The media is in the “blood-to-the-top” business. As a result, many pressing social issues and promising initiatives quickly go unmentioned. People incarcerated are largely invisible, as are prisoners and patients in psychiatric hospitals and de facto inmates in Alzheimer’s wards in nursing homes. Yet the U.S. prison population is As of the end of 2022, it will exceed 1.2 million. And we are clearly a world leader. Our country has 20% of the world’s prisoners..
A new story, Inside America’s Most Unlikely Prison Experiment This article from the Financial Times opens a window into this world, highlighting the contradictions in US prison policy. The article is about a charity called Puppies Behind Bars. I know about Puppies Behind Bars because I donated to them for several years after they were founded in 1997. Originally, It was to train puppies as guide dogs..1 The reason for using convicts is that they can give the puppies the full attention they need to become good guide dogs. To do it properly, it is a 24 hour job. Even with good training, not all candidates are successful. And of course, the second reason is about the convicts. They will learn to care for another animal and then let it go once it has “graduated.”
The article focuses on how Puppies Behind Bars founder Gloria Stoga decided to bring Puppies Behind Bars to Green Haven, one of the toughest prisons in the country, where half of the inmates are serving life sentences. Puppies Behind Bars has strict screening criteria for inmates. Inmates must have never attacked a prison officer or attempted escape, have a one-year violation-free record, and not been charged with a sex offense or violence against children or animals. Previous articles have reported that inmates are further screened, including whether they are willing to handle dog feces and bodily fluids. They must also have at least three years remaining on their sentence.
The Financial Times article, unlike previous “Puppies Behind Bars” accounts, does not explicitly state that the prisoners caring for these dogs are moved to a separate wing, which was the training model in 2004. From the Smithsonian Museum:
Each puppy is assigned two caretakers: a main caretaker and a backup. Inmates live with the puppies in housing units separate from the general inmate population and take the dogs almost everywhere, from prison work to dental appointments. There are six-hour training sessions once a week, where caretakers learn how to teach the dogs to climb stairs, come when called, and not bark or beg. One inmate ended up sending his puppy to a guide dog school in France, where he learned to give commands in French.
The reason Stoga is interested in such hardcore inmates is because, as the article states at length, training these puppies is very difficult and demanding work. Inmates with long sentences can be trainers for many years if they pass. So, as the article also indicates, while there is (for now) a high failure rate among Green Haven inmates selected for the program, those who pass will be trainers for a relatively long time. And because this seems to be the toughest inmate Stoga has taken on, perhaps she and the Puppies Behind Bars staff will be better at selecting these kinds of inmates. And if that’s true, it would also hopefully get other maximum security prisons on board (the article states that Puppies Behind Bars has worked with other maximum security facilities, but implies that Green Haven is more difficult for reasons that seem to be more than just size).
Prisons Warden Mark Miller is a strong supporter.
Miller arrived in Green Haven in 2021 and was determined to bring PBB to the prison. He had heard about a dog sent from the program to help the widow of a fallen police officer, and was moved by the act. “I’m not a compassionate liberal,” he says. “I always wondered, where are these dogs going, and who are they helping that really needs help?”
There were operational problems, too: boredom is the cause of much of the worst behavior in prisons. Miller found that implementing college-like programs at Green Haven kept inmates busy and interested, reducing violence, suicide and drug abuse.
In the United States, the “internal control” argument – that programs will improve prisoner behavior and therefore working conditions for staff – remains the most politically powerful – and is still considered progressive in a country where many believe violent criminals have no right to anything other than solitary confinement.
Note that the article does not address a further possible justification for Puppies Behind Bars: rehabilitation. Old stories from the Smithsonian Museum It highlights the fact that despite the small number of inmates serving as trainers, it had a disproportionate impact on the entire facility.
Jim Hayden has been watching the puppies work their magic since November 1998 at Fishkill Correctional Facility, a 1,750-man prison in Beacon, N.Y. Though only 25 inmates are raising the puppies, “the dogs have had a calming and humanizing effect on all the staff, including me,” says Hayden, who serves as assistant director of the program. “They’ve broken the inmates’ hearts, cracked their hardened shells, and broken them. The level of love and devotion they have for the dogs is something I never expected.”
A 20-month analysis sponsored by Iams, a pet food company that donates food to PBB, backed up Hayden’s observations: Prisoners who fostered puppies reported higher overall happiness than a group of prisoners who had no experience with dogs. PBB prisoners were more caring and responsible, and believed they could turn their lives around.
Tony Garcia, 42, raised four PBB dogs before he was released from Fishkill prison last January after serving a 16-year sentence for armed robbery. He now supports his wife and four children by painting apartments and is applying for a full-time job as a case worker for an organization that supports former inmates. “My perseverance, hope and willingness to work hard are things I’ve gained from being in this program,” Garcia said.
Jake Charest, 27, who is serving the ninth year of a seven-to-21-year sentence for attempted murder, is fostering his second dog, Skip. “All of us in the program regret what we’ve done, but it’s easy to say it, but we show it with our actions,” he says. “These dogs make our time here almost bearable.”
The Smithsonian notes that the Puppies Behind Bars program did not reduce recidivism rates overall at Fishkill Prison, but given the low participation rates, this seems like an extremely unreasonable expectation.
Being a humble blogger, I must confess to being dangerously ignorant about this world. I can count on one hand the number of people I personally know who have been in prison, with more fingers to spare. Two were very wealthy, and one was fairly well off, so all three never had to worry about not having enough money to pay for housing, food, or transportation after they were released. Only one had a history of violence; that was a truly amazing all around craftsman I hired when I was getting my mother’s house ready to sell. He had a very short temper (which I never saw), was in a lot of bar fights, and didn’t mind being in prison.
American prisons are not designed to be rehabilitative, so it’s not surprising that many inmates return to prison after release. Even people without sociopathic tendencies have a hard time settling into normal life, especially finding regular, paying work. It’s easy to imagine that people who have been involved with or around gangs or the drug trade could fall back into it if they find it difficult to earn an income in a law-abiding way, even if they had resolved not to do so.
I encourage you to read the whole piece. It is beautifully written and the author clearly reflects on the purpose of punishment and whether rehabilitation or redemption is possible. For example:
Prison distorts your beliefs, like trying to see something clearly through water. I will never know the truth about these men. But I have come to believe that no one can equal the worst thing I have ever committed, and no one can equal the best thing I have ever committed. That is something you don’t need to teach a dog.
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1 I must confess that I stopped donating after I returned from Australia. The story doesn’t go back far enough to mention the change in mission from guide dogs to veterinary and law enforcement-related roles, but since the author notes that many prison wardens and guards themselves resented and opposed the program because it gave criminals an opportunity to play with the dogs, it’s not hard to surmise that Stoga felt he needed to appeal to the gatekeepers by training dogs for a role that he thought would benefit the police community as a whole.
