Part-2 on Bard Prison Initiative
(Part-1)
Excerpts from transcript
PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour): The cliché is that prisons are schools for scoundrels. But during his time behind bars, Cardenales seems to have become, quite literally, a different man.
If many of us outside could be tipped to violence by extreme circumstance, he appears to have been tipped the other way, by the Bard College prison program. Barely 24 months out of jail, Cardenales is a rising middle manager at an electronics recycling company in Westchester county, New York, making some $80,000 a year. He's proof that a liberal education in prison, or at least a Bard degree, can pay off.
Moreover, says his boss, he represents a hidden national economic resource just begging to be tapped.
VIRGIL FISHER, WeRecycle: Look, we have got a hidden work force out here. I'm talking about you all.
PAUL SOLMAN: In a job-challenged economy, Virgil Fisher is looking to hire, as the company he runs, WeRecycle, expands. Impressed by the ex-con grads of Bard College's prison program who already work for him, he's looking to recruit more of them at Woodbourne.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Fisher isn't targeting everyone behind bars. Talent inside, he believes, is distributed just like outside: as a bell curve.
VIRGIL FISHER: You're going to have a group in the middle that is average, and then you're going to have a group that is below average, and then you're going to have a group that just rises to the occasion. And that's typically about 10 percent to 15 percent.
PAUL SOLMAN: Aren't you skimming the cream of the crop here?
VIRGIL FISHER: Absolutely. What business wouldn't want to have the best and the brightest?
PAUL SOLMAN: The best and the brightest who no one else is competing to hire.
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PAUL SOLMAN: In 2001, Cardenales made the inaugural class of a new college program for convicts run by Bard, an elite liberal arts school in nearby Annandale-on-Hudson. He graduated in 2008.
ANTHONY CARDENALES, Bard Prison Initiative: The title of my senior project was "Space, Time and Human Resilience."
PAUL SOLMAN: Any particular authors that influenced you?
ANTHONY CARDENALES: I used Kierkegaard. I used a lot of the existentialist writers. They had that deeper vision and deeper dialogue that made me struggle with it. And then, in struggling with it, it enabled me to tie it into, you know, the everyday experience.
VIRGIL FISHER: Talking about existentialism, and I can't even pronounce it. I -- we get in a lot of philosophical discussions. And you have to sometimes pinch yourself and say, well, how could they be so smart, because they were away for so many years?
PAUL SOLMAN: But a lot of companies would say, I'm running a huge risk by taking the best and the brightest from a prison in upstate New York.
VIRGIL FISHER: But are they any different than the population that is coming out of college? I would say that they have better work ethic. And their work ethic rubs off on the rest of the team.
PAUL SOLMAN: Yet another hidden work force benefit for a small company, says Fisher, that has trouble both competing with blue-chip firms for top talent and finding good workers willing to get down and dirty.
VIRGIL FISHER: We have gotten used to a certain lifestyle and a certain concept of what our job should look like. You take, for example, our jobs that we have downstairs.
The majority of college-degree people wouldn't do that job even if it meant, within six months, you're going to move up to a production supervisor and, after about a year, you're going to move up to a plant manager. I -- that's fast trajectory right there, but it's that first six months of working as a material handler, and that's thought to be a menial job.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The grads here have roughly the same credentials, but perhaps a better, some might say more desperate, work ethic.
BENJAMIN WILSON, inmate: When I leave here, I'm not coming back to prison. I have no choice in the matter.
BILL DOANE, inmate: I'm going to work harder for you than the next guy, because I have to. You understand? Because...
PAUL SOLMAN: Because the stakes are high.
BILL DOANE: The stakes are very high. I can't afford to screw up even a little bit. And so I'm going to -- I'm going to give you 150 percent, where maybe the kid coming out of college, he might be just using you as a stepping-stone, or he's looking around, he's feeling his way around in the world. You see the difference?
Personal Comments: While watching the videos (Part-1 & Part-2) I noted just how well Anthony Cardenales speaks.
Also, the Bard Prison Initiative represents what prison rehabilitation SHOULD be.
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