdoings that were inflicted on them in childhood. 

Overall, though, I am humbled by the sheer lack of entitlement and gratitude found in the incarcerated population. Many of my interviewees are happy just to not be behind bars, and rejoice at finding a simple, low-paying factory job if it means they can see their father and siblings once a week. Others are happy to be in drug rehabilitation programs and feel lucky to no longer be grappling with suicidal thoughts all day that were once spurred by burgeoning heroin addictions. Indeed, those who have done some time know what the vilest of society looks like: they have personally had their head bashed by a violent cellmate, they have witnessed another man die in the shower, they have injected wretched things into their arms, they have accidentally killed people in a car crash and they have seen people be accidentally killed in return. And they still find a way to position their chin up into the future. 

Society can learn great things from the prison population — in fact, those who are the least fortunate in our community have the greatest lessons to impart to all of us. We just have to be patient enough to listen. 

ISAAC AMEND graduated in 2017 from Timothy Dwight College. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s “Gender Revolution” documentary. In his free time, he is a columnist for the Washington Blade. He also serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him at isaac.amend35@gmail.com.