Thoughts from a SWANA Instructor

Joe Williams, Principal, Common Sense Consulting, has been a SWANA member for more than 20 years and is a senior faculty member with SWANA certifications in five disciplines.

I went to prison for SWANA.

Literally.

It was by choice. That’s terribly disappointing to many who know me, especially when they discover that it was only for three days and I was able to come and go easily.

In November, I spent three days facilitating training for eight inmates at the medium security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis for the Solid Waste Association of North America. I have lived in Tennessee most all my life and I didn’t even know it was there.  The event was to share the SWANA Managing Recycling Systems course, part of a pilot program by the facility to bring recognizable and respected training to inmates who may (or may not) be leaving the facility to give them a start at a new life.

I am a firm believer in SWANA’s catalog of training and certification courses and have been for the nearly two-and-a-half decades I’ve been a member of the organization. I took my first course in Seattle less than three months after accepting a director’s post in the public sector in Franklin, Tennessee. I was so impressed that I immediately applied to be an instructor. The training was, and still is, just that good.

I was very proud that SWANA would agree to work out an agreement to open new ground, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure about taking the assignment. I’m glad I did.

The students were all-in; they wanted to know how to create and operate a system. They were quick to grasp ideas they had never been exposed to and will probably never use – full cost accounting, general fund vs. enterprise fund, etc. But in each case, they were able to take those concepts and discuss how the principals could be molded to fit their current situation or to better understand how the FCI operated.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen “lightbulbs” go off so quickly and so often. They were so hungry to learn and understand. For some, that desire came from knowing they will be on the other side of the fence at some point soon. For others, I found out it was because they were anxious to expand and improve the inmate-led recycling program they have started, something a couple have a long time to work towards.

As much as I enjoyed the experience, it did not come without its sobering moments and requirements.

The background check before I could be approved was not a problem but arriving on the first day was an eye-opener for me. All electronic devices are banned including, I found out the hard way, my Fitbit watch. I was allowed my training manual, soft drinks, and snacks along with my car keys. Wallet and cash were forbidden with only a photo ID allowed past the security check point of x-ray machine and metal detector. Even passing through the detector, being “wanded” was not out of the question. My ID was confiscated and held in “Control”. I could not be anywhere outside of the glass enclosed classroom without staff escort.

Getting to the classroom was its own experience. After passing through security and being stamped with ultra-violet ink that hid to the naked eye where I was supposed to be, the first of two four-inch steel doors opened to the first sally port. After entering, they closed with an initially heart stopping clang. In the 4’ X 6’ room, I exposed my hand to black light for the officers in control, invisible through bullet-proof glass and bars before the second door opened, allowing access to a perimeter plaza and another steel gate operated by unseen correctional officers. You knew it was passable when you heard the lock bars disengage. It was when the gate closed, and the locks reengaged that you realized you weren’t in Kansas anymore.

On the other side of that gate was the entirety of the students’ lives. Without the fences, bars, and rolls of concertino wire high and low, it would have made a decent small college campus, with a large, level green space and sidewalks crisscrossing to several buildings. But the sidewalks were marked in red with terms like, “out of bounds,” and the people on them all walked in a single file line in matching clothing, watched from above by people in tall towers covered in tinted glass and multiple more several yards away in the grass wearing black tactical gear with belts burdened by keys the size of a hand, radios, metal restraints, and pepper spray.

As surreal as getting to the classroom was, inside the only real difference was the glass walls all around, covered by steel bars. There was a door to the outside, one of those four-inch steel models, while the inside door to the hall appeared to be basic glass with a typical commercial deadbolt. Inside the building all were free to move about to a point. And inside that classroom, there was a magic, created by a class of eight that were eager suck in every piece of information they possibly could.

Over the course of three days, some opened up about why they were there, others didn’t; some spoke of how long they had been in the system or how soon they hoped to exit it. They ranged in age from 25 to 68. The one thing they all had in common was their gratitude to be able to be a part of the program and they worked together to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of the Recycling course possible.

The training was not without interesting moments.

On the final day, we were wrapping up when a commotion outside caught our attention. The guys gave a running play-by-play and speculation on what was happening as nearly every corrections officer on the property went running past the windows heading to some disturbance. The officers were followed by the compound “ambulance,” the equivalent of an NFL injury cart. They had my attention, especially as five or six inmates rushed in the door down the hall from the outside then stood patiently.

Despite my attempts to be nonchalant about what was going on around me, my apprehension must have been apparent to the students.

“You don’t have anything to worry about, Mr. Williams,” one of them said. “We’ll all make sure of that.” His comments were followed by affirmations from all in the room.  The situation, though honestly a bit frightening, was over within three minutes. We watched as five CO’s walked an individual, in restraints, shackles, and chains, towards a building on the other side of the compound.

“He’s headed for the SHU,” one told me. “You know, the Special Housing Unit or the ‘Hole’?”

“We call it the ‘Hotel California’. You check in, but you never know when you’ll check out and even then, you can’t leave.”

As I left them to study together for the exam the next day, I shook hands with each of them individually. Their handshakes were firm, looking me directly in the eye with confidence and gratitude.

I’ll probably never see any of those men again, but it was a moving experience for me.