The Value of Prison Education

Freedom of Vision’s roots lay within prison education—teachers such as Richard Shelton, contributors Lollie Butler and Shaun T. Girffin, and myself, co-editor/co-author of Freedom of Vison. We believe that everyone has the ability to express themselves, and everyone has a story to tell or experience to dig out of their hearts and souls. We also believe that the vast majority of inmates can be rehabilitated, and that the road to lasting rehabilitation lies through reconnecting these inmates to their innermost selves through writing. With that comes a renewed sense of self, responsibility, respect for others and accountability — the base of sound choices and decisions in life.
Once a teacher proves he is a man of his word and demonstrates his mission to help the men find the real intellectual, emotional, and spiritual keys to freedom and safety behind bars which lead to a life of freedom and hope outside prison walls or he wins their loyalty and trust. However, he has to prove it every day. He has to pass all their little and big tests. Inmates will push as far as they can on every issue they can. But from their classroom successes, maybe the first such successes in their lives, real self-esteem grows. What a challenge!
Once a teacher understands the secrets behind prison walls and prison masks, he or she is hooked. He knows he is doing something most people won’t do or can’t do. He realizes that one person can make a difference in an inmate’s life.

Excerpt from Tornado Fever

Here is an excerpt from the upcoming new book, Tornado Fever (third in the series):


Velvet Fall Rapids comes up fast, and I knew many rafters had misjudged its strength by its seemingly harmless appearance. I kept in the middle of the channel, and head for the clear chute between obstructions, the current steeper and faster than the surrounding water. Down river and around a bend, I watch the boil line—where upwelling water misleads, some of the surface current going upriver, and the below surface current going downriver. Five miles past Velvet Creek Rapids, I steer past a boulder fan from an incoming Horn Creek on the left side—the sloping fan-shaped mass of boulders deposited by the tributary stream where it enters the middle fork, constricting the river and causing rapids. Six miles further down I think I’m back in Heavy Artillery, Army, at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I encounter Artillery Rapids, go past Rapid River Pack Bridge, then watch for rapids from Mortar Creek, followed by rapids from incoming Cannon Creek.

Five miles further, I hit the famous Pistol Creek Rapids. We accelerated coming into a lower S curve, as I guard against striking a house boulder on my near left. Now I’m heading straight into the three huge rocks looming in midstream on the right, but in the middle of the S curve. I cranked the oar blade madly to the right for forty feet and then madly to the left, so as to sail parallel to the granite obstructions. I have to steer for the outside—as if I want to kill myself on those huge rocks--but at the last minute the main current catches me as I suspected and sharply sweeps me laterally left. On a parallel course, I shoot past the Pistol Creek rocks going by on my near right shoulder.