Soledad lifers advise short-timers in prison program
Written by Allison Gatlin
Jun. 01, 2013
Kennaray Harris, a 24-year inmate and founder of Life-C.Y.C.L.E. at the Soledad Correctional Training Facility, sums up the afternoon’s positive messages for more than 100 participants. In an attempt to change life trajectories for the better, the group Harris founded in 2009 puts lifetime prisoners in mentor roles to short-term inmates about to be released.
Before hitting his personal rock bottom, 33-year-old John Geib was careening heedlessly down a path of self-immolation. But it wasn’t until he had been incarcerated for five years on a robbery conviction and “slamming” needles in San Quentin State Prison that he says he actually saw how low he’d fallen. The moment of self-realization occurred during a visit from his mother before his transfer to Soledad Correctional Training Facility in November 2012. “My bottom was when my mom said, ‘I know you’re using in there,’ ” he said.
After a lifelong fear of needles, Geib said he began using intravenous drugs while at San Quentin a year and half into his seven-year incarceration, when other drugs became less accessible. It was ultimately his mother’s admonition and his transfer to Soledad that forced the change he hopes to take with him when his sentence runs out in nine months. “I realized I had to do something different besides sticking a needle in my arm,” he said. “That was my bottom.”
Newly transferred to Soledad, Geib enrolled in Life-C.Y.C.L.E. (Careless Youth Corrected by Lifers’ Experience). The program is exactly what its moniker denotes. Founded in 2009 by 24-year inmate Kennaray Harris, Life-C.Y.C.L.E. is aimed at short-time inmates at Soledad who still have the chance to alter the course of their lives before they become lifelong prison residents. The program is headed up by 25 men long ago given life sentences who want the chance to change the perspectives of younger men soon to be released.
The societies the two generations left behind may be worlds apart, but that doesn’t mean the young men can’t benefit from the experience the lifers have in navigating the prison system, Harris said. After all, the paths to life sentences often begin similarly. “Nothing is new to us. Someone in this room has done it before,” he explained. “Our goal is to change the way these soon-to-be-released men view the world and their place in it. We want to make sure they find their niche.”
Twice weekly, the mentors and their mentees — between 100 and 125 in total — gather for meetings and sessions covering a range of topics from family values, upbringing and parenting responsibilities to drugs, gangs and violence. At the end of 25 weeks, the prison hosts a graduation that in the past two years has seen, respectively, 13 and 23 men complete the program, according to graduation programs. Each session begins with a large circle that later splits into four more-intimate teams responsible for delving deeper into the topic. The program came to Harris in a dream.
“Actually, it was more like a nightmare,” he said. “I found myself fighting the covers.”
Standing on a hilltop with another man, Harris said, he had a vision of his little brother playing on a pair of railroad tracks as a train appeared speeding around the bend. Although Harris was immediately concerned, the other man seemed nonchalant, commenting, “Watch this.”
“I ran off yelling, ‘Get off the tracks! Get off the tracks! Get off the tracks!’ ” he said. “And I realized there are two people in this life. Which one do I want to be? The one who takes off running or the one who says, ‘Watch this?’”
With the warden’s blessing, Harris began gathering the materials that would ultimately form the curriculum of Life-C.Y.C.L.E. He garnered support of a group of longtime inmates willing to offer their insight into life within and without the prison, purposely targeting those up the ranks of the prison gangs who might prevent young men from attending the meetings.
What Harris has found in the three years since the program’s inception is that many of the young men coming to the group are the older generation’s children or grandchildren — a dynamic that proves difficult to navigate on the basis of the differing generations’ perspectives. “I’ve been gone for 25 years,” he said. “The world I left doesn’t exist anymore. I depend on these young guys to keep me grounded with what’s going on in the world.”
Mario Lopez, a former gang member who has served 17 years of a life sentence, agreed. As a member of the older generation housed within Soledad, he recalled the respect for his elders he maintained even while living the gang lifestyle — a respect the new generation simply lacks, he said. “We might have been going out and getting drunk and causing trouble, but when we came home we at least tried to act sober,” he said. “They don’t do that anymore.” Soft-spoken, with a face that belies his years, Lopez said the young men coming into the program are instantly disarmed by his youthful appearance.
It’s a tool he uses to reach them on their level — until they discover he has a grandchild only a year younger than some of them, he said, laughing. Even as a mentor in the program, Lopez said, he himself is still a “work in progress.”
“There’s nothing I can do to change my past,” he said. “But I live in the present one day at a time to change my future. A lot of people would be surprised by the change we’ve made.” For Sam Lindley, a 22-year-old incarcerated on a residential burglary sentence, the program has been a shock to his sanitized upbringing.
The son of two doctors in Silicon Valley and on the path toward the profession himself, Lindley was newly of legal drinking age when a potent cocktail of anti-anxiety meds and alcohol led him to drive across Pasadena, enter a residence he believed to be a friend’s and consume several additional bottles of liquor. A neighbor called the cops and Lindley woke up in a nearby county jail a day later with no recollection of what happened. In fact, it took several days before he really “woke up” to what was happening, he said. “On the third day I realized this was real,” he said. His mother bailed him out on the fifth day. Much to his surprise, Lindley was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison as part of a deal he never thought would come to pass.
“I thought since there was no criminal intent I wouldn’t have to go to prison,” he said.
Upon entering the facility, Lindley said, he “was afraid all the time.” Meeting Harris changed that outlook. “When I met Kennaray, I found someone I could talk to intellectually,” he explained.
Each day since has been a practice in breaking down boundaries, he said. The Life-C.Y.C.L.E. program has been a big part of that, he added. “In prison you put up a mask and try not to show vulnerability,” he said. “This is a place where you can take that mask down. It’s cathartic. It allows you to be human again. It’s almost like a refuge.”
Between alcohol and prescription medication dependence, Lindley fully recognizes the difficulty he’ll face when he’s released in August. He has plans to finish college, complete a book he began when he first stepped foot in Soledad and to attend substance abuse programs. Overall, the sentence and the program were the shot of reality he needed, Lindley said. “It’s been a good experience,” he said. “I was living in a bubble of rich people. It just goes to show prison is full of people from all social, economic and cultural backgrounds.”
Geib knows he’ll have similar challenges when he exits Soledad in early 2014. But with the tools provided him in Life-C.Y.C.L.E., he said, he’s confident he’ll be able to break the loop of abuse that landed him in prison in the first place, namely his perception of what he believed to be a “need.”
Previous to his enrollment in the program, Geib said when he saw something he wanted he immediately became totally and utterly fixated on attaining it — no matter the cost. “I get tunnel vision and my focus is on that,” he explained.
The advice of a 28-year inmate and Life-C.Y.C.L.E. mentor gave Geib the tools he needed to break that loop. “He told me to think of the happy moments and then you don’t need the thing you want,” he said. “For me, it was pregnancy classes with my wife. I loved taking those classes with her. So, I think of my son and my wife’s pregnancy and it breaks the focus.”