I don’t think I would have ever volunteered to go into a prison purely on my own, but I went in the first time under the auspices of my school, Naropa University, to teach creative writing. I filled out an application, I think, but the professor, Mary Stewart Kean, did the rest—getting us cleared, getting our schedule and so on set up, transporting us down there. We went into Colorado Territorial, the oldest prison in the state, that still has block, razor-wire topped walls with guard towers.
That’s maybe enough for the average person who has no reason to see what it’s like inside and doesn’t want to know, much less care about the people housed there.
And who are those people, other than felons: they robbed convenience stores, they got into arguments and shot people, they sold fentanyl, they sexually assaulted children, on and on. It’s a very long, very tawdry list.
If you tell someone you’re going into a prison to teach meditation, one possible negative reaction is that you’re “making criminals feel better.” They did something evil and deserve to be punished. Why do they get to feel better?
