Introduction

A friend who is an avid reader urged me to dust off some of my prison stories, especially anecdotal ones, and reprint them, since crime and punishment (or lack of punishment in some cases) so often tops the daily news. She believes our culture continues to find such stories fascinating. At her suggestion I opened a copy of my prison teacher’s memoir, Dancing to the Concertina’s Tune, published by Northeastern University Press in 2004. The book is out of print but offenders’ stories remain much the same. My students were women and men who had murdered; raped; assaulted; pillaged; bought, sold and used drugs; and committed unimaginable offenses against those purported to love.”

I spent 18 years teaching adult felons in women’s and men’s prisons in Washington State. Seven of those years required a lengthy commute from my Gig Harbor, Washington home to McNeil Island Corrections Center in southern Puget Sound. I count myself fortunate for the experience of riding the ferries to and from the island, and walking through those prison gates so many times.

McNeil Island Corrections Center closed in April 2011. During my tenure, new housing units were constructed for offenders and some of the early 20th century structures, originally built as a federal prison were razed. Now all the buildings in the main complex are left empty, unheated and at the mercy of the weather and surrounding sea.

The first story in this series is the opening chapter of my memoir. It sets the scene for an unusual career. I didn’t plan to become a correctional educator – I was granted the opportunity by the department head at a community college where I was teaching. When I retired from that work, I meant to leave it all behind. But it’s not that easy. I wrote the memoir, and then a young adult novel, An Inmate’s Daughter, (Raven Publishing, 2006) about a girl whose dad is doing time in prison. I agreed to volunteer for Rebuilding Families, Inc., a group that facilitates programs inside two women’s prisons in Washington State. That takes me back inside several times a year to work with female offenders and their family members. I wrote another young adult novel, Romar Jones Takes a Hike (Plicata Press, Fall 2011) about a 15 year old boy who walks out of school in Oregon to go searching for his mother who’s in prison in Washington.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century almost 3 million children have a parent in prison. Those children are the reason I rewrote and reissued Parenting From a Distance (Plicata Press, 2011), the nontraditional text for offender parents. When you think about prisons and offenders, take a moment to wonder who’s caring for their children.