San Quentin State Prison hosted six outside guests during its fifth graduation of a prison self-help group aimed at assisting ex-offenders return home safely.
After four months of instruction, discussion, and training, 14 men in blue incorporated into their lives, the importance of distributive justice, retributive justice, procedural justice, restorative justice, community and transformative justice.
Alliance for CHANGE examines these forms of social justice “educates the men in ways of achieving social harmony in a pro-social way,” said President Malik Harris, who helped create the group five years ago.
“One of the main differences in this graduating class was the stark differences on how the ethnic groups interpreted how laws are applied,” said Isaiah Raheem Thompson, the group’s vice president. “Our course explains the theory of these applications, tears it down, and tries finding ways to reconstruct it, so students’ perspective of the law is more universal and evenly understood.”
Social justice is how people feel about the fairness and equality of allocating resources. For example, it analyzes how schools, police and other public services are funded along with what factors are considered in distribution of funds, according to Harris.
“People’s perception about the law affects how they operate in society,” said Dr. Kim Richman, who helped form the group.
Richman the president of the Board of Directors. Her administrative duties include operating the group’s non-profit status, streamlining the program’s operations and bringing quests into the prison to support classes given by it facilitators.
Richman teaches criminal justice classes at the University of San Francisco and assists Alliance for CHANGE by teaching inmate instructors how to facilitate classes.
Facilitators strive to teach the course without giving participants an opportunity to speculate as to how or what the content of the classes might consider regarding social justice and criminal justice—giving participants an exceptional perspective about equity and fairness.
The discussion groups have several types of exercises which give participants experience in how certain types of criminal justice policies affect them.
“Since we’ve begun this program, we’ve had about 60 graduates,” said Harris. “David Cowen graduated in 2011. He paroled from San Quentin and is now is our director for re-integration.” Cowen picks up new parolees, and helps them with things like getting identification, clothes and housing, Harris said.
Social Justice Graduates
BeltranChuc Tare
Blake, Carlyle “Otter”
Butler, Nelson “Noble”
Freelon, Karl
Gillespie, Nathan
Kim, Phirak “”Kid”
Little, Jefferey
Pangthong, Anouthinh
Parratt, John “Yahyah”
Potter, Theodore
Stephens, David “Lumpy”
Villa, Marco
White Larry
Yazzie, Eldridge
Anger Management Graduates
Adams, Kaseem
BeltranChuc Tare
Brewer, Robert
Burton, Terrence
Deragon, Christopher
Flowers, Darell
Green, Jason
Hill, Ernest
McKinney, Nathan
Pangthong, Anouthinh
Rogers, Wilbert
Stephens, David “Lumpy”
Taylor, David
Villa, Marco
White Larry
Zorns, Richard
