Muslim Chaplain, Imam Rafeeq S. Hassan began volunteering at San Quentin State Prison in 1985 under the endorsement and sponsorship of Masjid Waritheen of Oakland, CA. Imam Hassan officially became the Muslim Chaplain at San Quentin in 1986. Imam John Faqir had been the Chaplain at San Quentin for 10 years prior to Imam Hassan becoming the Chaplain for the Muslim Community at San Quentin. Imam Hassan is a student of Imam W.D. Mohammad.
Prior to his arrival here at San Quentin, Imam Hassan, came from Detroit, Michigan, where he workedas a fashion coordinator for the famous singing group “The Temptations.”
As part of his religious training he received an Islamic scholarship from the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”), in Indianapolis, Indiana. His studies included the following subjects: Fiqh Al Sunnah, Fiqh Al Hadith, and Fiqh Al Qur’an.
Imam Hassan facilitates Jumuah, Ta’leem, and Islamic study programs for the Mainline, Condemned Row, and Reception Center prisoners. He also finds time to facilitate various self-help programs which include, No More Tears, San Quentin Trust, and Milatti Islami (12-Step).
Imam Hassan anticipates sponsoring a Halal program in the near future that will allow prisoners to meet their religious dietary requirements. Imam Hassan constantly encourages Muslims and other incarcerated men to try and fulfill their obligations as fathers and for becoming productive members of society.
His 23 years of service here at San Quentin has allowed Imam Hassan the opportunity to work with and assist men of all faiths.
Archives for November 2008
Chaplains Serving Hope on All Levels
Father Stephen Barber started at San Quentin as a volunteer in 1996 along with other Jesuit priests from Berkeley where he attended the School of Theology and received his masters of divinity degree. He entered the Jesuit Order in 1989, and was ordained a priest in 1998.
Upon being hired as a chaplain for San Quentin, then Warden Jeanie Woodford told him, “You are the priest and chaplain for the entire San Quentin.” Then appointed to San Quentin by Arch Bishop Levada, he was told the same thing by the bishop.
When asked what was the most difficult issue that he’s had to deal with, Father Barber pointed to seeing his parishioners in blue who had passed on. He pointed to the death of Ricky Earl, a three-strike Lifer. Ricky had grown to embrace the Catholic faith, and many saw in him a caring and sincere individual. Father Barber visited Ricky in the hospice program at CMF shortly before his death.
In serving the San Quentin community, Father Barber says he seeks to be of help wherever he can. He recognizes the diverse ethnic and age group here that represents California as a whole. One of the great joys he receives in this job is seeing people enhance their own dignity and humanity, and grow in their walk with God.
Looking into the future, Father Barber wants to be around to see the Death Row population housed in the new building being constructed. He continues to work on his Spanish so that he may better serve the large Hispanic population. He hopes he may be an example to all that those who have become a part of the priesthood.
Chaplains Serving Hope on All Levels
Just as the U.S. military hires on Spiritual Counselors, so does the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The makeup of San Quentin’s five chaplains is as divers as the population: Catholic, Islamic, Jewish, Native American, and Protestant. The Chaplains serve Death Row, Reception Center, North Block, and H-Unit, as well as the Hospital.
SQ Chaplains have each gone through extensive theological training and education in their respective faiths. Each Chaplain conducts religious services for those of their faith in areas appropriate for the prison security, and, when necessary, becomes the bearer of bad news for family tragedies to many who aren’t expecting to hear it.
Each Chaplain brings to their duties a focus of their own religious convictions, with the intentions of providing a depth of understanding and ability to participate and practice in their chosen faith. Interviews with the five chaplains: Father Barber, Imam Rafeeq Hassan, Rabbi Carol Hymen, Hector Heredia, and Pastor Morris Curry, were quite revealing as to how each one has approached their responsibilities.
Think You Can Write?
Resilience Multimedia, publisher of the widely praised book, “Think Outside the Cell: An Entrepreneur’s Guide for the Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated,” is sponsoring a writing contest for people who are or were in prison, and their loved ones. The best submissions will be included in books in Resilience’s “Think Outside the Cell Series,” which is intended to help the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated tackle hard challenges and have successful lives.
Contestants may share personal stories about one or more of these topics: reentering society after incarceration, waiting for loved ones to return home from prison, or prison marriages and relationships. Three winners will be chosen for each topic and will receive cash prizes: 1st Place $300, 2nd Place $150, 3rd Place $75. Stories that do not win cash prizes will still be eligible for inclusion in the series. Writers whose stories are selected will receive a free copy of the book in which their work appears.
The Contest rules are as follows: All stories must be original and about situations or events that actually happened. You may submit stories on more than one topic. Stories may be up to 3,000 words. Stories should be typewritten and double-spaced. Handwritten stories will be accepted as long as they are legible. Each page must include page number, your name, contact information and story title. Resilience Multimedia reserves the right to edit stories for clarity, punctuation, spelling and grammar. Story entries will not be returned. ALL ENTRIES MUST BE POSTMARKED BY NOVEMBER 30, 2008. Winners and other selected stories will be announced on February 01, 2009 at www.thinkoutsidethecell.com and in a press release.
Emailed stories can be submitted to resiliencemultimedia@verizon.net. Stories submitted by mail can be sent to: Resilience Multimedia, 511 Avenue of the Americas Suite 525, New York NY 10011
Condemned Row Inmates Form Advisory Council
East Block’s Condemned Row has been a world of its own. It’s known to house the worst of the worst. It is a man’s final stop before his ill awaited fate is to be carried out. But many out on the mainline do not know that there are quite a few changes taking place here on the row. And, though there may be no hope for the condemned in the eyes of others, we see things a lot differently. We no longer sit under rocks and simply accept the fact that many of us may never see the streets again.
There were many issues that needed to be addressed within the East Block unit and absolutely no kind of communication when it came to staff and prisoners. This, of course, caused many difficulties and gaps that to this day remain, except for the reality that these issues are “fixable.” With that said, the East Block Advisory Council came into play. The “EBAC” members work along with the unit staff and Administration here on the row to make life easier and the program run smoother, for both staff and prisoners. It is a council of the condemned that have been here anywhere from upwards of many years to just a few. We are all working together to make this program more suitable and beneficial to all.
There are six “Grade A” yards here, and on each yard there are four EBAC representatives, one for each of the basic four ethnic groups, and one yard chairman who goes to the scheduled meetings with the staff. The issues brought up vary, such as: canteen, medical, property, and general unit issues that involved the Condemned population as a whole. The staff needs to know that we are willing to work out issues with them on an advisory level, instead of using the Inmate Appeal Process (CDCR 602). By the EBAC reps speaking to their constituents, we can now bring to the staff’s attention issues that have an adverse effect on a certain group of prisoners, or a single person. On many occasions, the individual issue could turn into a population issue. By being able to address the staff using the EBAC process, we can now be at ease to know that most problems will be worked out on a timely basis and resolved.
Condemned Row has a history of not being able to function as others do out on the mainline. By working to resolve the problems on the row, we have now shown that not all inmates are program failures and many are willing to function like any other prisoner housed in the CDCR. It’s the EBAC council’s hope that the line we now have to the staff and administration can remain open so that programs can continue to run smoothly. Death Row is now stepping out.
How to Persuade a Judge
When faced with someone who sits in judgment over us, we need wisdom and skill to persuade that judge to rule in our favor. We all must appear before the “Judge of the whole earth” (Genesis 18:25). Antonin Scalia, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, has written a practical guide called, “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges.” Justice Scalia provides clear and concise principles to be an effective advocate.
An advocate’s character is important. Justice Scalia writes, “All of us are more apt to be persuaded by someone we admire than by someone we detest… Your objective in every argument, therefore, is to show yourself worthy of trust and affection. Trust is lost by dissembling or conveying false information-not just intentionally but even carelessly; by mischaracterizing precedent to suit your case; by making arguments that could appeal only to the stupid or informed; by ignoring rather than confronting whatever weighs against your case. Trust is won by fairly presenting the facts of the case and honestly characterizing the issues; by owning up to those points that cut against you and addressing them forthrightly; and by showing respect for the intelligence of your audience.”
Justice Scalia states that judges can be persuaded only when three conditions are met: (1.) They must have a clear idea what you’re asking the court to do. (2.) They must be assured that it’s within the court’s power to do it. (3.) The must conclude that what you’re asking is best-both in your case and in cases that follow.
Among the principles that Justice Scalia presents for effective argumentation are:
- Your arguments must make logical sense. Always outline your brief.
- Know your audience.
- Know your case.
- Know your adversary’s case.
- Never overstate your case. Be scrupulously accurate.
- If possible lead with the strongest argument.
- Select the most easily defensible position that favors your case.
- Don’t’ try to defend the indefensible. Draw the sting out of unpleasant facts by presenting them yourself.
- Select your best argument and concentrate your fire. Justice Scalia quotes Quintilian, who said, “We must not always burden the judge with all the arguments we have discovered since by doing so we shall at once bore him and render him less inclined to believe us.”
- Communicate clearly and concisely. An advocate’s job is to present clearly the laws and the facts favoring your side of the case. It is not the judge’s job to piece the elements together from a wordy or confusing brief or argument. Scalia states that successful arguments are marked by brevity. Courts don’t want to hear you repeat yourself. He advises advocates to compress their writing by eliminating sentences, phrases, and words that do not help.
- Appeal not just to rules but to justice and common sense.
- Reason is paramount with judges and overt appeal to their emotions is resented.
- Assume a posture of respectful intellectual equality with the judge. “An advocate should be instructive without being condescending, respectful without being obsequious and forceful without being obnoxious.”
- Restrain your emotions and don’t accuse.
- Close powerfully and say explicitly what you think the court should do.
Justice Scalia’s advice is a powerful tool to improve the art of communication. Communication is about trust and that is why honesty and fairness are important characteristics for a judge and for anyone who wants to persuade a judge. When Moses was chosen to be an advocate for the Hebrews, before Pharaoh, he protested to God: “I am not a man of words…my speech is difficult and my tongue is difficult.” (Exodus 4:10) God responded: “Who gave man a mouth…Is it not I, God? Now go, and I will be your mouth.” (4:11-12).
Moses, a man who was not a “talker” became a powerful and effective advocate because of humility. He got out of the way of his arguments. Moses was an effective advocate because he was not in love with his own words and arguments. Moses did not let ego dilute or distort his message. He absorbed higher wisdom and became a channel to convey knowledge and truth greater than himself. These principles, when applied, can help us to become more effective advocates before those who judge us.
‘Songbirds in a Golden Cage’
As a teenager and young adult, Jaimee Karroll sang. She played guitar and sang mostly dark folk songs until she realized that she used her voice to disassociate from herself, a coping technique she says she learned in the wake of a childhood kidnap and rape.
Karroll, now 53, quit singing more than 20 years ago. She put away her guitar and never picked it up again until last week, when she changed the strings and tuned it up to sing to a group of San Quentin State Prison convicts.
In her deep, melodic voice, Karroll explains that she had to quit singing to begin healing. “Why would I stop singing?” she asks, sitting on a floral futon next to her Labrador retriever and her cat in her El Cerrito home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. “In order to use my voice, I would lose awareness of myself. I fled myself in order to not be conscious of what happened. I wanted to become whole.”
So, after a psychiatric hospitalization, she stopped singing completely. Not even in the shower. In the meantime, she underwent intensive psychotherapy and sought to regain and process repressed memories of the 1963 day when she was abducted and assaulted. She joined Bay Area Women Against Rape, counseling other victims, and a few years ago began working inside San Quentin with men serving time for crimes like the one she says silenced her. Inside the prison overlooking San Francisco Bay in Marin County, Karroll began to forgive the three men she says abducted and assaulted her when she was 9 years old.
This weekend, the Marin-based Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance will give Karroll a Hero of Forgiveness award.
“Forgiveness was not achieved in a single moment but has unfolded over two decades,” she says. First Karroll had to remember a crime she had long tried to forget. Though some have questioned the claims of people with repressed memories of crimes, Karroll’s story has been heartfelt enough to earn not only the forgiveness award but the trust of her colleagues working in the prison and the prisoners themselves.
At a recent dinner party with the leaders of the Insight Prison Project, a nonprofit program through which Karroll trained to run a weekly prison group, Rochelle Edwards invited Karroll to sing to her 11-year-old daughter. She sang “My Songbird,” a 1977 ballad that Jesse Winchester wrote and Emmylou Harris made famous.
When he heard Karroll sing, Jacques Verduin, Insight Prison Project’s executive director and founder, asked her to sing for his prison group. Karroll hesitated. But another event nudged Karroll to more openly confront her past and to overcome her hesitation. About a year ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
To prepare for her first performance in two decades, Karroll reunited with her old voice teacher and tuned up her long-silenced instrument.
Last week, dressed completely in black with tights and a turtleneck beneath a long skirt and a jacket despite the summer heat, she sat in a circle with 12 inmates, many of them serving life sentences for murder, in a San Quentin prison classroom. The only window looks out on a hallway.
The men, wearing denim and sneakers, all intently concentrate on Karroll, giving her the sort of attention commonly reserved for religious leaders and rock stars.
Karroll crosses and re-crosses her legs as she addresses her rapt audience. She lost her long, brown hair to chemotherapy. Short, gray, curly hair frames her face.
The day after Thanksgiving, when she was 9 years old, she was walking about a block from her house. “I heard brakes screech and felt two hands grab me,” she says. “I was immediately bound and attacked for approximately 10 hours.”
Her assailants raped her repeatedly with the handle of a knife, she says. “If you can imagine being 9 and having the knife inside of you. It was terrifying.
“It was a day of complete violation. In that day, I totally lost myself. I broke in so many ways.
“Prison has helped me grasp
the depths of humanity and
the possibility of transformation”
“I just couldn’t tell my parents anything about what happened. Basically, I came home and went to war with my family.”
The prisoners stare contemplatively and empathetically.
Karroll says that she married, became a singer and tried to bury her pain by drinking. “When I was a performer,” she says, “I still didn’t have a voice. In order to have a full experience of myself, I had to let go of that.
“Violence renders people silent.”
She tells the men that they understand her in a deep way. “You really know what happened to me,” she says. “I can’t think of a better way to interrupt the cycle of violence than to be right here in this prison. This work in the prison has helped me grasp the depths of humanity and the possibility of transformation.”
Phillip Seiler, a well-groomed 47-year-old prisoner serving time for murder, thanks Karroll for telling her story. “What a brave little girl,” he says.
Performing terrifies Karroll. But she feels compelled to share her story and her song with the criminals.
“It feels really profound to do it with you,” she says, “to do it with men who’ve committed acts of violence and are committed to transcending that. It just feels important to tell you how I lost my voice as a result of that crime and to share it with you.”
For more than five minutes, the men focus on Karroll while she tunes her guitar.
“All right,” she says finally, beginning to strum, “don’t expect much.”
“It sounds good already,” Seiler says, smiling tenderly.
Swaying back and forth, her legs still crossed, Karroll’s harmonious voice fills the room as she sings “My Songbird.”
Songbird in a golden cage
She’d prefer the blue
How I crave the liquor of her song
Poor bird who has done no harm
What harm could she do
She shall be my prisoner her life long
My songbird wants her freedom
Now don’t you think I know
But I can’t find it in myself
To let my songbird go
I just can’t let her go
When she finishes, Robert Frye, 38, who has spent 20 years incarcerated, asks, “How did that feel?”
“I was a little bit nervous,” Karroll responds. “I could hear it in my voice.”
“Why did you like that song?” Seiler asks.
“I was drawn to that song because I was in a cage,” Karroll says. “But how does it feel to you guys to be in a cage?”
“It’s different for you,” says an inmate who requests anonymity. “You’re innocent. How long were you in a cage?”
“A lifetime,” Karroll says.
“Jaimee,” says Pat Mims, 46, who has spent 20 years in prison for second-degree murder, “I’ve known you for about one-and-a-half years now, and I’ve never known your story. I live a life of restitution. I never know if my restitution is being paid out to Kevin’s family. When you come in and share your story and play your music, it makes everything I’m doing worth it. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
The prisoner who requested anonymity holds the microphone for Karroll while she plays a Leonard Cohen song.
When she finishes, Manuel Nieto, 47, who has being behind bars for 24 years for a drunken-driving homicide, says, “I’m very touched by your story. Do you have any nightmares?”
The two talk about their nightmares.
“I think lives are turned in the midst of these acts,” Karroll says. “My life was turned in one direction, and the men who hurt me, their lives were turned in another direction.”
“What happened to those people who were so awful to you?” the inmate who held the microphone asks.
“I don’t know,” Karroll answers.
“You never went to [the] police? So you let them have a free slate?”
Karroll fires back, “It’s not free.”
For more information on the Insight Prison Project, call 415/459-9800 or go to www.insightprisonproject.org . Contact Ronnie Cohen at ronniecohen@comcast.net. To forgive and never to forget San Quentin group leader Jaimee Karroll is one of four women who will receive awards Sunday at the International Forgiveness Day ceremony in San Rafael. The ceremony also honors Eva Kor and Nadia Bishop. Kor has forgiven the Nazis for the crimes they committed against her and her twin sister while they were prisoners and human guinea pigs at Auschwitz concentration camp. Bishop has forgiven the men who killed her father, the prime minister of Grenada, in a coup. Mill Valley attorney Robert Plath created International Forgiveness Day in 1996. Plath dreams that the day, the first Sunday in August, will become the first internationally sanctioned holiday. Last year, forgiveness celebrations were held in Southern California, New York, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Canada, Nigeria and Ghana. This year, the ceremony moves to England as well. Plath serves as executive director of the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance. Its mission is to promote awareness of the healing power of forgiveness. “Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment,” says Holocaust survivor Kor. “I call it a miracle medicine. It is free. It works and has no side effects.” This year’s forgiveness heroes will offer a Masters of Forgiveness Workshop from 1pm until 5pm Saturday at the Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church in Mill Valley. The awards ceremony begins at 7pm Sunday in the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael. For more information, call 415/381-3372 or go to www.forgivenessday.org .—RC
PROPOSITIONS 5 & 6
In an election that was quite clearly overshadowed by the uncertain economic times, Americans went to the polls and voted their pocket-books in sending Propositions 5 and 6 down to decisive defeat.
Prop. 5, known as the Non-Violent Offenders Act, would have diverted drug and non-violent offenders into rehabilitation and diversion programs, making it much more difficult to incarcerate them. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the initiative could have eventually cost the state over $1 billion a year, off set by an additional $1 billion a year in savings from reduced parole and prison costs.
Voters who participated in exit polls cited the certainty of the projected expenditures in deciding to reject the initiative.
Prop. 6, A Police and Law Enforcement Funding initiative, would have mandated an initial outlay of $965,000,000 per year to fund police, sheriffs, district attorneys, adult probation and jails, an increase of several hundred million per year over current levels of spending. It proposed numerous changes in current laws related to membership in gangs, as well as sentencing changes. The measure was soundly defeated by voters.
A Portrait From the Past Clinton Duffy: Mr. San Quentin 1940-51
No one would have believed that as late as the summer of 1940, San Quentin, a “modern” prison where Warden Jimmy Johnston had ended officer barbarism in 1919 and Warden James Holohan in the early 1930s instilled imprisoned men with new dignity and inspiration, was on the brink of deadly riots certain to reverse efforts in rehabilitation by 100 years.
Now under the stewardship of the tough, hard-boiled Warden Court Smith who adamantly refused to end “the shame of San Quentin”, a 50 foot long dungeon was constructed under the old hospital with seven niches cut into the subterranean rock on each side to serve as cells. Hundreds of convicts trembled with so much hate and fear that some were arming themselves to escape or kill as many guards as they could.
With the growing crisis no longer kept secret from a public well aware that the “Big House By the Bay” was a city of nightmares, Gov. Culbert Olson ousted the entire Board of Prison directors. And on the morning of July 13, a new five man board convened in the conference room of the warden’s office at San Quentin to fire Smith. Four years of bloodshed, strife, and, some officers insisted, rot and corruption during his brief tenure were about to end. Clinton Truman Duffy, a 42-year-old Parole Board secretary who was born, bred, married and now lived on the prison grounds, was summoned along with several other witnesses for questioning about the increasing abuses and chaos.
“I sat on a long polished bench outside the meeting room for what seemed like hours, mopping my face and listening to the wildest kind of rumors,” Duffy wrote 10 years later in his autobiography: The San Quentin Story. “I was sure I was due for the chopping block since a number of official heads had already been lopped off that morning. Then and there I made up my mind to quit prison work for good. Warden Smith was called before the new board around noon and for several hours loud voices filtered out into the hall. Smith emerged at four o’clock and clumped down the hall and out the door without a word.”
After several other flushed and nervous administrators entered and exited the conference room, someone called out, “Duffy, you’re wanted inside.” Duffy walked in and sat down, wiping his glasses to conceal his nervousness. He didn’t want to get fired; he wanted to quit. After all, his father had been a highly respected guard for more than 30 years. Suddenly someone said, “We have not agreed upon a new warden. You’ve been around here all your life and you know all the spots. We understand your dad taught you the cardinal rule of reform: no man can ever be redeemed by using the whip. How about taking over for the next 30 days?”
Duffy, from his autobiography, writes, “I could have crawled under the rug. ‘Taking over?’ I asked mechanically.”
“Yes, as Acting Warden.”
It was about six o’clock when Duffy called his wife Gladys about the news. They reflected upon how their old way of life was finished and that he was now assuming a great responsibility to the people of California and to the thousands of men behind the walls. “Before I come home, I have something important to do,” he said quietly and hung up.
Duffy then walked down San Quentin’s long main street to the house closest to the East Gate and knocked on the door. Captain Ralph New, under whom guards had used the dungeon, the straps, and the rubber hoses so frequently they had cost an old warden his job, opened the door. The unsmiling new acting warden said simply, ‘I’ve just been appointed to take control of the prison and staff. I’m making changes and as of this minute, you’re through.” He turned and walked back to the warden’s office.
Upon entering the deserted office, he immediately telephoned Joseph Fletcher, a guard he had observed for years. “I’m appointing you Captain of the Yard and your first official act within the next hour is to abolish the dungeon.”
“By eight o’clock that night, the moldy, foul 50-foot cave where hundreds of men had suffered unbelievable tortures through the decades had ceased to exist,” Duffy would say in later years.
Part two of this three part biographical sketch of “Mister San Quentin,” as Time Magazine referred to him in a January 7, 1942, article, will appear in the next issue of the SQ News.
Student Injured in Print Shop
Andre Taylor, vocational student, was seriously injured while operating a paper cutter in the San Quentin Printshop. Taylor’s hand was caught in the clamp which holds the paper for cutting, as a result, three of the fingers on his right hand were crushed and partially severed.
The seriousness of the injuries warranted emergency response by the San Quentin Fire Department which arrived on the scene within minutes of the accident. Taylor was stabilized and transported to an outside hospital for emergency surgery. Taylor was returned to the prison infirmary after surgery where he is recovering.
According to the infirmary staff, Taylor’s fingers were reattached and he is expected to make a full recovery and is expected to retain the use of his hand.
Printshop Instructor, John Wilkerson say’s that, “all students are trained to safely operate the equipment in the Printshop and are constantly reminded of safe operating procedures throughout their vocational training.”
The paper cutter involved in the accident has been taken off-line until completion of the investigation by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The accident remains under investigation.