2008 Woodie Awards
UWF professor sheds light on local prison
Cheryl Swanson doesn't teach students in an ordinary classroom
Lindsey Davies / Staff Writer
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A guard is slashed on the head as he tries to search an inmate suspected of concealing a weapon. A 45-minute riot follows, leaving one inmate dead, 30 inmates injured and 20 guards wounded at a maximum-security prison near San Diego.
This violent world is the workplace of Cheryl Swanson, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of West Florida.
The soft-spoken woman recently was given the opportunity to be part of an educational program at W.C. Holman Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Atmore, Ala. It is home for men who have committed serious crimes ranging from rape and burglary to murder. Many of the inmates are on death row or are serving life sentences for crimes such as these.
Swanson said the "Restorative Justice" program deals with inmates learning how to handle conflict in a responsible manner, to be accountable for their actions and to make the system more responsive to victims and their needs.
"The prison can be such a destructive environment because you have a lot of men convicted of serious crimes in very close quarters," Swanson said. "The idea is to have an environment that promotes peace, stability and security and the least possible cost."
It is hard to imagine this soft-spoken, fashionably dressed middle-aged woman interacting with convicted rapists and murderers.
"I seem to be able to engage the inmates quite well," Swanson said. "They are interested and quite responsive."
Swanson said the program is cost-effective because everything is donated, including her time and the materials used to teach the class. She also said it saves taxpayers' money because fewer correction officers are needed at the facility.
Swanson said she teaches three small groups of male inmates two times per month at the facility in the Holman Honor Dorm. She said the honor dorm is a selective section of the prison that is only for inmates who have no disciplinary infractions, although many of the men she teaches still have committed serious crimes.
"These are people who should definitely be thinking about the impact of their actions," Swanson said.
"The only time I feel uncomfortable is when I walk through the prison yard to get to the honor dorm," she added. "There is a big difference between the inmates who have not been socialized and those who enter the community in the honor dorm."
Swanson said the inmates at the honor dorm vary greatly in the amount of education they've received. She said there are some inmates with second- and third-grade educations, and there is one with a master's degree in electrical engineering.
Swanson demonstrated this by describing a card given to her by one of the inmates. She said the inmate was self-taught and gave her a card with a letter that was grammatically correct, beautifully worded and written with perfect penmanship. She added that the inmates work together in her class.
"It's almost like a one-room schoolhouse in the old days, where the ones who are more capable try to help the ones who are less capable," Swanson said.
She said the inmates' response to her class has been positive. "They are highly participatory, and I would say that has a lot to do with the fact that they don't get a lot of stimulation outside of their environment," Swanson said. "Because of that, they are not distracted by all of the things you and I are distracted by." The course's primary focus was on apathy and victimology, which explores the impact of the offenders' actions on their victims and victims' families, Swanson said.
"When offenders go through the criminal justice system, the justice system says, 'You're guilty,' so you never own what you did," she said. "Once offenders are convicted, there is an opportunity to own what they did."
Swanson said the focus this fall has transitioned to the community part of restorative justice.
"It focuses on people's emotional lives and how that affects the community in either positive or negative ways," Swanson said. She also said one of her classes focuses on forgiveness.
Swanson said some of the class's activities include discussing about what is important for making a community work and how this can be applied to the honor dorm community. She also surveyed the inmates on what their expectations are for a community. She said these expectations include creativity, respect and responsibility.
Swanson said UWF students have gotten involved with her classes at the correctional facility by thinking of questions for the inmates to answer and reading hypothetical letters written by the inmates to their victims.
Swanson said some UWF students have visited the prison. She said any staff or students are welcome to visit the facility as long as there is a significant reason for the visit or that it pertains to what they are studying.
Swanson has been teaching at UWF since 1990. She holds a doctorate in political science, specializing in state and local government.
She said she became interested in criminal justice as a graduate student when she worked on a national grant studying assaults on police officers and co-authored an article on the relationship between officer height and assault behavior.
Swanson said she also teaches a restorative justice class at UWF.
She said she got involved with the program at the correctional facility after a discussion with UWF Chairman John Smykla while she was being recruited from the University of Southern Alabama.
Swanson said she contacted Chris Summers, the chaplain at the facility, and asked him if he would like to give a guest lecture to her restorative justice class she was teaching at Fort Walton Beach at the time.
"He came over, and we started a dialogue. And he asked me if I liked to teach," Swanson said. "I went through all of the background checks, got approval from the warden and started in June."
Swanson said she would like UWF students to develop greater empathy for offenders. She said she wants UWF students to be able to realize there are offenders convicted of serious crimes who still can make positive contributions to society.
She said she also would like students to better understand how offenders can contribute to the healing process of victims.
The largest goal of restorative justice, however, is to contribute to the notion of having a restorative community within the prison, Swanson said.
She added that "within the class itself, the primary goal is to give inmates tools to realize the positive aspects of community and to make the community work as effectively as possible."
Swanson said she eventually would like to do some additional research projects and get UWF students involved, but she does not want to introduce change too quickly to the prison environment. She said that for now, it is about getting comfortable with the instructional and exposure aspect.
"I want the research to be helpful to people," Swanson said. "I want it to be something that gives back, not just something that interests me."