Finding Purpose in Prison: the Search for Meaning

Have you ever pondered the purpose of your life? That's a difficult question to answer for anyone, but in prison it's a challenge to answer.  In this thought-provoking episode of Voices Unlocked, Pam Bailey and Tee Peters explore this question inspired by the book, "The Why Café." They are joined by Rob Barton, who is still in prison, and Cordell Miller, who was recently released, but then deported. Can e person find purpose and meaning in prison? 

We look at the myriad ways prisoners find a way to spend their time, whether it's learning the law, setting records for burpees, learning to crochet or -- less constructively -- gambling and drug dealing. Rob and Cordell, however, became change makers. 

Tune in, and think about how YOU would answer the question: Why are you here?

Follow this podcast so you'll be informed when new episodes are uploaded (twice a month). Meanwhile, read more stories and learn how you can contribute to reform; visit MoreThanOurCrimes.

Transcript

PAM BAILEY: Hi, I am Pam Bailey. I am host of Voices Unlocked, the podcast produced by More Than Our Crimes, so that we can bring the voices of people behind bars in federal prison out to you, so you see their humanity and the need for reform. With me as host today is Terrell "Tee" Peters,, who was just released from prison in December after 23 years, eight months and three weeks. I think it is important to note because you really keep exact count, a countdown to freedom. The focus of the show today was inspired by a book I recently read called "The Why Cafe." It's a silly name sort of, and in a way, the book is a little bit predictable and simplistic. But there is something about it that got me to thinking. The central theme of the book is that it asks you to ask yourself the question, "Why are you here?"

And by "here," they don't mean in the studio right now, or in a Starbucks coffee shop, or in prison. It's more like, "Why do you exist? Why are you on earth?" I wonder how many of you could answer that question. And it got me thinking about that too. Basically the question is, "What's your purpose?" And as I answered that for myself, I started thinking about, wow, what about people in prison, especially people who may not see the light at the end of the tunnel? What if they have life without parole? Or what if they are like some of the people from DC who have indeterminate sentences, sometimes 30 years to life, like my co-founder? When you first go in (to prison), or you're in the middle, that's a long time. Your end date doesn't seem realistic. 

So, how do you... It's easy to say that there is no purpose in prison, that the question doesn't apply to you. And we sort of want to challenge that today. The premise of the book is that, no matter where you are, if you know what your purpose is or what you want your purpose to be, you can find a way to bring that to existence, to breathe life into it. So, we're going to be talking about that in the first interview with Rob Barton, my co-founder of More Than Our Crimes. I'll tell you more about him in a little bit, but you're going to hear him use the word "bid," people who are doing their bid in prison. That's probably a term you haven't heard before. Tee, why don't you talk a little bit about what that term means and the nuances around it.

TERRELL "TEE" PETERS: Okay. Well, basically when we use that term, it means that you're doing your time. You can have two different mindsets during your time. You can have a mindset of just accepting your fate in prison or you can actually do something constructive with your bid. So bidding just means doing your time, in a constructive way or destructive way.

PAM: Yeah, so that's what we'll be talking about today, all the different ways people find to do their bid, to somehow make the time go by. And some people do it more productively than others. My first interview was with my co-founder. As I said, his name is Rob Barton. He has been in prison since two months past his 16th birthday. He's 45 now. And if you've watched our podcast before, you've seen him several times or heard from him several times. He's currently at the high-security prison in Coleman, Florida, and he's going to talk a little bit about the different ways people do their bids.

ROBERT BARTON: Basically, what happens is in order to do time, you got to bid. Some people bid by fighting their case. That means you got to go to the law library all the time, and that gives them hope that they're going to go home. And then some people just fritter away time; some people gamble every day, or watch sports. Some people work out, some people sell drugs, some people get high. They do whatever they can to get through their bid, and they do this consistently. Day after day, week after week, year after year. You start putting the days together, the years start going by. And in the process, I do whatever else I can do to get through the days.

PAM: So, one point I want to make... Rob was talking about the variety of ways he's seen people bid that may not sound very positive to other people: gambling, doing drugs, selling drugs, watching sports all day. But it's really important to understand....I mean, try to imagine for a minute that you are spending years upon years upon years locked away behind walls, pretty much invisible to the rest of the world, and it seems like it's going to go on that way forever. You have to find some way to pass the time. The outside world sort of recedes. It's not real anymore. What's real is what's inside. So a whole other society, a whole other economy, emerges. And so people, for instance, sell drugs to make money. They have to pay for,...I mean, we've talked in other episodes about how bad the prison food is. So, they do whatever they need to do to pass the time and to live somewhat comfortably. 

TEE: Can I say something about that? 

PAM: Sure.

TEE: Yeah, what you just said. People do sell drugs just to make money; sometimes that's the only way they can see to survive. So, even though I'm not saying that selling drugs is right, that might be the only thing that they know at the moment.

PAM: Yeah, I mean, let's face it, a lot of these individuals came off the streets and prison doesn't offer alternatives. It used to be that prison jobs were very available. That's not true anymore. And if you don't have family supporting you... Rob often makes the point that when you're in a mansion, you live like you do in a mansion. But when you're in the woods you follow the lifestyle of the woods.

TEE Exactly.

PAM: Rob however, had an opportunity that not everybody has. He was going through some court hearings, so he was brought back to DC from Florida and he stayed in the DC jail for over a year. He had the opportunity to participate in an inside-outside university program put on by Georgetown University, and was exposed to a whole other world. Finally, the outside world became real and he connected to it again. That opened up a lot of other options and possibilities for him. But he lost his court hearing. He was hoping to get out, and was sent back to Coleman [instead]. But he went back with a renewed sense of possibility and options. He still needed a purpose very much because he'd been rejected. That's very hard to think that you might be free and then you're not. You have the opportunity taken away from you. So he needed to find a purpose, but this time he had more ideas. So he's going to talk about how More Than Our Crimes...That's when we created More Than Our Crimes; it was right in that period when he was in DC, he had lost his hearing, he was going to be sent back, and that's when we met and we created More Than Our Crimes. And it became his purpose.

ROB: I went up to the jail and met you and started being in these programs and stuff like that, and just seeing that there were people that really care about us in the world and that you could really make an effect from here... And when we started, we established More Than Our Crimes that became something that was bigger than me. It was hearing people ask, "Rob, what do you think about this? How can we push this forward?" Or, "Can we do this?" as far as getting laws changed or whatever. It gave me a sense of purpose. Having people believe in me and call on me like that, took me outside of myself. It made me think, "Well, damn, although I'm in jail, I still can do this. And not only help me, but help everybody else. So that's what made me have a bigger purpose than me.

It made a difference in the sense that it means your life counts, what you're doing counts. So for many people that got life without parole, or you're never going home, it's like I'm just exsisting until I die. And whatever bid I pick up, like what I told you, selling drugs or getting high or gambling or whatever they do, I do this until...It's not a conscious thought, but it it helps me get through the day, to get through the time. But when you pick up these bigger missions, it's like, well, damn, I really can affect the world. I can change something for the people that's here. I can change something for my family members or maybe I can change the world. And when you start thinking like that, it gives you power. You feel like you got power and it gives you a renewed hope. So my self worth is not tied just to me. It's tied into More Than Our Crimes and what we're doing. It's tied into a bigger cause of helping us.

TEE: Wow. What Rob just said in his interview resonated so deep with me because in the earlier parts of my incarceration, I used to run around and gamble and drank wine, made wine.

PAM: All against the rules.

TEE: Everything against the rules. And I didn't have a sense of purpose. and that's because I didn't have a sense of direction. I was still young at the time, and it just took for me to, like have to...just like Rob when he came to DC and he connected with people who seemed like they cared for him and that in itself invoked hope in him. And the point in my incarceration when that happened for me, was in 2014 when I was introduced to a whole different world. I took a sociology class at West Virginia University. It was part of the program called the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. And within program, I learned different theories, social theories, one of them being the strain theory.

PAM: What was that?

TEE: The strain theory basically states that when people in society... The pressures of society imposes on people a strain, of not being able to handle what society brings to them. And that happens in prison as well, when prisoners have to go through the strain of being imprisoned. And so those type of theories, like the social bond theory, the broken glass theory, those type of theories resonated with me because I learned them, but I've also experienced them. And just knowing that people cared for me, coming in and helping us learn these different theories and were willing to educate us, gave me hope. And that in itself gave me a sense of purpose.

PAM: So, I guess sometimes people think of theories as something that's not real. But for you, they gave you an explanation for what...

TEE: Happened to me.

PAM: Yeah.

TEE: Exactly what happened to me.

PAM: And was that when you were in a medium-security prison?

TEE: That was in USP Hazelton.

PAM: Okay. That's great to hear because too many times, these really good programs aren't offered to people in the high-security prisons. You have to move down to medium security or lower to get really good programs. And I've always thought that where they should be offered are to the people who are in the most restrictive settings, because they need something that will help them change.

TEE: Well, that program invoked in me a desire to be more.

PAM: What became your purpose then?

TEE: Just to be more. Just to educate people that they can be more. My purpose actually became to dismantle the systems that placed me in prison. Some people might say that I placed myself in prison because of my act, but there were certain things, pieces that were put in place that shaped the way how I thought. And eventually I ended up in prison because of how I thought. So that system itself, I just want to help dismantle that system.

PAM: I think your story also shows that as people struggle to find their purpose, they need help. They need the programming, the education. You can't do that on your own very easily sometimes. You need to have rehabilitation, which we seem to forget in our prisons. Our prisons seem to be more about warehousing these days. So it shows the importance of offering education.

TEE: And then, the term you just used, rehabilitation. You can't rehabilitate something that has never been habilitated. I used to always say that that term wasn't effective for what needed to happen to people in prison like myself. And that we had to go through a process of being transformed. Once you go through that process of being transformed, you find a purpose that's bigger than you, and the why, like you just said from the book, the why.

TEE: Why am I here?

PAM: What can I do? What's my role in life? Everybody wants that. I think you mentioned it. One of the books that people have read, you mentioned it and I've heard it from a number of people in prison, a book that was influential for them was Man's Search for Meaning. By Viktor Frankl.

I think that's when we say, "why are you here?" that's what's behind it. We all want to find meaning. We want meaning to our life. We don't want to feel like this is all there is or it's inconsequential. So the next interview is with a man named Cordell Miller. He was known in prison as Boogie. So, I call him Boogie. He has a pretty amazing story in that he was in for 31 years, one of the longest I've heard, since the age of 17. And in a future episode, we'll talk more about his story because he ended up being deported right after 31 years in prison to Jamaica, where he had been born but didn't grow up there. And that's a whole other story, when he had to find purpose all over again.

TEE: Oh, wow.

PAM: But I think he has a wonderful story about how he went through the same search for transformation and how he found it. So in this first segment of his interview, he talks a little bit about the early part of the journey where most people take a while to find their purpose. You mentioned that when you first come in, you're overwhelmed with just being in prison.

TEE: You're trying to figure out how to navigate this new world that you're in.

PAM: And you're still in the same mindset you were in when you were in the streets to some extent. So it always takes a little while before people evolve. So let's listen to the first part of his journey.

CORDELL "BOOGIE" MILLER: For some people, if you have that mindset like, well, man, I'm not going to get up. I feel as though that I'm going to be here for the rest of my life. But you know, uou have options. I can either just be a part of what's going on inside the prison, just start getting high or just start being troublesome, just do whatever the situation may whatever prison had to offer on a negative perspective. I'd be like, nah, that's not me. I'm saying, I think that I could do more. I can be more to others. I can have a more impactful presence in somebody's life or whatever. So I did. I started surrounding myself with the younger brothers, those that were coming in that didn't have a clue about prison and the mannerisms and the etiquette of prison, something that nobody did for me when I first came in at a younger age, you know what I'm saying? Because I was confined when I was 17. Nobody pulled me to the side and took me under their wing and you know what I'm saying, showed me anything. I had to learn a lot of things on my own.

PAM: And in the next soundbite from Boogie, you mentioned that it was the Inside Outside program, the education, the university that helped you find your purpose. For Boogie, he talks about finding Islam. I mean, people can do it on their own, find their purpose and go through the transformation you talked about. But a lot of times they need something to facilitate it. It could be a book, it could be a program. For him, it was converting to Islam, and that's what gave him, as you'll hear, he decided that his mission was to help other people. And he ends up deciding he was going to help the young people coming into prison who we just talked about: the fact that when you first come in, you're lost. You can go in a couple of different directions and sometimes they're very negative. Anyway, he' talks about that journey and how he found his purpose.

BOOGIE: It didn't start in the beginning. It started toward the end of my confinement, later on in my years when I got older, when I was in my 30s, like about 30 on up. And I think it really began once I became Muslim, I think this is when my perspective began to change. I was no longer feeling sorry about my situation. I was no longer beating myself up about that fact that I got a life sentence and so on and so forth. And I felt now that my purpose was to help us as opposed to feeling sorry for myself. I got tired of seeing the younger brothers come in with an extensive sentence. And what they did was they came straight in to the block, met a few guys and went straight to the basketball court or went straight to the gym, not realizing the gravity of their situation. You know what I'm saying?

Because they were young. They were very immature in that regard. No matter how dangerous a setting was, they were so content with being around their so-called homies or people they were familiar with that they hadn't seen in a long time. They forgot about their situation at hand. So therefore, I'm like, man, there's more to this. You know what I'm saying? Guys that were lacking in education, didn't have a GED or felt as though they had to do nothing but be with the homies as they say. That's how you do time: ust hang with your homies. But there's so much more to it than that.

TEE: What Boogie just said about him finding Islam or becoming a Muslim also resonated with me because I found Islam in prison as well. And one message that I' got from that is that in order to get a hundred percent change in anything, you have to be a hundred percent dissatisfied with what you're doing. And I was a hundred percent dissatisfied about who I was and what was happening to me. So Islam gave me a foundation of principles that changed the trajectory of where I was going.

PAM: Yeah, yeah. It's a common experience I know, shared by a lot of individuals. I don't know how you could survive prison if you didn't have some kind of value system. And also you get community from it, right? Meeting other people who share that. And it gives you community. Now, in the last soundbite from Boogie, he points out that not everybody finds purpose that is as deep and meaningful as Rob and himself. For some people... 

I can think of one gentleman, for instance, he discovered he has an artistic skill. So for some people it's painting. And the one I'm thinking of, he crochets. And the reason why that's a purpose is he makes things for people who he loves or gets to know. And he always does something with each thing he crochets as a gift, so that when that person gets it, it's unique to that person and that person will think of him all the time. So for instance, he's making a big afghan for me, and he won't tell me yet, but he's woven into it something that is sort of a message to me. And that's his purpose. It's a way of giving happiness to others through a talent that he has. So Boogie talks a little bit about some of the other ways you could find purpose that may not seem like a purpose at first, but are.

BOOGIE: See guys, basically find something, a talent about themselves that they never knew existed. Time does that. I got to know guys who began to write poetry, artistry, music, sports, whatever the situation. I saw guys really find themselves in that regard. Yeah, man, it takes time. You got to really just be patient with yourself. Now you got some guys that's all about their case and so forth, but you also have guys that realize, I've seen guys that study the law so much and can't help themselves, but they are able to help others.

TEE: Upon returning back into society. I believe that a lot of guys who did long, lengthy sentences, when they do return to society and they have a sense of purpose, I think they continue their sense of purpose. And for some people, you have to reimagine a sense of purpose. But for the guys that did those long, lengthy sentences, I see that... including myself.. we continuie our purpose. We are in the communities, we are doing a lot of stuff or a lot of things that we pledged ourself on while we were in prison.

PAM: Like working with youth. I hear a lot of the people in prison who I talk to, one of the purposes they think that they have is to work with youth to make sure they don't make the mistakes that they did.

TEE: And you see that. You see that. They don't want the youth to end up or have to go through what we went through. And just like myself, for example, I said that my purpose, I wanted to just dismantle the system, the machine, and just slam it and just mess it up and just create a new system. And I believe that I'm continuing that purpose.

PAM: Because you work with the nonprofit organization that's very much focused on reform.

TEE: Exactly. And so that's my love at the moment. Yeah.

PAM: And it's what I hope we want more people to see is that people coming out of prison have gifts they can give to their community. They have an inside knowledge of where the system isn't working, and why do people, kids get involved in crime to begin with? And so we really should see them as assets. 

And I tell you what, I think all of us and everybody who's watching or listening today should think about that question too. Why are we here? What is our meaning? And I have to tell you, More Than Our Crimes is a big part, I think, of why I'm here. And it makes me feel good to say that, it doesn't earn me big bucks, that's for sure. And it's hard to start a new organization. But I do feel like I have meaning and I'm contributing something. And it answers that question of "why" for me. 

I would encourage everybody out there to ask that question of yourself, "What's your purpose?" And please subscribe to the podcast, so you will be notified of future episodes, and discuss this over dinner with your friends and family after watching this. Thank you.