One afternoon last month on Rikers Island, a small group of detainees sat in an otherwise bare cell block decorated with streamers, waiting to deliver inspirational speeches about the future.
“I’m a little nervous,” said one detainee, Dashawn, as he stepped in front of a small audience, holding his speech on two pieces of paper in his hands.
Dashawn and 18 other detainees were graduating from a three-credit criminal justice course at LaGuardia Community College, offered in partnership with the nonprofit College Way. The graduates asked that Gothamist not use their full names because their cases are still being processed.
The course began this summer, just as the city Department of Correction was cutting many other classes and programs for detainees. It survived because everyone involved worked pro bono, so it cost the DOC nothing.
Dashawn quickly found his voice to share a message of hope: Your life is “not over” due to being in jail, he said.
In a speech that quoted spiritual theorist Eckhart Tolle, Dashawn said he was committed to his intellectual development and building generational wealth for his family.
LaGuardia criminal justice professor and course director Cory Rowe said she and other volunteers saw a “profound” shift in the students across the course of the program.
“I think it is just a testament to the power of education,” she said.
The course teaches detainees both practical law and self-development tools, such as meditation and mindfulness, over three months of weekly lessons. It’s the first college program of any kind to be offered at Rikers’ George R. Vierno Center — a housing area that has very little programming, in part because the men detained there are charged with serious felonies, said Rowe.
The graduates said the course was transformational.
Many said they now intend to go to college. One man who was recently released has already visited CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College and enrolled to get his GED, according to Rowe.
The DOC…
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