Pubdate: Wed, 10 Aug 2005
Source: Bucks County Courier Times (PA)
Copyright: 2005 Calkins Newspapers. Inc.
Contact: http://www.phillyburbs.com/feedback/content_cti.shtml
Website: http://www.phillyburbs.com/couriertimes/index.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1026
Author: Laurie Mason, The Intelligencer

PRISON'S 'LIFERS' TACKLING CRIME

The street is where crime breeds. Its code is an eye for an eye, a life for 
a life. Honor means not being a snitch. And disrespect can get you killed.

This so-called "street culture" is foreign to most Bucks and Montgomery 
County residents. But with drug gangs from Philadelphia, Trenton and 
Allentown inching ever closer to our borders, experts say it's a language 
we must learn.

The answer might come from deep within Pennsylvania's most populated 
maximum-security prison.

At the State Correctional Institution at Graterford in Skippack, Montgomery 
County, a group of inmates serving life on Tuesday presented its plan to 
end the culture of street crime.

The program by LIFERS Inc. was held in conjunction with the 14th World 
Congress of Criminality, a convention in Philadelphia this week that is 
drawing crime prevention experts from as far away as Australia and Great 
Britain.

The 80-member inmate organization meets weekly inside the prison to discuss 
ways to make their home communities better. Participants say that although 
they will never walk the streets again, they want their families to live in 
a safer environment.

"We have a vested interest in eradicating crime," said Tyrone, a 
52-year-old Philadelphia resident serving life for second-degree murder. 
"Our families still live on those streets."

Tyrone - prison officials do not allow inmates' last names to be published 
- - said that the current criminal justice approach to stemming crime is 
failing because street culture rewards criminal behavior and makes 
rehabilitation nearly impossible.

Unless attitudes out there are changed, he said, more young people will end 
up behind bars.

"No matter how many people we arrest, no matter how many prisons we build 
. you take a person off the streets, there will always be someone to take 
his place. It's a continuous flow. An assembly line."

As criminal justice students, activists and educators rubbed elbows with 
jumpsuit-clad inmates in the prison chapel, members of LIFERS used 
role-play to drive their message home.

During an elaborate skit, the inmates acted out a scenario in which "Ace," 
a former drug dealer, returns to his neighborhood after a 15-year stint 
behind bars.

Ace soon learns that his nephew, "J-Money," has risen to the top of the 
narcotics trade on the block and is headed toward a gun-blazing showdown 
with a rival dealer.

After some very realistic - and profane - arguments, J-Money agrees to back 
down, saying he respects Ace's opinion because he's an "Old Head," or 
elder, in the neighborhood.

Tyrone, who was named Inmate of the Year by the Pennsylvania Prison Society 
and was one of the hosts of Tuesday's program, said that LIFERS teaches 
inmates about the pitfalls of street culture so that they can bring the 
message back to the young J-Moneys on their blocks.

"This is about building relationships and bringing men who are in the 
culture into self-awareness," he said.

Graterford is home to more than 3,400 inmates, 767 of whom are serving life 
sentences with no chance of parole. It houses the largest inmate population 
in Pennsylvania and the sixth largest in the nation.

David DiGuglielmo, superintendent of Graterford, said he hopes the LIFERS 
message will be heard on the outside. For that to happen, he said, 
community leaders and citizens have to change their thinking.

"This is an issue of public safety, one we talk about more than doing 
something about it," DiGuglielmo said. "It's easier to find 100 people 
willing to volunteer to come here and work with inmates than to find one 
person in the community to reach out with programs to help an inmate when 
he leaves."

For more information on LIFERS visit the Pennsylvania Prison Society at 
(http://www.prisonsociety.org)www.prisonsociety.org.
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MAP posted-by: Beth