Here's the Truth about Fictional Prison Claims

 I have a background in Internet marketing and public relations, so I tend to notice marketing ploys and public relation strategies. Lately, I've noticed a concerted effort by the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) to improve their public image, through a fanciful marketing campaign and more recently through media stories intended to generate good will. 

For years the MDOC has claimed that its focus is on rehabilitation. While they have offered some rehabilitative programming over the years, it has often been low quality curriculum or apathetic instruction. Programming that prisoners are required to take prior to their paroles have often been provided late, even delaying many prisoners' paroles. Required programming is, by some instructors (but definitely not all), treated as something to check off a list rather than as an honest attempt to change hearts and minds. 

To be fair, though, education, especially that's designed to change thinking and behavior, cannot be coerced. It simply isn't effective; however, prisoner initiated education and rehabilitation is, but only if it is allowed. 

In recent years, the MDOC has allowed college programs to operate within prison. This began after then President Obama initiated a limited return of PELL grant funding for prisoners. Now, the MDOC is touting its new focus on educating prisoners, but its messaging is deceptive. 

The MDOC director and perhaps a few others may genuinely desire to educate prisoners since research has shown a direct correlation between education and reduced re-offense rates. However, college programs are sometimes poorly supported by the MDOC, and their motivation appears to be driven more by money and public image than a true desire to change hearts and minds. 

A recent local news story touted the MDOC's push for more prisoner education, and its recruitment commercials laughingly claim, "compassion works here...unfriendly does not." Meanwhile, administrators at SMT (and most certainly at other Michigan prisons) are facilitating the extreme censorship of educational materials. Free educational programs available to prisoners, like the PEN Writing Program and Cornell University's Prisoner Express, are rejected due to "voluminous mail" limits. Policy now limits the number of pages to 12, far fewer than what is mailed out in free educational programs. 

Exceptions to this page limit policy do not exist, even for educational, rehabilitative, and religious materials. Consequently, the MDOC sells to the public its "educational and rehabilitative focus" while actually thwarting prisoners' efforts to educate and rehabilitate themselves. 

Apparently, if there's no money in it for the MDOC it's not allowed. 

One thing I have learned through Restorative Justice literature, prior to the MDOC's recent extreme censorship practices, is that honesty is critically important. One cannot expect to find any genuine restoration without a radical commitment to truth. This and other important truths are critical for prisoners to learn, if they are to genuinely change their hearts and minds and become safe citizens who positively contribute to their communities. 

Perhaps more prisoners would learn the importance of truth telling if the MDOC also committed to honesty and truth in its marketing and communication with the tax paying public.