By Damian Daley
In 2008 while being housed at Jackson correctional institution, I submitted a written proposal to Warden Jeter, laying out a synopsis of observations and conclusions reached regarding the need for a fresh approach to the curriculum formats being used in programs being offered to inmates being housed in Florida prison facilities. My proposal laid out the skeleton of a curriculum structure I’d developed and specifics in regards to why I felt each element of the curricula was relevant to the psycho spiritual and psychosocial dysfunctions that incarcerated men struggle with. Honestly I was surprised when 30 days later Ozie Bigam the volunteer pastor who had delivered the proposal to the warden, told me that the warden had approved for immediate implementation of the program and was removing inmates from an entire cell block to make 56 bunks available for us to create a residential facility for the program.
Within four months of the program’s inception, the institutions assessment of the progress of the men involved resulted in me standing on the cell block, shaking the hands of Mr. Walter McNeil who was the head of all the prisons in Florida. Hearing about the program he’d come to present questions regarding the ideologies used to structure the phases of the curriculum.
In 2017 I arrived at Charlotte Correctional Facility. That year the facility had the most deaths in the state. Gang wars were rampant. I approached the head of security with a proposal for a youth mentorship program, promising that, given a chance the curriculum and mentorship would cut the violence on the compound by 50 percent within 90 daysassigned the gang unit sarge, Sargeant Ronga to oversee the program. Myself and my facilitators immediately with permission from the administration got all the gang leaders in one room the beginning of a process that led to building relationships between the different underground factions on the compound.
Within 60 days administration conceded there was a drastic reduction in violence. You may think this article is about me but it’s not. It’s about the millions of men and women behind these walls who want to change, can and will change once we as a society become courageous enough to allow those of us who have evolved during our incarceration opportunities to formulate and facilitate curriculums intricately tailored to the identity crisis being struggled with. The youth in our communities and behind these walls are struggling with some truly complex psychosocial and psycho spiritual issues and they don’t have a tangible language to explain the mystical nature of their inner turbulence.
The fundamental stability of every society is in peril when entire generations of youth are imploding. Balanced leadership is at the nucleus of all social evolution. When society becomes courageous enough to acknowledge there are men and women behind these walls who have evolved beyond the dysfunction that once held them captive, who are now in possession of a love language potent enough to administer healing, we will then begin to administer a vaccine to a disease threatening to destabilize all social spheres of our society…
If nothing changes. Nothing changes. Damian Daley is an inmate currently house in a Florida State Correctional facility.
