Having first introduced you to Alaynie Drury and the thoughtful use of her agency as an intern for the Calvin Prison Initiative (CPI), we felt it fitting to introduce some of your fellow Calvin students from the Handlon Campus. In the second part of this series, you will read how Drury’s interaction with her carceral classmates has affected their lives and inspired change in the hearts and minds of each individual. Each of the following participants were interviewed by Drury. They would like for you to know the impact her engaging spirit has had upon them.

To begin with, as Dr. Todd Cioffi, senior advisor for CPI, has stated, “It is nice to see young people (such as Drury) showing a spark and drive for the criminal justice system and wanting to produce a change.” CPI students are harvesting fruit from seeds that Calvin University began planting over a decade ago; having Drury engage with CPI students now is an amazing testament to her desire to continue producing a positive yield through her education and Christian character. Through this restorative lens, one of the questions Drury asked concerned the ways in which CPI students have been institutionalized by their incarceration. Some elements of being institutionalized through incarceration are very noticeable. For instance, when the emergency count siren goes off, every student rushes to the bathroom, because once we are ushered back to our cells we have no way to use the facilities and we do not know how long we will be immobilized. Additionally, these emergency count times often interrupt classroom lectures and study hall time. Even when it is near chow time (which we go to a central dining area to receive), we all go to our cells for at least five minutes before being called to go to chow. Moreover, CPI students cannot just go to study hall whenever we want; there is an itinerary system that we must be placed on in order to study in a less trafficked area.

However, after answering this question about institutionalization with this very broad stroke, I found myself revisiting this question at different depths and responding a little deeper. But, even as I tap these keys, I am considering how Drury has cut away several layers of institutionalized elements that I would have never considered because I had never thought to look. One example — having been incarcerated for nearly three decades — are the layers of humanity that have been removed from my social systems. I did not recognize that knowing someone’s full name — not merely a last or first name, or identifying someone by a number — has a profound effect on how we communicate with that person. Furthermore, not being allowed to shake hands with non-prisoners for over 25 years of incarceration was a stigma that I had to overcome in order to engage professors and CPI faculty with proper reverence. 

There are a myriad of ways that being institutionalized can be harmful to humanity if the applying institution is not formed in a restorative light. One of the ways spoken about above is how institutionalization severs layers of humanity and stagnates relational depth. Being able to have interaction with CPI professors, staff and interning students helps to repair our social mobility. Personally, I want to thank Drury for helping to drive me in the direction of removing this embedded layer of institutionalization that I had long since not recognized. 

A second voice comes from Kevin “Kidd” Moore, who is the CPI Choir’s percussionist and super senior on his way to earning his bachelors’. “What I got from the interview with Alaynie [Drury] was that she is a concerned person wanting to see criminal reform in a fashion that all prisoners are treated equal, and all prisoners have a second chance in society. Also, what I learned from Alaynie [Drury] was that within criminal justice there is a wave of young adults that view the criminal justice system as being unfair to prisoners. As such, with the criminal justice system being viewed as unfair by our youth of today, their mindset is to change the views of the lawmakers. In fact, they want to encourage the lawmakers to change their view to fit what the constitution actually states under equal protection of the law. According to the youth’s view, they believe that equal protection of the law should be afforded to all prisoners and the abolishment of the natural life sentence. Meaning, they believe in giving every prisoner the equal opportunity to have a second chance in society with a meaningful opportunity to flourish, as opposed to dying in prison.”