Prisoners Are Contributing to Science and Green Technology
On December - 15 - 2009
My first 2 pieces of published journalism (for a teen mag) asked the question why should there be detainees who are doing nothing everyday when there is always so much to be done. At the time I was saying things like ‘they should be growing food to feed hungry children at school’ because when prisoners sit in jail everyday doing nothing, it still costs the public something, even just to lock them up in those cells.
And now, as I start my own blog, I still stick by this idea: that inmates should be helping society at large through programs that can give them some sense of importance but will also provide raw material or products for industry and commercial areas. It means teaching inmates what can turn out to be valuable skills that can help them when re-entering the ‘outside world’ and it also gives them something to care about, to know that the betterment of such and such depends on them.
Today I came across this example of the kind of thing I would like to see Jamaica do, since we are the sweet ‘land of wood and water’:
Prison seems an unlikely source to find eco-inspiration.
Until now.
Prisoners at Stafford Creek enrich their lives and science
The offenders at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Washington are going green through a partnership with The Evergreen State College and The Nature Conservancy. The project is saving money and resources and helping enrich lives.
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, a faculty member at Evergreen and a Washington trustee for The Nature Conservancy, started the Sustainable Prisons Project in an attempt to cultivate tree mosses to supply the floral industry.
Now the program works in two Washington prisons, where offenders learn how to raise endangered Oregon spotted frogs, reclaim wastewater, recycle on a massive scale, nurture honeybees and grow rare prairie wildflowers.
The partnership helps prairies, but perhaps even more rewarding, it helps offenders develop important skills to use when they re-enter society. And if a prison can go green, save money and enrich lives, what’s stopping the rest of us?
Check out more about the Sustainable Prisons Project Here- http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/
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Janessa Says:
AMAZING STORY ZIG! <3 it for sure. Great proposition for purposeful jails!
Posted on December 27th, 2009 at 10:21 PM