Guest Columnist
Ricardo Reyes is currently studying science, math and Spanish at Colorado State University. He aspires to complete his university education and become a middle school math teacher. His interests include volunteering for Christian Fellowship, running and boxing.
Where to begin? I can take so many avenues when it comes to correctional systems and the programs they offer, as I have some firsthand knowledge. It’s a miracle that I am writing this column. I won’t pretend that I had no part in my life going the way that it went. There was help and opportunity all along the way. There were recreation centers and clubs and sports, and I was so smart, they all said. Smart for my environment that is. I carried some resentment with me, I suppose, and that led me to rebel. I rebelled against everything— rules, grades, my mother, the law. When you run out of things to rebel against, that’s when they lock you up.
As horrible and lonely as prison life is, I am grateful that my poor decisions didn’t land me there sooner. The prison life that I encountered was far different from what I expected. Initially I got a sense that the people I was encountering had a real interest in my success upon release. There was talk of this class and that class. Learn how to do this and learn how to do that. Go to church and participate in sports. Practice good habits for maintaining sobriety. It was no picnic by any means but there were real options for what to do with your time and how to use that time for good rather than evil. Used correctly, inmates could exit prison prepared for a life free of lost time. A step closer to closing the ever-revolving doors of the criminal justice system.
In the United States, we love to lock up our citizens. I watched a story John Oliver did in which he stated that we have more people in our jails and prisons than China. That sounded crazy to me because they have about five times the population as us. I learned from prisonpolicy.org that his information was pretty accurate and has remained constant. According to the website, the United States locks up about 614 per 100,000 of its citizens, a number that is rivaled by only one jurisdiction in the world, Colorado. In Colorado our numbers are 556/100,000 and coming in at a distant third is the U.K. with a measly, or should I say respectable, 144/100,000. I am now a part of these numbers, but efforts are underway to make sure that I, and others like me, don’t return to a life of prison. There is a plethora of programs one can participate in,, and they are all aimed at helping people stay out.
One of the first things I thought about doing when I got to prison was to look into furthering my education. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to participate in any kind of collegiate course. Considering that earning a bachelor’s degree typically takes four years to complete, it’s easy to understand that those programs are geared toward prisoners with lengthy sentences. In a sense, my short prison sentence was a double-edged sword that kept me from partaking. So, I read. In the 18 months that I spent incarcerated, I read over 150 books.
To those who say that educating our prisoners isn’t helping curb their appetite for their own destruction, I would advise you to read about David Carrillo on Chalkbeat Colorado (chalkbeat.org). He became the first inmate, in the country, to be hired as an adjunct professor through Adams State University. He taught Intro to Macroeconomics at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility to other inmates. He earned outside wages through a special program aimed to help the incarcerated have financial security upon their release. Carrillo was the first to benefit from Adams State’s new initiative which focuses on employing incarcerated people with graduate degrees as college professors. “The idea — hiring an incarcerated professor to teach incarcerated students and paying him outside wages — is almost unheard of in correctional settings” (paragraph 1).
For Carrillo, the ideas of release and freedom were as real as a square circle — he was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. For that matter he probably never thought he’d be a college professor either. But freedom is what happened when Carrillo received a letter from Governor Jared Polis telling him, “It is evident that you have put in tremendous work while incarcerated to change your mindset and pursue educational goals by obtaining your GED, bachelor’s degree, and MBA, and becoming the first incarcerated adjunct faculty member in the country”. The governor said that Carrillo’s journey to educate himself and work as a professor contributed to his decision to grant Carrillo clemency, which gave Carrillo his freedom.
There are so many wonderful things going on in Colorado’s prisons. Writing that last sentence gave me an oxymoronic feeling, but it’s true. People are getting some help back there and stories like David Carrillo’s will become more common
It says something about the prison systems in our country that even they are looking for ways to help us previous inmates stay out, should we have the misfortune to one day land ourselves behind their walls. In the short time I spent in prison I met people from every walk of life — doctors, lawyers, white-collar and blue-collar men. I’ve met artists and musicians. I encountered real talent and true kindness and with all that loneliness and turmoil I also discovered that which matters most — myself. As I reflect on my time in prison, I sometimes think that I could have done things differently. The inevitable regret of past mistakes sets in but there is only one God who knows it all and he does not make mistakes.
My life has gone to plan. I thought that if I had avoided that fight, I would have made parole. But that fight didn’t keep me from going to the halfway house from where I ran away to Texas and was eventually caught. I lived in Texas at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office for two months and then I was extradited back to Colorado to finish serving my time. I see now that God needed me behind those walls for my own good. Then he used the devil to scare me out of prison and into the halfway house. Had I stayed at The Delta Correctional Facility I most likely would have earned some kind of trade certification and upon release I would have gone to work in that trade, and I would not be writing these words right now and furthering my education.
Truly, I find reasons every day to be grateful. The best part is, I’m not even looking.
