Appeared in the November 2002 issue of Focus.

Editor’s Note: To give our readers a sense of one social worker’s experience working in the prison system, we asked Ros Winsor to interview Jeanette Hanlon. Hanlon is the founder and Executive Director of Partakers, Inc. Ros Winsor, LICSW, is the founder of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition.

How did you get involved in prison work?

While doing a fellowship at McLean Hospital, a psychiatrist from Bridgewater State Hospital approached me, stated the need was great, and asked me to consider working in the prison system. I had been intrigued for some time by my and others’ ability to dismiss prisoners as America’s present day lepers. So, I seriously paused to consider the invitation without resorting to the barriers and justifications I had created to totally dismiss this population from my reality. Jeanette Hanlon, LICSW

How did the work compare with other clinical work you’ve done?

In one sense it was the most gratifying work I’ve ever done because by simply following social work principles and treating prisoners with respect, your “interventions” can mean a great deal to people starved for a genuine human connection. On the other hand, the system is designed to dehumanize, if not brutalize, its inhabitants — both inmates and guards. At best we warehouse people and do little or nothing to prepare them to return to our communities. It was immensely frustrating to work in a system that takes no responsibility for results!

So after a few years you left to found Partakers. What is its purpose?

Partakers is a faith-based non-profit which, in the words of our mission statement, “strives for reconciliation between prisoners and society...” We’re old fashioned: we believe in rehabilitation. We’re also modern: we have embraced the old but newly articulated philosophy of restorative justice, which stresses mutual accountability — prisoners need to be accountable to victims and to society but the community is accountable for the conditions that breed crime and for providing opportunities for offenders to learn, change, and make amends.

The new Restorative Justice Movement is the most hopeful thing that’s happened in the world of criminal justice in years. How does Partakers implement restorative justice principles?

At Partakers we provide opportunities for ordinary folks to be involved with prisoners, as well as internships for social work and theology students. And social workers can get CEU’s for their involvement. Some people participate in the weekend workshops with prisoners in the Quaker originated program “Alternatives to Violence.” Other people attend or facilitate weekly groups on emotional literacy for prisoners based on a book by Robin Casarjian, Houses of Healing.

If policy makers were serious about cutting crime, the most important thing they could do would be to provide a college education for prisoners. Almost half (44%) of Massachusetts prisoners are back behind bars within 3 years of getting out. Years ago when college programs were available in most Massachusetts prisons, not one prisoner who completed a college degree returned to prison. But Congress in its wisdom eliminated funding for prison college programs in 1994.
Boston University, at its own expense, still offers college courses in three prisons, but only for prisoners who’ve already amassed nine college credits. Partakers matches interested prisoners with groups — often churches — who agree to finance correspondence courses for those prisoners and to provide moral and academic support through visits and letters.

In what way is Partakers a “faith-based program?”

Partakers is based, as are all religious faiths, on the precepts that all human beings are worthy of dignity and respect and, perhaps with outside help, capable of change. My own Christian faith has provided the strength and motivation for my involvement, but Partakers is non-sectarian. We are not seeking to convert anyone to a particular faith, but to provide opportunities for spiritual, as well as educational and psychological, growth for prisoners and for our volunteers. I have been particularly interested in providing opportunities for faith communities to fulfill their mandate to be present to the disenfranchised.

Where does the name Partakers come from?

It’s a word used in the Bible to convey the mutuality on which Partakers is based. Cf. Ephesians 2:19: “They are no longer strangers and aliens one to another but citizens being built together as fellow-heirs, fellow members of the body and fellow partakers.” This is difficult work. What keeps you going?

Unlike the stereotypes, there are many prisoners who are so hungry for an opportunity to change and so responsive to the interest which people from the outside can show them. I feel that this program is making a difference in the lives of prisoners and also of people who may have never given two minutes’ thought to those behind bars or to our criminal justice policies. Being a social worker, I am committed to social change, but I don’t think that will happen until we build more bridges across the wall that artificially separates people into “good” and “bad.”

What would you like the FOCUS readers to do?

I’d like them to come into a prison, even if it’s just for a weekend workshop to gain first hand knowledge of the grim reality which more and more of our fellow citizens and our clients are coping with. Hopefully they’ll be more informed advocates for criminal justice reforms and perhaps even consider working in a corectional setting.

To learn more about the new restorative justice movement, contact NASW’S Criminal Justice Committee co-chairs Dorothy Weitzman at 617-552-4029 or Kathy Doller at 508-285-8744 or Suffolk University’s Center for Restorative Justice at 617-305-1991.