Nicholas Hunt
News Sentinel
WARTBURG, Tenn. — As Allan Brown sat in a meeting room in the Morgan County Correctional Complex, it was not just getting out that was on his mind.
Getting out was the easy part.
“Staying out,” answered Brown, when asked what concerned him most about his upcoming release. “They say that this place is a revolving door.”
Bob Wadley sat across from Brown. He understands the apprehension.
“The odds are against him,” Wadley said, “but we hope that he’ll break them.”
Wadley isn’t another prisoner. He doesn’t work for the Department of Correction. He didn’t even have to be there that day, in a cinder block room, surrounded by chain-link fences, barbed wire and prison guards.
But he did volunteer for it.
“I think it is tough when you get out, and you have a record, to stay out,” said Wadley, parish administrator for Church of the Ascension in Knoxville. “Anything any one of us can do to stop that revolving door from revolving, we should do.”
Wadley and Brown are taking part in a new partnership between the Tennessee Department of Correction and AmeriCorps VISTA called the Good Samaritans Network.
The 1 1 /2-year-old program pairs soon-to-be-released prisoners with mentors who live in the same community they are returning to. The mentors help the inmates with the logistics of their release and their return to civilian life.
They talk about transportation, housing, jobs, education and anything else that might come up. But the mentoring programs are about more than just logistics.
Because he is a felon, he felt like a second-class citizen, Brown said during his meeting with Wadley.
“Then (Bob) came along and made me feel wanted,” he said. “That the value of my life is the same as the next person’s. ... I’m not looking for financial help, just advice. I feel thankful to have him.”
Said Wadley, “I just want him to know that I’ll try to be his friend, and that’s the bottom line.”
The DOC received the grant for the program from AmeriCorps VISTA in early 2009, and it is the only partnership between a state DOC and AmeriCorps, said Robin Porter, DOC’s director of volunteer services.
“It was an event that came about through our desire to create a little more support for our inmates returning to the community,” said Jim Crosby, DOC’s assistant commissioner for rehabilitation services.
The program recruits from the community, often going to churches and other faithbased organizations asking for volunteers, Porter said.
So far, 45 mentors and prisoners have been paired, and 15 more are about to be matched. Each pairing lasts close to a year.
“They start the relationship six months before the prisoner’s release to make sure the relationship between the inmate and the mentor is established before inmate has to go out into the community,” Porter said. "(Then) the mentor is there when they get out to help them and to be their advocate.”
It is still too soon to tell whether the program is having a positive effect because most of the inmates involved have not been released, Crosby said.
“On an anecdotal basis, we haven’t had the time yet for hard research, but on an anecdotal basis we have had some very good reports,” he said.
The program is still looking for mentors and is planning an open house at the Morgan County facility this month, said Kathleen Daily, one of the AmeriCorps VISTA members involved in the program. Anyone interested should contact her at 865-582-2081 or e-mail her at Kathleen.1.daily@tn.gov
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