Prisoners sign up for law degrees

Ana Ruiz, a former offender, is in her final year of a law degree.


Like many students, Malcolm Sang, who is working towards a law degree, spends hours poring over his books. But when it comes to some aspects of his studies, the reality of what he's working on is very close to home – because he is in jail, serving a life sentence for murder.

And if his subject is unlikely, his educational past is, too: because when Sang was convicted, a decade ago, he hadn't a single GCSE to his name. "Malcolm was kicked out of school at 13," explains Jude, his mother (as he's a prisoner, Sang isn't allowed to give interviews, but he has given her permission to tell his story). "It wasn't until he found himself inside that he went back to studying. He passed GCSEs in English and maths and then got an A in A-level English."

Sang's decision to pursue a distance-learning degree in law at Nottingham Trent University was partly motivated by his disillusionment with the law. He believes he should have been convicted not of murder, but of manslaughter, as his co-defendant was.

Now 30, Sang is an inmate at Verne prison in Portland, Dorset – but when he started his degree, he was in another prison and staff there tried to dissuade him from enrolling. "They said law wasn't a suitable subject for a prisoner to study. But there's no reason why not, and he was determined to do it," says his mother.

Sang's funding came from the young people's charity The Longford Trust, named after the Labour peer and prison reformer, which since 2004 has offered scholarships to current and former convicts who want to study for a degree. But what the trust has come to realise, explains its director, Peter Stanford, is that prisoners like Sang aren't alone: law is a subject that prisoners often feel particularly drawn towards; so much so, that the Longford Trust decided to establish a new batch of awards aimed at enabling prisoners to study law. The Patrick Pakenham awards are named after Lord Longford's son, a barrister who died in 2005, and they offer practical, emotional and psychological support to students during their time at university.

"In many ways it's entirely understandable why prisoners who get involved in education should feel drawn to law as a subject," says Stanford. "They're far more likely to want to study law than they are to be drawn to, say, English or classics or history – these subjects aren't going to have the same relevance for them that they do for young people coming out of school, who have maybe had more advantages in life than many of those who end up in jail."

Another law student who has had personal experience of being on the wrong side of the law is Ana Ruiz, who was convicted of drug dealing eight years ago. "Being sent to prison is a crushing blow to anyone's self-esteem – you think you're worthless, you feel excluded," she says. "Starting to study makes all the difference, because you realise you can achieve something."

Ruiz, who is 33, is in her final year of a law degree that she started in 2007, having been released from prison the previous year. She hopes to become a solicitor, specialising in environmental law. "I feel very strongly about these cases, and I'd love to make working on them my future."

Maria Aristodemou, a senior law lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Ruiz is studying, says students who have direct experience of being caught up in the criminal justice system often have fascinating insights to share in seminars and tutorials. "At many universities, though not at Birkbeck, many students have come straight from school and have no experience like this – so someone who can talk from personal experience can be really interesting for them," she says.

"But there is a downside, too, which is that people who've been in this situation can sometimes be quite opinionated and stubborn – they're entrenched in their own experience, and they're unable to see the wider picture. You start to feel that what they're unpacking in a seminar would be better unpacked on an analyst's couch, and it can be hugely time-consuming for everyone else.

"But certainly in the long term, those who stay the course and maybe go on to work in the legal system will be able to relate to defendants in a way that many lawyers maybe can't, and that has to be valuable."

One anxiety for people like Ruiz and Sang – who would also like to work as a solicitor eventually – is that they may never be able to make the leap from one side of the courtroom to the other, despite having studied hard for their degrees. That's because they fear that the Solicitors' Regulation Authority (SRA), part of the Law Society, won't sanction their applications to work as solicitors. "I understand their worries, because certainly on past experience the Law Society has been reluctant to admit people who've been convicted of crimes to the solicitors' course," says Stanford.

According to Diane Lawson of the SRA, every application for admission to the solicitors' course is evaluated on merit – but there are concerns. "The overriding consideration is public protection," she says. "The type and number of convictions are taken into consideration, and applicants have to provide evidence of rehabilitation.

"It's quite understandable that someone who'd been exposed to the legal system may have a great interest in pursuing legal studies. However, the SRA has an obligation to build public confidence in our legal system and has to ensure that all entrants to the profession meet the requirements for competence and conduct."

But some prisoner law students have already put their learning to practical use. "Gary", who can't be named for legal reasons, served three years of a six-year sentence for rape. Like Sang, he became interested in studying law partly because he felt he'd been the victim of injustice. "When I was convicted, I was disqualified from seeing any children including my own – but when I read up on what the law actually said, I discovered it shouldn't have happened in my case.

"I lodged an appeal and represented myself – and I got the disqualification overturned. I was very nervous, but I knew I could do it. The judges took 10 minutes to reach their decision, and winning really spurred me on to study law. It made me realise how brilliant it is to be able to argue a case in a court of law – it made me determined that this was what I'd like to do."

And when he got back to prison, there was a long queue of fellow inmates all waiting to see him. "They wanted me to work on their appeals for them. My nickname became "the QC"; even some of the prison guards came to see me, to ask advice about their divorce cases.

"You need a lot of books to study law, and when I was inside, it was difficult to get them. Eventually, I decided to write to every judge, barrister and solicitor I could find, asking them to donate books they didn't need any more. Lots of them did – in the end, I had 40 or 50 books, so many that I had to be moved to a bigger cell!"

Gary is now out of prison and continuing the law degree. Like Sang and Ruiz, he hopes to practise as a solicitor. "I'd like to work in criminal and family law," he says. "I don't feel the lawyers I encountered served me as well as they should have done. I want to be a better lawyer for some other defendant in the future."

Smugglers find creative ways to move contraband

The package surprised even veteran law enforcement officials used to seeing all kinds of contraband smuggled into prisons: It was a child's coloring book, dedicated "to daddy" and mailed to a New Jersey inmate, with crayon-colored scribbling made from a paste containing drugs.
The discovery of the book last month prompted the Cape May County sheriff to warn others in law enforcement that smuggling techniques were reaching new levels.

In Pennsylvania last month, prosecutors disrupted a prescription drug smuggling ring that was mailing narcotics into prisons concealed under postage stamps.
And in Clifton, N.J., police once uncovered a drug-smuggling operation under the guise of an importer bringing fresh flowers from South America in cardboard boxes that, when shredded and mixed with a solution, dissolved into liquid heroin.

Experts say even as surveillance equipment, airport scanning technology and cargo X-rays modernize, drug-smuggling techniques are keeping pace.

"It's a question of building a better mousetrap," said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Corrections Department. "Somebody's going to always try and think of a new way."

It's been more than a decade since sending food to prisoners was prohibited, but today, drugs, weapons and cell phones still find their way behind bars, according to Fedkenheuer. New Jersey's prison system has added dogs trained not only to sniff drugs, but to detect the odor of cell phones as well, which are banned.

It's not only prison smuggling that gets creative, according to U.S. Customs officials. Smugglers try all sorts of techniques to bring contraband into the country by air, sea and land.

Smuggling drugs into the U.S. has been going on as long as there's been a market for illegal substances, according to John Saleh, a Customs and Border Protection officer based in New York.

"The drug industry, drug trafficking, is a billion-dollar or trillion-dollar business," Saleh said. "It's a business that makes money, so they're very cunning in their ways of masking something, or smuggling something in so they can make a profit."

In the past two months alone, inventory confiscated at New York-area airports and ports included opium concealed in porcelain cat figurines, cocaine in bags of freeze-dried coffee, drugs built into the railings of a suitcase, sewn into pants, molded into sneakers, concealed in clothing hangers or packed into the console of a Nintendo Wii video game system.

"You name it, we've probably seen it," Saleh said. Drugs have been hidden in electrical cords, in a computer mouse, a child's Mr. Potato Head doll, baby diapers, drug-soaked clothing, toothpaste, cosmetics, fruit that is expertly sliced, gutted, filled with drugs and resealed to look untouched, or in live animals _ such as puppies _ and of course, in people.

Even for customs officials like Saleh, who think they've seen it all, every once in a while, a smuggler surfaces whose level of craftsmanship has to be admired.

Saleh said one of the most shocking finds was a cache of cocaine that had been sculpted into the size and shape of individual black-eyed peas, each one painstakingly hand-painting with tiny black markings to blend in with a bag of real beans.

Customs enforcement agents use a multi-layered approach, according to Saleh, to detect smugglers or illicit goods; a mix of technology, intelligence techniques and officers on the ground.

Kevin Donohue, a deputy chief officer with U.S. Customs at Newark Liberty Airport, says that in addition to drug and agricultural product-sniffing dogs, scanning technology and luggage searches, the most effective way to catch smugglers is by being able to read people and detect scenarios that may seem slightly off.

A young woman with small feet, carrying size 14 sneakers in her luggage.

A beat-up, older-model suitcase with shiny new screws in its base. Travelers who watch the carousel a bit too anxiously for their bag. A person carrying a huge tub of peanut butter from a country that doesn't produce it.

A hard-shell suitcase coming from a country where nearly everyone carries soft-sided luggage. They are all real scenarios in which drugs or illegal contraband have been found at the airport, Donohue said.
"You pretty much become an expert in the suitcase," Donohue said. "Rivets, bolts, the way it's made, the weight of every kind of suitcase."

Airports tend to have smaller-scale drug smuggling, although Donohue said there are agents on his force who are also trained airplane mechanics and search aircraft for hollow contraband cavities.

That leaves traffickers hoping to move larger quantities to find other methods.
In 2010, a truckload of white sea bass headed into San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico, was found to contain 708 pounds of marijuana wrapped in 29 packages and stowed beneath the fish and a layer of ice.

In Dallas, a man pulled over for a traffic violation was found to be transporting a casket carrying 100 pounds of marijuana instead of a body.

A corrections officer in Arkansas was arrested in 2008 for making frequent takeout food deliveries to the county jail and was caught sneaking syringes inside tacos and marijuana under chili.

Smugglers also use a wide variety of methods to get drugs across borders.
Soldiers in Colombia seized a fully submersible drug-smuggling submarine in February, capable of reaching the coast of Mexico.

Last July, another fully submersible "narcosub" was seized just across the border by authorities in neighboring Ecuador.

And this past January, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials discovered drug traffickers in Mexico using an ancient technology _ a giant catapult _ to hurl marijuana across the U.S. border into Arizona.

Those on the front lines of stopping contraband, like Customs officials, are rarely ever surprised.

"There really are no new ways," Saleh said. "If you can imagine it, they've probably done it."

Inmate reading programs suffer amid state cuts

CUMBERLAND, Md. — “Oh, Miss Shirley is here,’’ says the man behind the library reference desk, peeking over the top of his reading glasses. He is a convicted murderer.

Miss Shirley is Glennor Shirley, head librarian for Maryland prisons, responsible for the rows of books behind the barbed-wire fences here at Western Correctional Institution and 16 other state prison libraries. The relationship between the inmate behind the desk and librarian started with a Commodore 64.

“Remember when you locked me in a room until I learned how to use that computer?’’ says the inmate, who wasn’t authorized by the prison to be quoted by name. Miss Shirley laughs and changes the subject, and then the inmate whispers: “Don’t let her be too modest. She is an amazing teacher. A lot of us have relied on her.’’

Murderers, rapists, thieves, and drug dealers have been relying on Miss Shirley, as she is always called by library visitors, for more than two decades to get them Jackie Collins novels, Westerns, biographies of Henry Ford, the latest James Patterson page-turner, poetry, Entrepreneur magazine, math textbooks, resume guides, and illustrated books about snakes.

But with state budget shortfalls, Miss Shirley is no longer allocated money for new books. Her already tiny slice of the $13.9 million prison education budget was whittled back even further after the department took a $2.1 million hit last year. Staffing is down.

Funds for programs letting prisoners read books to their children — also gone.

These days, her stories about library science behind bars often begin with this phrase, “When I had money … ’’

Miss Shirley has weathered deficits during previous recessions as lawmakers diverted money away from prisoners toward law-abiding citizens — a constituency, she knows, that is prone to ask, “Why give money to murderers to read when people can’t get jobs?’’

Prisoner advocates say neglecting rehabilitation in tough fiscal times is shortsighted, pointing to studies showing education programs can reduce recidivism by 29 percent.

“Libraries in prisons changes lives,’’ says Diana Reese, president of the American Library Association’s division for specialized libraries.

Prisoners acknowledge the difficult decisions lawmakers face.

“Here are these men locked up, promised three meals a day, and we can read at our leisure without paying the rent,’’ says Wayde Heslop, 38, of Silver Spring, Md., who is serving a life sentence at North Branch Correctional for the murder of a 23-year-old man. (Heslop loved “The Count of Monte Cristo.’’)

“Some of these men are coming back home,’’ Heslop said. “If they come back into society, at least they should come back educated.’’

Miss Shirley is not complaining. Rather, she has won plaudits from her prison librarian peers for pushing ahead despite setbacks facing the entire prison reading community.

“Her libraries have been devastated in the last few years,’’ says Diane Walden, Miss Shirley’s counterpart for Colorado prisons. “She doesn’t complain or vent or whine. She is very focused on what she can do. She’s an amazing person and advocate.’’