For my community experience, I toured the Utah County Jail in Spanish Fork. I had never been to a jail, nor was it somewhere that I really ever wanted to go to. However, it was a much better experience for me than I was expecting.
We were not allowed to take our phones into the jail, so I will do my best to explain what we saw.
First we talked with a sergeant about the jail, what kind of inmates they housed, what they do for and offer inmates, how they keep track of the inmates, etc. There are 700 inmates there, but space for many many more. Most inmates there have not committed felonies, unless they are being held and waiting for a hearing at court.
We walked through two huge doors that can only be controlled by a single switch, inside a control room. All doors we went through were operated by these switches. There was no way out once we were in We were locked in behind two big heavy metal doors. We saw a security guard every once in a while in the hallway, but other than that it seemed to be deserted.
We got to experience an empty housing unit-where I experienced one of my many disruptions. There was no sense of privacy for the inmates. It was two inmates to a tiny little cell, where they had a bunkbed, a toilet and a sink. There were showers on both the upper and lower levels of the housing unit, but there were two shower heads next to each other and no curtain or way to separate the showers. It was sad to me because they are human too, and probably want their privacy just as much as I do. But they were not afforded any luxury of privacy. It just didn't seem fair.
We also learned a lot about the programs that the jail provides for its inmates. For example, they offer classes so that some of them can earn their GED, they offer some rehab type programs to help others, they hold Sunday worship services for a number of different religious denominations, etc. They do what they can to help inmates have skills necessary to get out of jail.
Probably my favorite part of the tour was when we got to talk with an inmate in their chapel. I was terrified because I was sitting on the front row and I thought something bad might happen. I began to realize that I was biased against these people. I had no idea who they were, what they'd done, or anything about them, but I was already decided that their intent was possibly to hurt me.
However, a woman walked in, her arms covered in tattoos, purple hair, etc. She was not quite the person I had expected to come through the door. That led me to another disruption-who was I expecting to come and why was I so prejudiced against them? I'd expected some big, scary, strong person-probably a man-because it was so much more common for them to be in that jail. I didn't stop to think that they might bring a woman to talk to us, a large group of mostly white middle-class women.
She began by telling us the earliest two memories she had of her childhood. I had to try really hard to keep back the tears because it was so terrible and things that I just never even thought about because I have never had to worry about those specific things happening to me. I could not even imagine how hard it must have been for her to go through the things she did. I realized again that I was wrong as she talked to us. As she came in, I immediately thought she had done some terrible thing to get her in jail, but as she told us her story and how she had gotten into jail, I immediately regretted all my biases, stereotypes, prejudices that I had come up with without having known anything about this woman.
I was disrupted by how society had conditioned me to think about inmates the way that I had judged this woman before she even walked in the door. I had so many opinions of her, not even knowing her gender. Society conditions us to prejudge all these inmates for things we do not even understand, nor can we begin to comprehend if we do not talk with them and hear their story.
I learned so much from going on this tour. I think it was helpful to me to realize how biased I am against certain groups of people, based on appearance, rumor, or race without meaning to be. I think that it is going to help me in my classroom to eliminate my own prejudices because I will be able to recognize them.
It was also interesting to me how this woman talked about her family. She had several kids and loved them so much and wanted only the best for them. However, because she was facing many years in prison she probably would not be able to see them in a long time and would not be able to offer them the help that they needed because she was isolated from them.
I realized that there are probably many children out there who are facing situations similar to this woman's young teenager. They do not see their parents and often or at all because their parents are inmates, for reasons the children may not understand, for things they may not have even done. This is a very difficult situation for a child, whether they be in poverty, of a minority race, any sort of minority, life is already going to be hard for these students. However, not having a parent at home is going to make things even more difficult. It is something that I want to be a lot more aware of students and situations like this so that I can help them in the future.
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