A story by Nicole Lund from 2024
My interest in volunteering at the Maine State Prison stemmed from my own lived experience with the criminal justice system in Massachusetts. Like the vast majority of people incarcerated, I have been both victim and perpetrator. As a result of poor coping skills, I used substances to deal with long term abuse and trauma I experienced as a child. I went to rehab for the first time at age 13. The first time I was arrested for possession I was 15. By the age of 19, I was a heroin addict living on the streets of Boston when I was abducted by a man recently released from Walpole.
After I escaped, my drug use amped up ten-fold and I eventually found myself in front of a judge facing 15 years. The judge offered me leniency. Instead of sending me to prison, he offered me probation with the contingency I had to comply with a two year outpatient drug rehabilitation program, suspending the remainder of my sentence. Basically, he sentenced me to therapy instead of prison. I am acutely aware of how lucky I am. Unfortunately a lot of people I knew at the time were not so lucky and I saw a lot of people lose their lives to overdose or incarceration.
Incarceration is not an academic issue–it is a human issue. The relationship between victim and perpetrator is not binary, it is an infinite loop. I may have started out a victim, but I quickly became a criminal. I was further victimized and fell deeper into criminal activity. The cycle wasn’t broken for me until a judge decided to change the trajectory of my life by offering rehabilitation. I was given the opportunity to address the hurt I was experiencing and behavioral therapy services to continue my life in the community with support.
People can change. I know this for a fact, because I did and I don’t believe I’m unique. I didn’t really understand at the time just how lucky I was to have been born into a middle class white family and live in the right zip code. I knew how race and neighborhoods played a part in unequal treatment for youth offenders in Massachusetts but it was nothing compared to what was happening in Maine where I eventually moved to. I was floored to find out Maine had no parole, very few diversionary programs for youth offenders and no public defenders. How could corrections in a New England state function like this? I always believed New England to have the cohesion of progressive attitudes towards justice, especially youth.
I was working to complete my bachelor’s degree in Art Administration and needed an internship. I heard about an exhibit of artwork created by the incarcerated individuals of Maine’s prisons curated by the volunteers at Inside Vision. I went to the gallery opening and struggled to hold back tears as I listened to the assistant director of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and a volunteer art teacher talk about the incarcerated artists. Their work was so powerful and showed so much emotion and vulnerability. I realized I couldn’t stick my head in the sand any longer and I decided to get involved.
Through Inside Vision, I volunteered for a summer teaching a workshop at the Maine State Prison. I went inside once a week and taught printmaking techniques, art history and whatever else the guys were interested in learning. We created cardboard sculptures, multimedia collages, monoprints, and acrylic paintings. We had great conversations about philosophy, how Renaissance art has influenced contemporary culture, what makes art “good” and our own lives and interests. It felt like such a privilege to get to know these people but it was also so heartbreaking to find out most of them were lifers. So many of them had been wrapped up in the system since they were children. No therapy. No diversionary programs. No public defenders.
At the end of my summer workshop I had become good friends with Buddy, the resident who had the job of running the art room. I didn’t see the harm in keeping in touch with him. We enjoyed each other’s company so much, had so many common interests and absolutely cracked each other up. I had a month off between when my summer internship ended and the fall workshop I had planned began so we kept in touch talking on the phone. I went in again as a volunteer at the end of September, after the break, not realizing it would be the last time I went in as a volunteer. The administration found out we had been talking on the phone and my number was blocked. I was supposed to have had no outside contact with the inmates as a volunteer and the friendly nature of our phone conversations gave rise to an investigation.
A detective called and I was interrogated. The detective had listened to all of our phone calls and was quoting the conversations Buddy and I had back to me. I couldn’t help but laugh. I laughed so hard the detective started laughing and said, “Yeah, Buddy laughed when I repeated these quotes to him, as well.”
At the end of the interrogation I apologized for breaking the rules. I really should have known better. I understood I was going to be banned from volunteering and I felt awful about it. I asked if I could apply to be a visitor so Buddy and I could maintain our friendship. The detective gasped at me, “You want to visit him?”
I was confused by his confusion. Yes, I wanted to visit Buddy. We had become really close friends and I wasn’t going to throw away a friendship with someone I cared deeply for. The detective and warden decided there needed to be a punishment. Buddy and I needed to be punished. Banning me from volunteering wasn’t enough, nor was it enough that Buddy is also serving a sentence long enough to be considered LWOP. So, to make their point, I was also banned from submitting a visitor application for one year. If I still wanted to be friends with
Buddy in a year, I could submit an application then. Buddy’s additional punishment was thirty days of good time taken away.
The following September I submitted my visitor application and was elated it was approved. I can’t even tell you what Buddy and I talked about during that first visit, we were both so stunned to see each other again.
Massachusetts has closed three prisons, including Walpole, since the time I was a drug addicted teenager on the streets. They’ve invested more resources into programming and enhancing public safety through rehabilitation programs. Massachusetts DOC has made phone calls free for inmates because they recognize the importance of family and community connection to a persons recovery. Meanwhile, Maine is funding the expansion of their jails and prisons. Maine continues to criminalize care. Maine continues to support for-profit companies that capitalize on indigent prisoners. Maine continues to deny people their constitutional right to
a fair trial and qualified legal representation.
Hurt people hurt people and we need to address and heal the hurt that people are experiencing in order to prevent crime. Denying incarcerated people community, connection, love and friendship is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Putting people alone in cages doesn’t fix the root of the problem, it only makes it exponentially worse. Incarceration does nothing to heal our communities.
Because of my experience volunteering at Maine State Prison, I am more invested than ever in advocating for the incarcerated individuals of this state and educating others on the injustices of the system.
