One Barrel at a Time: Mapping a Route Across the Prison Recidivism Desert

In April 2005, two days after my seventy-sixth birthday, I became the Protestant chaplain at California Correctional Center in Susanville, California. The warden hired me for the job of creating a faith-based rehabilitation program, taught by inmates, supported by unpaid outside volunteers. It was anticipated that it could be a rehabilitation program for the twenty-six state prisons in California, as well a challenge for the myriad jails and prisons throughout the United States. To overcome the warehousing model of incarcerating and housing inmates in prisons throughout most prison systems, it is imperative that inexpensive programs be developed to counteract the chilling effect of sparse and ineffective free-time support for the inmate population. California recidivism rates in state prisons exceed 80 percent. It is expected that it's much the same across the United States. Something needs to be done to counteract this, and the CCC model is one attempt to do it. Included in this book are anecdotal examples and testimonies that point to this possibility. The challenges, or "barrels", related in this attempt to change the recidivism rate at one institution tell us it won't be easy. New ideas are hard to come by in prison; "the old, and tried and failed" to often have the upper hand in the operation of state prisons in California. . As you follow my story, you will see how and who are the advocates and foes of change in the way prisons are operated. The story told here can benefit the families of the more than one million inmates in the prisons and jails in America. It can provide insights into the prison life for the students in the correctional curriculums in the colleges and universities of America. If the book were read by the personnel in the administration of state prisons, they might be challenged to work to change the climate in their jails and prisons.