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Posts Tagged ‘Patricia Leigh Brown’

Inmates in the Vineyard

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2016| 4 Comments »

When people are serving time for a crime, how much better for society — both during their sentence and after they get out — if they have some useful work while inside.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at Atlas Obscura, “Justin King spends most of his hours in a cinderblock dormitory room for minimum-security prisoners, sleeping on a metal bunk bed and being constantly monitored by surveillance cameras.

“But on a crisp California morning with coastal fog hanging on the hillsides, King, who is serving time for selling methamphetamines, and three of his fellow inmates at the Mendocino County jail huddle together in a 175-acre vineyard to pick plump sangiovese grapes. The only visible difference between the prisoners and the other field workers are the GPS tracking devices wrapped around their ankles.

” ‘Hey dude!’ King, 32, called out to his fellow inmate, Meliton Rangel, as King eyed a promising group of clusters wet with dew. ‘I hit clump city here!’

“The men’s enthusiasm for grapes with just the right sugar levels and tannins is a variation on the concept of work release, in which inmates deemed low security risks are employed by private companies. …

” ‘They’re hard workers,’ [Vineyard owner Martha] Barra says of her new employees, who wear “civilian” clothes in her magazine-esque vineyard. ‘They have to meet the same punctuality and performance requirements as everybody else.’ …

“The work is notoriously grueling: At first, Rangel, a stiff-legged 37, said he was going to quit. That changed when he received his first paycheck—his first one ever. ‘This has really helped me out,’ he says. ‘It feels very good to work.’ …

“In the Mendocino program last year, four of the six inmates who worked on the grape crew at Redwood Valley Vineyards have indeed stayed out of jail. Three now have full-time jobs. One now works at the vineyard full-time, rebounding from tough years of drug addiction and homelessness. …

” ‘There’s peace of mind out here,’ King says.”

More here.

Photo: Olivier Vanpé /Wikimedia Commons
Clusters of ripe and unripe Pinot noir grapes.

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A Respite for Farmworkers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 17, 2014| 2 Comments »

When a do-gooder from the nonprofit Kounkuey Design Initiative told poor farmworkers at a California trailer park she wanted to work with them to build a place to relax and play, they didn’t think much would come of it.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at the NY Times why the community is happy to have been proved wrong.

“When Chelina Odbert, the 36-year-old co-founder of the nonprofit Kounkuey Design Initiative, based in Los Angeles, showed up two years ago and asked residents to propose ideas for a park that they might design and build collaboratively, most assumed she was yet another do-gooder bearing ‘muchas promesas’ that would come to naught.

“And yet, after more than a year of drawing, debating, hauling rocks and waiting out bureaucratic delays, the residents had a fiesta recently to celebrate the opening of the park, a public space built out of railroad ties and other simple materials. It has a playground, a community garden, an outdoor stage and a shade structure where neighbors can gather and gossip even on 110-plus-degree days.

“The park, which doubles as a zócalo, or traditional town square, exemplifies a new phase for both Kounkuey (KDI for short) and the field of public-interest design, which tries to put design tools into the hands of neighbors who can create local change. …

“Alberto Arredondo, 51, lives across from the garden and has become its keeper. … Before, he said, he would come home after a day in the fields picking grapes and collapse on the sofa. The park, he added, has ‘de-stressed the women.’

“His theory was borne out by Rosa Prado, whose commitment to the park never wavered. ‘It helps with depression,’ she said. ‘You go out your door, and you see a lady in the park and sit next to her.’ She added, ‘Then a few minutes later, you forget what you’re worried about.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Residents of all ages turn out for the opening of a new public space, by the Kounkuey Design Initiative, in St. Anthony’s Trailer Park, home to farmworkers east of Palm Springs, Calif. 

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Restorative Justice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

Solving a problem by definition means making something better. But for many years, disciplinary action in schools made things worse. Now more communities are testing the potential of “restorative justice,” an approach focused on helping a perpetrator change for the better.

It was at a neighborhood picnic that I first heard from a couple neighbors that they were restorative-justice volunteers.

They told me that if a student spray paints someone’s garage, let’s say, the police get called in, and the kid may end up with a record.

Under restorative justice, however, police, perpetrator, victim, school personnel, and community volunteers hear the case and agree on suitable compensation — in this case, it might be repainting the garage. The youth sees face to face how the victim feels. Change is possible with the community involved.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at the NY Times about a restorative justice program in Oakland, California, where a high school’s “zero tolerance” policies had ridden roughshod over underlying causes, leading to escalation of problems.

She writes about youth adviser Eric Butler, whose “mission is to help defuse grenades of conflict at Ralph J. Bunche High School, the end of the line for students with a history of getting into trouble. He is the school’s coordinator for restorative justice, a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to ‘zero tolerance’ policies like suspension and expulsion.

“The approach … encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another through ‘talking circles’ led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.” More.

In one talking circle, participants discovered that a girl in trouble for uncontrolled aggression had just lost a brother to gun violence. She had not told anyone or sought support. She began to learn other ways to deal with her anger.

Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Mr. Butler with a student at Ralph J. Bunche High School in Oakland.

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