The media is in the business of “If it bleeds, it leads.” As a result, many pressing social problems and promising initiatives are left behind. Incarcerated populations, such as prisoners and patients in mental health facilities, and the de facto incarcerated, such as the Alzheimer’s wings of nursing homes, end up being nearly invisible. Yet the United States has a prison population of more than 1.2 million by the end of 2022. And here we are clearly the world leaders. Our prisoners represent 20% of the world total.
A new story, Inside America’s Least Likely Prison Experiment in the Financial Times opens a window into this world and also ends up highlighting the contradictions of US policy towards prisoners. The article talks about the charity Puppies Behind Bars. I know Puppies Behind Bars because I donated to it a few years after it was founded in 1997. Originally, It was to train puppies as assistance dogs for the blind..1 The rationale behind using prisoners was to be able to give the puppies the considerable attention they needed to become good guide dogs; it’s a 24-hour job when done right. Not all candidates succeed, even with quality training. And of course, a second set of reasons concerned the prisoners: they had to learn to care for another creature, then abandon it once it had “graduated.”
The article tells the story of how Puppies Behind Bars founder Gloria Stoga decided to bring Puppies Behind Bars to one of the toughest facilities in the United States, Green Haven, where half the population is serving life sentences. Puppies Behind Bars has strict standards for vetting inmates: They must never have attacked prison staff or attempted to escape, must be free of offenses for a year, and must not have been accused of sex crimes or violence against children or animals. A previous story reported that they are further vetted for, among other things, their willingness to handle dog poop and fluids. Oh, and they have at least three years left in prison.
The Financial Times article does not make it clear, as previous descriptions of Puppies Behind Bars have, that the prisoners who handle the dogs are placed in a separate wing. This was the training model in place in 2004, by The Smithsonian:
Two handlers – a primary caretaker and a backup caretaker – are assigned to each puppy. The inmates, who live with their puppies in a housing unit separate from the general prison population, take the dogs almost everywhere, from prison jobs to dentist appointments. A six-hour training session is organized once a week. Breeders teach their charges to climb stairs, to come when called and not to bark or beg. An inmate, whose puppy was destined for a guide dog school in France, learned to give orders in French.
The reason Stoga is interested in such a tough prison population, as the article demonstrates in its long form, is that training these puppies is very hard and demanding work. Those who serve long sentences, if successful, can become trainers for many years. So while, as this article also demonstrates, the failure rate among Green Haven inmates chosen for the program (so far) is high, those who do make it will have relatively long terms as trainers. And since this appears to be the toughest population Stoga has ever handled, one can assume that she and her colleagues at Puppies Behind Bars will get better at controlling this type of population and, if true, at successfully enlisting other maximum security prisons to participate. (The article mentions that Puppies Behind Bars has operated in other maximum security facilities, but implies that Green Haven is more difficult, for reasons that seem to have to do with more than its size.)
Prison director Mark Miller is a strong supporter:
Miller arrived at Green Haven in 2021, determined to bring PBB into the prison. He had heard about a dog sent by the program to help the widow of a deceased police officer. The gesture touched him. “I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal,” he said. “My whole thought was: where are these dogs going and who are they helping those who really need it? »
There was also an operational aspect. Boredom underlies much of the worst behavior in prisons. Miller found that programs like the college at Green Haven kept inmates occupied and motivated, and reduced violence, suicides and drug abuse.
In the United States, the “housekeeping” argument that programs improve inmate behavior and, therefore, staff working conditions remains the most politically powerful. This is also still considered progressive in a country where many believe violent offenders are entitled to nothing more than a cell.
Note that the article avoids a possible additional justification for Puppies Behind Bars, that of rehabilitation. The Early History of the Smithsonian insists that the small number of inmates as trainers nevertheless had a disproportionate effect on the entire establishment:
Since November 1998, Jim Hayden has watched the puppies work their magic at Fishkill Correctional Facility, a prison that houses 1,750 men in Beacon, New York. Although only 25 of the inmates are breeders, “the dogs have had a calming and humanizing effect on the entire staff, including me,” says Hayden, deputy assistant superintendent of programs. “They broke these inmates, took their hard shells and cut them open. Their level of love and commitment to these dogs is something I never expected to see.
A 20-month analysis sponsored by pet food company Iams, which donates food to the PBB, supports Hayden’s observations. Inmates who raised puppies reported better overall well-being than a group of inmates who did not work with dogs. PBB inmates were more compassionate and responsible and believed they could change their lives.
Tony Garcia, 42, raised four PBB dogs before being released from Fishkill last January after serving 16 years in prison for armed robbery. He now supports his wife and four children by painting apartments and has applied for a full-time job as a social worker at an organization that helps ex-prisoners. “The patience and hope that I have, and my willingness to work hard,” Garcia says, “I gained through this program. »
Jake Charest, 27, who is serving his ninth year of a 7-to-21-year sentence for attempted murder, is raising his second dog, Skip. “We are all sorry for what we did, but instead of saying it, which is easy, we show it,” he said. “These dogs make spending time here almost bearable. »
The Smithsonian points out that the Puppies Behind Bars program has not reduced recidivism…in Fishkill as a whole, which, given the small number of participants, seems like a completely unreasonable expectation.
Your humble blogger must confess that he has a dangerously limited knowledge of this world. I can count on one hand the number of people I personally know who have been to prison and still have fingers. Two were very well off, one was quite well off, so all three got out without having to worry about not having enough money to pay for housing, food, and transportation. Only one had a violent past: an absolutely wonderful laborer I hired for many strange tasks while I was preparing my mother’s house for sale. He had a very bad temper (which I have never seen), was prone to barroom brawls, and did not care about being in prison.
Given that American prisons are not rehabilitation centers, it is not difficult to understand why so many inmates end up returning to jail after their release. Even those who do not exhibit sociopathic tendencies have difficulty settling into a normal life, including finding regular paid work. If they have been involved in gangs or drug dealing, it is not hard to see them slipping back into the past, even if they had decided not to, if they are struggling to earn their lives while respecting the law.
I invite you to read this article in its entirety. It is beautifully written and the author clearly questioned the purpose of punishment and whether rehabilitation and redemption were possible. For example:
Being in prison distorts your beliefs, like trying to see something clearly through water. I will never know the truth about these men. But I’ve come to believe that no one is equal to the worst thing they’ve ever done. No one is as good as the best thing they’ve done either. This is something dogs never need to learn.
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1 I must confess that I stopped donating after I returned from Australia. This story does not go back far enough in time to cover the shift in mission from guide dogs to veterinary dogs and law enforcement roles. But it is not hard to deduce from the author’s mention that many prison governors and guards themselves were unhappy with the program because it gave criminals the opportunity to play with dogs, and therefore opposed it, that Stoga felt it necessary to use the guards in training dogs for roles that were seen as serving the wider police community.
