The Human Kindness Foundation

Bo Lozoff

Extracts from a recent talk by Bo Lozoff about the work and philosophy of the Human Kindness Foundation (see also the previous item).

People who defend the prison system, or who want to build even more prisons and sentence more people, they are the idealists, not me. They're 'negative idealists', because they have a punitive ideal which reality continues to disprove. It simply doesn't work. Hurting people who hurt us just perpetuates a lot of hurting.

'The vast majority of prisoners hate their lives, and they begin to shine when someone comes along and shows them they can be of value'

I would say that over 90% of prisoners would love to straighten their lives out if given a decent chance. Very few people are dead-set on doing wrong. The vast majority of prisoners hate their lives, they feel like worthless losers, and they begin to shine when someone comes along and shows them they can be of value.

That's why I'm so passionate about prisoners doing some kind of 'good works' instead of just getting an education and job skills. As somebody named Susie Gomez once said, 'It is an honour to be asked to help.' It's an amazing experience to introduce a prisoner to that honour, and to watch the profound changes which take place.

I don't say to set everyone free. There may always be twisted people who need to be removed from society to protect the public. And sometimes somebody may even forfeit his right to ever again be trusted with his freedom - perhaps like David 'Son of Sam' or Charles Manson. Why should the public be guinea pigs?

But there are very few people like that, and we already have more than enough prisons to hold them. And even so, we can create optimum conditions for their redemption so that even if they're behind bars for the rest of their lives, they have an opportunity to become respected writers, inventors, thinkers, artists, or humanitarians, contributing to the world through their unique restrictions and humility for their past.

'That's why I'm so passionate about prisoners doing some kind of 'good works' instead of just getting an education and job skills'

But those are the few. The many are prisoners who would be better served through imaginative combinations of house arrest, community service, electronic monitoring, family counselling, restitution, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and so forth. Prisons should be the last recourse. And prisons offer no solution to problems which are primarily social and medical, such as drug abuse.

The Human Kindness Foundation rely on free-will donations rather than grant applications. Their address is above.

Prisons with menus of 'kindness projects'

Bo Lozoff goes into more detail about his ideas for service to the community by prisoners.

Human beings - including prisoners - have a fundamental need to contribute something to the world around them, a need to focus their attention sometimes on the problems of others instead of solely on themselves.

There are prison inmates who translate books into braille, raise vegetables for nearby nursing homes, operate a children's radio station, build and repair toys for needy children, build playground equipment for day-care centres, raise money for charities, correspond with terminally ill children, run a wide variety of delinquency-prevention and substance-abuse programmes - all without leaving the prison.

'At most prisons, empathy and altruism are virtually impossible to express, because conservatives and liberals alike have unwittingly designed prisons as narcissistic environments'

But such programmes are rare. At most prisons, empathy and altruism are virtually impossible to express, because conservatives and liberals alike have unwittingly designed prisons as narcissistic environments. An inmate's attention is focused intensely on himself, whether in negative pursuits (physical survival, power struggles, con games) or positive ones (education, vocational training, parole plans). How can we be surprised when an offender gets out and seems to be a 'taker', entirely self-concerned, with no giving skills of his own? He's had no practice at all.

In our pluralistic culture, all the elements of the conservative and liberal myths seem to have amalgamated into one monstrously counter-productive prison system: 'Lock 'em up, punish, educate and release.' It almost guarantees an unending stalemate, because conservatives can go on blaming the system's failures on its liberal tenets, and liberals on its conservative ones.

But what if the problem doesn't lie in the battle between conservative and liberal values, but in their underlying narcissism instead? Nearly every code of ethics, philosophy, or religion points out the unsatisfactoriness of intense self-concern. Even outside of prison, people who are obsessed with themselves do not live very happy lives. We see tragic figures like Christina Onassis, Howard Hughes, and Elvis Presley, and we shake our heads in wonder. We read about the crimes of greed committed by Boesky or DeLorean and we think, 'My God, how many millions do they need?' We should realise by now that education, training and privilege do not guarantee happy or constructive lifestyles. Our current prison system is reminiscent of former California governor Jerry Brown's observation, 'When there's a problem, conservatives deny it exists, while liberals throw money at it.'

I've heard from a number of prisoners who claim that neither punishment nor rehabilitation programmes had much effect on them until they stumbled onto an opportunity to be of value to others. And suddenly, the education and training programmes, and even the fact of their punishment, finally found a context which enabled them to turn their lives around. They discovered within their acts of kindness a freedom which gave them hope and self-respect and, often for the first time, a connection with the rest of humanity.

'The vast majority of prisoners would love to become kinder, more trustworthy people'

Our crime-and-punishment dilemma is not the simplistic Willie Horton morality play politicians shove down our throats at election time. The truth is, because we eventually release 99% of them, we have to hope that criminals become more decent human beings. A very small percentage of prison inmates may not want this decency, but I know from fifteen years' experience of dealing with tens of thousands of prisoners that the vast majority would love to become kinder, more trustworthy people. To be successful, a prison system needs to allow opportunities towards that end.

'Each prison could have a menu of 'kindness projects' in which inmates are invited to participate'

Each community has so many needs, it's hard to imagine that some of them couldn't be met by volunteers from the nearest prison - and I don't mean highway beautification crews, but rather projects with direct beneficiaries, projects with a heart-to-heart quality. Each prison could have a menu of 'kindness projects' in which inmates are invited to participate. Such programmes as the examples mentioned above have gone on in prisons for many years, but for the most part they're not supported administratively or respected as a serious component of rehabilitation; they're regarded mostly as 'fluff'. All I'm suggesting is to shift our rehabilitative focus to the obvious: the cultivation of empathy and altruism is paramount, not fluff.

Many prisoners have left deep scars in their victims' lives and have been deeply scarred themselves - before, during and after their crimes. The milk of human kindness is a time-tested balm which heals such wounds and scars. With more recognition, planning and institutional support, 'kindness projects' could become a staple in our prison systems and affect millions of lives for the better, on both sides of the bars. The following, for instance, are two suggestions I can make for such projects.

The Great Convict Smoke-Out

Here's one of these great ideas where everybody wins: how about starting a project in your prisons for inmates and staff to quit smoking, and donate all the money that would have been spent on cigarettes into a charity pool?

At a women's prison recently, I looked around and did some calculations, $600 a day was being spent on cigarettes, going towards nothing except poor health. $600 a day equals $219,000 a year - which could fund an entire shelter for battered women, abused children or homeless people.

Recycling in the joint

In the prison visiting area alone, on a weekend, there are probably several whole barrels of drink cans that are trucked out with all the other garbage to a local landfill. And think about how many pounds of newspapers, books, mail and magazines get tossed out every day in your prison. Persuade the administration to allow a recycling crew of inmates who are willing to help out. A recycling agency may pay for all those cans and papers and the money could go into a special 'human kindness' account, for you to send donations to those in need.

Bo Lozoff is preparing a book entitled 'The Freedom of Kindness' demonstrating the variety of compassionate services that are or could be provided by inmates. It will be available free of charge to prison staff and to prisoners themselves. The latter can also receive free Lozoff's book 'Lineage and Other Stories' - which are wise and witty tales of prisoners and others facing up to challenges and developing courage, self-honesty, humour and a sense of awe and wonder in the process ($9 incl. p&p overseas to non-prisoners).

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