Ed Wiltse, G98

Jail Break

Ed Wiltse

The Crime and Detective Fiction course Ed Wiltse, G98, taught each spring at Nazareth College was a success by almost any measure. Each year, students would race to register for it, often settling for the waiting list, and end-of-semester evaluations were usually good. Wiltse also believed the course was meeting its educational goals, helping his students critically examine how crime had been defined and understood at various points in history. But, despite its apparent success, Wiltse was troubled. He saw a fundamental flaw with the course and in 2000 realized that something needed to change.

"I was increasingly dissatisfied by the possibility that it was reinforcing the notion, all too available on television cop shows and the nightly news, that identification and incarceration was the end of the story," says Wiltse, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at Nazareth College of Rochester, New York. "Television programs like CSI and Law & Order end with the slamming of the cell door, but do not address the question of what happens after the trial and conviction."

Wiltse had a choice to make. He could take the conventional route of just adding more books, articles, and movies about jail and prison life to the syllabus, hoping his students would develop a deeper understanding of what happened after the legal process concluded, or he could do something more daring. He could go where the media rarely does. He could travel into the heart of the corrections system. And if he did, he reasoned, maybe his students would too.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF STUDENT
It's a summer morning at Nazareth College. The campus is mostly empty, save for a few faculty members and students who walk by. It's an idyllic place, featuring large, well-manicured lawns and stately buildings, at the far corner of which sits a massive, four story brick building. This is the home of the college's Department of English. It's where we find Ed Wiltse.

A couple of things come to mind upon meeting Wiltse for the first time. The first is that he's a collector, evidenced by the assortment of books that crowd the bookcase in his office. The second is that he looks like an English professor, right down to his closely trimmed beard, glasses, conservative haircut, and casual clothing. He would seem, if one were going by appearances alone, like the last person who would travel into a jail bearing books. But that's just what he did.

"I wanted to put some literature into my course about jails and prisons, but I also wanted to pair it with a project where students could go into a jail or prison and work with the inmates," says Wiltse, who earned a Ph.D. in English from Tufts in 1998. "But before I could, in good conscience, ask my students to go sit in a jail classroom with a group of inmates to discuss literature, I had to do it myself."

Wiltse vividly recalls his first visits to Monroe Correctional Facility (MCF) in Rochester in 2001.

Jail Project participants read, among other books, Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing and A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines.

"The first time I went to Monroe, and every time that followed, I had to go through a heavy metal door which led to the inmates," he says. "Every time the guard opened the door, it buzzed and the sound of it made me jump. The first few times I sat down in the classroom, after having dragged the plastic tables and chairs into a square so we could sit facing each other, I could feel the sweat of fear on myself. I would ask myself, 'why the heck was I doing this?'"

Monroe is a jail, not a prison facility. While some inmates are waiting for their day in court, the majority are serving sentences of anywhere from a few weeks up to a year for a range of offenses including drug possession, driving under the influence (DUI), burglary, robbery, and prostitution. In more ways than one, these were not your average students.

"The energy level was like nothing I'd experienced in any classroom anywhere, and I've taught in a lot of different settings," says Wiltse. "The classes were edgy, raucous, profane, personal, funny, rancorous, and contemplative, all in the space of an hour."

Despite his initial trepidation, Wiltse says, "By the third meeting at Monroe, I was hooked."

Wiltse chose the jail rather than one of the prisons in the area primarily because of its close proximity to the Nazareth College campus—and for another reason too.

"Beyond the simple convenience factor, I wanted my students to understand that the incarcerated are everywhere among us," he says. "There are 2.4 million people behind bars in America right now and they are not somewhere else. They're right here."

The next step was to involve his students in the jail work. After meeting with administrators at Nazareth and MCF, gaining clearance to bring students into the facility, Wiltse made some significant alterations to his Crime and Detective Fiction course. He changed the name of it to Crime and Punishment in the USA and, along with including novels and short stories about jail and prison life in the syllabus, added a service-learning component. As part of this component, which later became known as the Jail Project, groups of Nazareth students could visit Monroe six times during the semester in lieu of writing a final paper for the class. While at Monroe, they would meet with inmates in small groups and discuss a series of books and the questions they raised about crime and criminals, the criminal justice system, incarceration, and rehabilitation.

Outside of class, the Nazareth students were required to keep a journal in which they documented their experiences at the jail. They were also required to complete a second, albeit smaller, project that either benefited the inmates at Monroe or raised awareness about jail or prison issues.

"In the past, students have submitted articles to campus, local, or hometown papers about their experiences at Monroe, have coordinated community forums around jail and prison-related issues, and have held book drives for the MCF library," says Wiltse, commenting on this outreach work. "I also encourage students to donate the books they have used for the course back to the project. As much as I would like to believe that they are retaining their books and lining the walls of their dorms and apartments with them, I know that many are selling them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. So, I encourage the students to donate them and, as a result, the number of new books that I have to buy each semester for the inmates gets smaller and smaller."

The inmates at Monroe, who are male and female and range in age from 16 and up, had to fulfill a series of requirements as well when the program started. They agreed to read six selections from the syllabus, attend each meeting and, like the Nazareth students, keep a journal.

The format of the Jail Project, which is supported by the Nazareth College Center for Service Learning, has remained the same since the first students began visiting Monroe in 2002, as has the unique role that Wiltse plays.

"Typically, I set up the groups, which consist of around a half dozen students and a half dozen inmates in each," he says. "I attend the first meeting of each group. I help the students through security and then stay for the first few minutes of the meeting to help break the ice. I give the students and the inmates an overview of the project, set some ground rules, and then I leave. The rest of the time my role is to be constantly in touch with both the students who are doing the project and the educational coordinator at the jail to make sure that everything is running smoothly and that everyone is feeling like the project is productive. One thing I do not want to do is give everyone, the students and inmates alike, the sense that I'm looking over their shoulders. I want things to grow and develop organically."

A typical session might cover topics ranging from how a book does or does not capture life in jail to how the inmates themselves feel about being incarcerated.

BREAKING DOWN WALLS
It only takes fifteen minutes to get from the Nazareth College campus to the Monroe Correctional Facility. Once there, one is met by an anonymous red brick building, which houses 350-400 inmates locked away not in cells but in "pods," or communal living spaces. But the building does not tell the story of Monroe. There are no bars on the windows. No razor wire fence encircling it. Once inside, though, the purpose of the space becomes clear. There is a large, gray metal detector, uniformed guards, and visitors wearing identification tags around their necks that read "The Bearer May Travel to Designated Areas of the Monroe Correctional Facility."

As one travels deeper into the jail, through the large door that separates the inmates from the outside world, he or she enters a long hall which features a series of closed doors—the "pods." Further down, an open door comes into view. This room is not a pod, but rather a classroom that holds bookcases, tables and chairs. It's in this place, Classroom #4, where the work of the Jail Project takes place. It's the place where walls are broken down.

"I'm from Rochester originally, so I would drive past the jail a lot," says Aaron Civalier, a former student in Wiltse's class. "I never thought I would set foot in the jail. But getting to know the inmates made me open up my eyes. I know a lot of people look down on people who are incarcerated, but doing this project made me see that they were just normal people."

Adds Jessica Reilly, a recent Nazareth graduate who took the course last spring, "I was raised in a family that stressed punishment more than rehabilitation. I felt that if you did something wrong you should know what's going to happen and be punished for it. But this class helped me broaden my horizons. There are often extenuating circumstances and just because someone did something that got them into jail, it doesn't mean they're a bad person. People sometimes make bad choices, but they are still people."

For the inmates, the Jail Project has helped alleviate both the monotony of life in jail and has provided them with another means, beyond visitors and phone calls, of interacting with the world beyond it.

"This class was like opening a door and you have a little crack of light coming into a dark room," says one inmate. "You can't open the door, but you can open it enough so you get a little of the light in. This class was like opening up that little bit of outside society into our life in here. We looked forward to that."

"It was really great to come and talk with the students and get to know their views," adds a fellow inmate. "I think they were probably interested to see what brought us to jail and why we were here. I was feeling kind of nervous about meeting them, that they would look down on us because well, you know, here we are in jail. I was glad to see that they didn't."

The Jail Project may affect the inmates at Monroe in another way. In 1994, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, released a report linking reduced prisoner recidivism to participation in prison education programs. While the report focused on prisons, these findings may be applicable to jail populations as well.

Therefore, Wiltse's program may help the inmates at Monroe avoid returning there following their release.

Professor Wiltse with Sabra "Twig" Hickam (second from the left), the education coordinator at Monroe Correctional Facility (MCF).

"A project like this really develops the self-esteem of the participants," says Sabra "Twig" Hickam, the education coordinator at Monroe. "They feel good about the discussions they have with the Nazareth students. It's stimulating their minds and gets them out of the mindset of getting back out there and doing drugs or participating in some other criminal behavior."

Wiltse echoes these sentiments when talking about the goals he has for the inmates in his program.

"The most important thing that I hope the inmates will take away is a sense of themselves as thinking beings whose ideas and opinions are valued," he says. "This is something that they may not have experienced anywhere else in the criminal justice system."

And there's another thing the inmates at Monroe, and in other correctional facilities across the country, may not have experienced.

"Higher education programs in jails and prisons have been drastically cut since Congress eliminated Pell Grants and other support for inmates in 1995," says Wiltse, who continues to lead discussions with inmates at Monroe each fall. "Because of this, there is a scarcity of educational opportunities beyond GED classes in jails and prisons in the United States. I hope that the Jail Project, at least at Monroe, can help fill some of the void left by these cuts."

FUTURE PLANS
Back in his office, Ed Wiltse is feeling troubled again. But not by his Crime and Punishment in the USA course or by the work being done at Monroe. What's weighing on him is more about volume than anything else. Wiltse recognizes that there are scores of jails and prisons across the country that not only keep inmates in, but keep people like him and his students out, and he hopes that someday his Jail Project will not be unique. That no one will think twice about a professor bringing his or her students deep into the corrections system, with notepads in hand, to talk about books with the inmates.

Professor Wiltse has been working with inmates at MCF since 2001.

"This work has given me the opportunity to work with an amazing group of people," says Wiltse of the inmates. "I never would have expected that they would challenge me and enlighten me in the ways that they have, and I'd love to see other people take up similar projects not only with literary texts, but with other kinds. It seems to me that one could easily work in jails and prisons with a range of other college or university classes and disciplines."

But regardless of what happens in the future, Ed Wiltse will continue his work at Monroe. He will still leave his office a few days a week, get into his car, and drive. Along the way, he will pass convenience stores and joggers, malls and fields crowded with children at play. When he reaches his destination, he will enter a jail that doesn't look anything like one. He will pass by a metal detector and slip his visitor's pass around his neck.

And then he will disappear, swallowed whole by the door that leads to the long hallway where Classroom #4 and his other students wait.

Article by Robert Bochnak, G07, senior writer/communications manager, Office of Graduate Studies

Photos by Alex Shukoff

This article originally appeared in the fall 2007 edition of Alma Matters, the magazine for arts, sciences, and engineering graduate alumni.