Appreciative Inquiry

For this interview I spoke with my friend Kerry, who coordinates educational programs for jail inmates - that is, men and women who have not yet been convicted, but may be in the jail for months or even years if they cannot afford bail as they await trial. Knowing some background about the difficulty of the work environment, and Kerry's accomplishments in spite of these difficulties, were why I chose them for this interview. They are someone I know to be a highly empathetic Servant Leader - extremely committed to those they serve above all else, while also effective at finding resourceful ways to achieve things others would not think possible. 

The following is a summary of the interview, edited for clarity.

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There was a program in the jail garden before where the university would come in to teach classes, with the intention of getting inmates hired after they were released, but they failed at getting them hired, so the gardening program was on hold when I took it over. 

So at one point the sheriff said he wanted every inmate enrolled in some sort of program. The jail is huge - around 9000 inmates in multiple divisions, and we only had 8 people on staff. But we managed to develop an internship program where interns could come in and teach a curriculum in every division. I developed a curriculum from scratch where inmates could learn gardening, then come back and mentor others after they were released.

One female inmate started to crave being in the garden after she learned how to do it - that made me really happy. We were able to get her back as an intern for a few months.

I was also really proud that we got women involved in the garden with that program.

I will actually brag about this - my proudest accomplishment was creating the maximum security program tier.

There was a tier of women who were exceptionally violent/difficult in maximum security - they just acted out out of boredom - they had no programs, no one really gave them attention. But now it’s a program tier.

It started with a theater group - they were regarded by some high profile people, so we were told to give them whatever they needed. At the initial meeting I asked if they were willing to work with maximum security women - they agreed to try, and it worked out really well. After that, other organizations followed.

Another one of my proudest moments was seeing inmates that had behavioral issues, that after engaging in the program, were able to stay infraction-free for the remainder of their time in the jail knowing that they would get kicked out of the program for misbehaving.

That helped at other levels too - guards had fewer issues with them so it made their jobs a lot easier.

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Here is a link to my video talking about the experience of conducting this interview.