An Army of Normal Folks - Todd Cioffi: An Army of Normal Prisoners (Pt 1)

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Todd is the founding director of Calvin Prison Initiative, an accredited bachelor degree program that’s inside of a prison. And one that’s not only transformed their students’ lives, but most fascinating is how it’s cultivated An Army of Normal Prisoners who've completely transformed the culture inside of Michigan’s prisons! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That is sparking creativity among our students to say, all right, I've harmed. What do I have to do to help repair that harm? And that's when some guys years ago said, you know what, we've a lot of us have been pretty violent against women. What do we do? We would like to grow vegetables and donate the vegetables to organizations that work with abuse women. And we're like, okay.

Great idea. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis in the last part somehow.

Well, it led to an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never gonna be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us, just you and me looking around in our neck of the woods and saying, hey, you know what? I can help. That's what Todd Choffee, the voice you just heard, has done. These students that are doing this beautifully redemptive thing are prisoners.

Todd is the founding director of the Calvin Prison Initiative, a credited bachelor's degree program that's now inside of a Michigan prison. And one that's not only transformed their students' lives, but most fascinating is how it's completely transformed the culture inside of Michigan's prisons. I cannot wait for you to meet Todd right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Lately on the NPR Politics podcast, we're talking about a big question. How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy?

Schools? Healthcare? Follow coverage of a changing country? Hey everybody. Through a set of strange circumstances that I'm actually a little bit embarrassed about and angry about because I didn't get to handle this one, our executive producer Alex Cortez ended up hosting this particular episode and he did a great job, which is not surprising since he's probably conducted 200 interviews of his own in a former life. So you'll hear about all that and why during the episode. But to tease it a little bit, given you're hearing my voice right now, I am alive.

Let's go to Alex. All right, guys. As you know, this is not Bill Courtney's voice. We were 25 minutes past our recording time. Sorry, this makes it sound super ominous, but I hope Bill is okay. I'm guessing he's either in a car wreck and he's not or something serious has happened with his company that he's got to deal with. This is the first time that I'm doing an interview.

Debut. Which he actually made me super pissed about. He walks in here in the next five minutes. But it's out. I'm so sorry that you're stuck here with me today. Oh, no, it's a treat. All right. So Chad, choffy choffy. I get it right. Yes, sir. It's kind of a weird pronunciation for CIO. Italian, and the CI gets a chuff. Okay, so I often say coffee with a chopuff. Yeah

As Bill always say welcome to Memphis. Yeah, thank you very much. Do you like the actually I didn't ask you on the drive over Did you like the arrive hotel? I did isn't it? It's a great hotel. Yeah, it's got a great vibe about guitar player Oh really and so on the bedstand was a little Bluetooth mini Marshall head. Yeah, that I woke up and could play my music to this. Well, that's really cool. Yeah, great hotel. Nice. All right. Well, usually we'll start with people's childhood Todd. So tell me a little bit about yours where you grew up your parents or community. How did those things shape your life? So I grew up in Holland, Michigan, which is on the west

side of Michigan to look capital to look capital of the world. People don't know we're talking about. So it's it's as the name implies, it was settled by Dutch folk in the mid 19th century, named it Holland. And I'm half Dutch, half Italian. And so my mother grew up there. And it's right on Lake Michigan basically. And she worked in it's right on Lake Michigan basically and She worked in some resorts on Lake Michigan, but the resort owner also had resorts in New York State And so he said if any of you want to go to New York State for the summer

You can work out at those resorts out there. So she did and my father His parents first generation from Italy were there in Albany, New York and that's where they met So they got married. I had my two older brothers. They moved back to Holland and that's where I was born In Holland, Michigan. So I grew up in Holland Still in the same house. My mom owns the same house all these years later and It is the tulip capital when I was a kid the tulip time parade on the Saturday, which ends the tulip festival was the fourth largest festival in the country. Really? Yeah. And how many tulips and how many people come

to the all my word back in the day, it would shut the city down. All these buses and everything. And you could go to tulip farms, where you get on observation everything. And you could go to tulip farms where you get on observation decks and there's just as far as the eye can see tulips. There's like 100. I mean, I've read it before. There's like hundreds of thousands of tulips, hundreds of thousands of tulips. And you wouldn't believe how many varieties. And you can go to a wooden shoe factory. And they actually have a windmill that was given by the queen of the Netherlands

back in the day. and it's all Dutch. Alright, so given you said Dutch again, I can't help myself but hanging around your town of Grand Rapids, I was telling you driving over. I've heard all the jokes like if you ain't Dutch, you ain't much. There's actually a really inappropriate one that I'll tell anyway. Someone you know too said a Dutch man would rather be caught cheating on his wife than home at 2 p.m. Not working. Yes Like the touch work that is very true. That's very true

So what was interesting though is my father Italian Catholic My mother Dutch Dutch reformed, okay, and you don't put those two together Right, and but they were yeah And so I've reflect back on that experience and I realized that already in my household at a very young age There was significant religious diversity. I mean significant at the time Because there was some Dutch reform folk who didn't even believe Catholics or Christian right and And so my father had to navigate that but so did we as the

children. And so as I got more interested in the church, and probably junior high, by then my mom had left the Dutch Reformed tradition and now was going to a Baptist church. And so here I am, you know, having some Dutch Reformed influence, Catholic influence, now Baptist. And then by the time I graduated high school, I was going to a central a Wesleyan church that basically functioned as a non denominational church. But I realized at the time I didn't like it. Because I thought it was confusing. Yeah, right.

It's confusing. However, I realize now that it prepped me for what would end up being a lifetime of working in highly diverse contexts, religious for sure. But then eventually, racial class, you name it. And so it is one of those things where I look back on my life and see what I'm doing now. Working in a prison is incredibly diverse environment and I realized oh my goodness all those years actually prepped me for this It makes sense to me so being a diverse setting seems normal And I want to save this more for later, but I was surprised Prepping last night to that you guys had a muslim man in your program. We can talk about it more in a bit

So let's wait for it. Yeah. Yeah, we're just teasing people here. There is well and we can tease them this way too. So what I discovered and people don't realize this. People assume they know who's in a Christian program. Program. But everybody's in prison. So people have an image because the media of who's in prison. And I've met every type of person you can imagine in prison and Prisons are incredibly diverse places which good and bad makes it hard. But at the same time

These guys have to figure out a way to get along they have to they don't have choices because there's bars around them and there's walls And they do a much better job eventually Living with diversity and getting along than we do when we're so-called free any challenges in your childhood barriers obstacles things you got through or other lessons that parents or other people influential in the community taught you yeah so Growing up Holland,, not only was the home to the largest tulip festival in the US, but it also had a Heinz pickle company. And the Heinz Corporation would make

pickles, and we could smell it. And because of that, there were a lot of farms around the area. And so they could grow the cucumbers and whatnot, and then they become pickles it attracted a lot of Latino folks from the south Mostly Texas and they'd come up and so growing up. I had a lot of Latino friends however There was real segregation racism when it came to that and so the neighborhoods were completely split schools were split and some of my family looked down on my having Latino friends

and when you're young you're at the time elementary school and when you're that age you don't know you just know that you like so-and-so and you have fun and you do your thing and I would begin to appreciate that as I got older in terms of Family members some neighbors. I realized how they're really actually quite racist and they support segregation and Then when I learned about the civil rights movement as I got older we should say to what year are we talking about this these are the 1970s okay and by the time I was old enough to learn about and understand

the civil rights movement I thought oh my goodness I kind of get that because that that was my town that was my town. That was my town. You just didn't mix with these Latino folk. Some of them didn't speak English very well. And so they'd be ridiculed for that. And there's all derogatory names. And they were Catholic. How dare they? And they're Catholic. And literally, I had some friends that went to the Catholic Church just blocks from my house. And I had some family members just kind of wag their

finger at all that and That ingrained in me I think a sensibility I Didn't know to call it at this time, but justice What is justice entail and again, especially because the town was so Christian from these Dutch folk Dutch reform Dutch Christian people and yet it was clear to me that I'm just a basic level they weren't living out a Christian life. If it means treating these other people who are actually, you know, let's face it, making your pickles. They're farming,

they're picking all the stuff out of your farms around you. They're doing all the manual labor that you don't want to do. Probably had something to do with the tulips too. Yeah, right. They probably did and I remember just seeing a lot of yard crews that were Latino and I didn't think anything of it as a kid, but then I realized later. Oh my gosh, you know, they're mowing white people's lawns and so I began to and reinterpret that experience the older I got especially especially when I got to college, as an issue of civil rights. And lo and behold, throughout my career then, I ended up working in a lot of urban areas with African American communities.

And it just made sense. It made sense because I could easily identify Now I couldn't identify as a white person per se but I could identify as a white person about what white people do and and I had to learn how to own that and be sensitive to that and Allow the other To be my teacher on on how best to overcome these things You talk to your parents about that and what did they say? I have. Well like back then as a kid.

Yeah, I think when I got more to high school and those are hard conversations because you wanna be able to say, hey mom or dad, I noticed you use these derogatory names and they kind of brush it off. Well I'm not racist, I'm not I'm not being mean I mean, I don't really mean anything by it. And so to this day with some family members, including my mother really There's a denial

there's simply a denial and I had to come to terms with that and I think what it did for me is it made me Realize I don't want to be a denier. I just have to own it. And as white folks, there's a history here. And if things are going to change, those who have most of the power and most of the position have to change. Another big one. And then let's move on. But people, even people around me in Oxford who I like and otherwise, you know get along with really well

Say retard and retarded a lot. Yes, it just bothers the hell out of me. Yes I've interviewed enough families with kidney autism and Down syndrome. Yes, and how that you know offends them hurts them That's their child and yet people say well, I'm not using it in that way And it's just like, why are you throwing that out there? Exactly. into the world? And exactly. And so it's from the little things about why I don't mean that word in that way. Doesn't matter what you mean. It's offensive, or to finally supporting structural

problems. And that's for me where my college and graduate training really helped a lot for me to better understand. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the Army at NormalFolks.us. By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. We'll be right back. Lately on the NPR Politics Podcast, we're talking about a big question.

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Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On the NPR Politics podcast, listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So why did you go into seminary? Yeah, so when I went to college, I felt- Where'd you go? Hope College in Holland, Michigan, Dutch Reformed. And I thought I was going to go into ministry after college. I felt a calling. And I haven't lost that sense,

but it changed. And so when I went to college, I was a very average student in high school, my mother, I remember my mother telling me, don't get below a B in any of your classes. Okay, my mom never went to college, my dad dropped out of high school. So I thought, okay, I literally graduated high school with a 3.0 B average. It should have set the bar higher. Exactly. So okay, B, I got it. All right. I go to college and I

was completely unprepared. And so my first year of college, I had to take some remedial classes for no credit just to get caught up And I thought oh my goodness, you know, is this gonna work? And I thought well it's got to my parents said you have to go to college. So I thought it's got to work So I worked hard the first year and then I took a philosophy course in my sophomore year of fall semester and fell in love with it just fell in love with philosophy and who knew right and fell in love with it. Just fell in love with philosophy. And who knew right? And reading Plato the whole bit. And then I had to write papers and I did horrible on them. And so the prof said, I

think you understand this material and you actually enjoy it. But you can't write to save your life. So you're gonna have to work very hard because I'm willing to work with you if you want. So I did. And by my junior year, as a pretty decent writer, falling in love yet with philosophy, falling in love with the liberal arts. And all of a sudden, people started saying you should go do a PhD in philosophy. I said, Well, I'm going to do ministry. And in a reformed setting, the reformed theological

worldview says, your whole life can be a form of ministry. Teaching philosophy is a type of ministry. I said it is. And so that put the bug in me and I thought well I said I'll tell you what I'm gonna do a Master of Divinity first and then we'll see where that gets me and then if it makes sense somebody to do a PhD I will. So I did my master of divinity Really enjoyed working in the church. I ended up working in a lot of non church related ministries Including a prison for a year in seminary. Well, tell us that story Yeah, the drive over yeah, so you needed to do an internship

yeah, so we were moving in the dorm in the for the fall semester and internship. Yeah, so we were moving in the dorm in the fall semester and unpacking everything and my neighbor right next to me the room next to me. He came out and he said, Do you have an internship for your first year? And I said, No, I just got here. And this is before computers were used to sign up for everything. And he said, Well, look, I'm signed up to be a student chaplain at the state prison. Do you want to do that? I said, I don't know. Do I? How old was he at the state prison. Do you want to do that?

I said, I don't know. Do I? How old was he at the time? Probably 23 ish. OK. Yeah, that's pretty daunting. Yeah. So 23 year old chaplain. And I was 23, too. And so I said, I don't know, do I? So he told me a little bit about it.

I said, sounds kind of interesting. He goes, why don't you just do it? I said, OK, just like that. And so there's five of us eventually, and we worked in a maximum security state prison for a year as student chaplains. And back then, they gave us basically free room in the prison.

And so we would go on to pods or units, and the security was actually quite lax. Now the guys were in their cells, they couldn't come out, but we would just go cell to cell. And I would talk to these guys, I would hear their stories, and they were remarkably open. And I would hear the whole bit about why they were there. And I'm 23 years old and I'm talking to murderers and the whole bit, you know.

And that's when it dawned on me. Everybody's got a story. No, we're actually open to share and I started interrupt. I would look yeah, if you ever heard Deidre Bonhoeffer's line. Yeah I mean, this isn't the exact quote But it's one of my favorite lines is he says the problem of Christians is they're lonely in their sins Whereas the sinners of the bar have so much more fellowship with each other because they share everything it is spot-on That's exactly what I found. I was blown away by this guys would tell me their stories. And I remember one guy, he said, I'm in here for several murders. And he goes, I had a

horrible upbringing, poverty, the whole bit. And he said, I am so angry at everything. And he said, if I get a chance, I will kill an officer. He's telling me this we're sitting literally across from each other to table and I didn't know what to say and I thought in your cell. Yeah, right. Yeah, right At a time I thought I should have said something but now I realized no just listening fine. That's okay But that's when it dawned on me that no one sets out to go to prison. No one sets out to to become the person that based on their worst day ever. They're going to be known now for the

rest of their life. No one sets out to do that. There are a whole lots of things that have to happen. Yes, choices are made. But a whole lot has to kind of become a recipe for that. And I was very surprised given what we know from the media about prisons There were so many of guys who said I wish I could do it over I wouldn't do it I mean, I wish I could do that day over and they felt remorse and guilt and shame And then they would say I want to do something with my life. I don't want to be a complete waste You know, what is there anything I can do to give something to another person?

That blew me away I thought you're not supposed to say that You're murderers. You're this you're that you're horrible people horrible people don't want to give they want to take But they did and then I also don't I mean there wasn't much for them to do You know, I think as a country, um, we've progressed a lot on this front set, we have back then there probably wasn't many programs, there wasn't. And it was this idea of, hey, look, you committed a horrible crime, we're gonna lock you up. And that's that. Throw away the key,

throw away the key, we're gonna turn our backs on you. And basically, all we're gonna do is make sure you don't get out. And that left a huge impression on me. Lo and behold, it would be decades later That had come full circle with that, but I would literally think about the guys I met in that prison often If not at first several times a week a month To the doesn't even today. I still think about some of them because I know they're there All these years later decades later. They are still doing the same things, the same routines, same sell, same regrets, same hopes. And I don't know whatever became

of them personally, but I know where they are physically. And I've moved on. Your thoughts about going back? I have, I have, I'm actually going to be there this summer for a conference on prisons. And I'm actually gonna be there this summer for a conference on prisons and I'm gonna see if somebody could actually get me in there I think with what you've done I hope so because it was also the case that again I was 23 at the time and many of the guys I was working with were in their 20s and

So we've kind of age-wise been living parallel lives together all these years and Again, I think of I went to grad school. I've traveled I've been to around the world. I've done this I got married all these things and I thought They're still getting up at whatever time chow-haw weight pit They're still doing that all these years later, and I would love to be able to go back and say you know what? I actually didn't forget about you

I don't want to spend too much time like doing a timeline in the next year I want to get to Calvin prison initiative, but take us through how you got there personally I mean Now see you could have gone down the ministry path. There's been a preacher in a church or yeah I'm sure you had several options before you but yeah, you get to Calvin prison initiative. So I When I graduated with my master of divinity This was 1993. I said, alright Lord, tell me this I'll do whatever I'm really open to moving around whatever the case Tell me this I'll do whatever I'm really open to moving around whatever the case

But I had good advice as I told you in the car from a scholar mentor He said don't do a PhD if you don't have to There are lots of people who are so eager to do a PhD. There's lines to these schools, but there's nobody going into the inner cities There's nobody nobody doing these things. You have a heart for that stuff, go do it. So he said, the only way you do a PhD is if you cannot satisfy that itch. And so I said, okay. So I spent seven years after my MDiv doing inner city ministry.

I was a co-pastor of an urban church in Detroit called Martin Luther King Jr. Church. My co-pastors African-American. I was the only white person basically in the congregation. How was that? Wild. Just wild because it got to the point where we never forgot who's white, who's black, but at the same time we had become a community. And so I thought it was such a privilege that they allowed me to preach on Sundays there. Because I thought, you know,

what do I have to say exactly to you? And they conversely said, Of course, you have a lot to offer. We all do. And so I was there almost a year. And I got to the point where they were looking for a permanent pastor, and they'd asked if I wanted to do it. And I came real close saying yes. And I realized, the reason I would say yes to a church at that point was because it was urban. It was I had issues of race, issues of class, the whole bit in Detroit. And that was ringing bells down for me that

I recognized. The only thing that stopped me is I also was teaching at a Jesuit high school. As teaching Catholic theology of all things, full circle. I'm Catholic. I went to a Jesuit high school in Chicago. So University of Detroit Jesuit high school. And there I was now raised in Harlem, Michigan, but teaching at a Catholic high school Protestant, but teaching Catholic theology And they hired me as the token Protestant Because they said about a third of their student body were Baptist Protestants from Detroit

And we want to have a Protestant in our religion department this Protestants from Detroit. And we want to have a Protestant in our religion department. So said sure, but teaching Catholic theology, but teaching Catholic theology. And they said, as long as you teach Catholic theology, the way it should be taught. After that, after his criticism, that's fine. Only Jesuits can do this. So I said, Okay, I love the classroom so much that I wasn't prepared to leave it and That's when I realized my mentors words are coming back if you just can't shake this thing that maybe you can't shake it

So that's when I realized is there a way I could go on to do graduate work do a PhD but now take all these experiences and package them together and not become just a scholar in the library, but become the sort of theologian who's constantly looking out the window at the world and saying, as Christians, as the church, all right, what are we going to do? And so I said, if I can do that, if I can stay committed to that, then I'll go. So I went back and did a PhD in systematic theology, but I did it on a political theology with the intent of, all right, how do I help the church change the world? And that is what was affirmed by my advisors and the people around me. So I had a really good experience in my doctoral program.

And then through a series of, hey, look at this school, look at that school, I got a call one day. Calvin College then is looking for somebody to do a ministry studies department. You're interested? I said, yeah. Never thought I'd go back to West Michigan.. Now is in the real thick of Dutch reform stuff with Calvin. But I went back and the department allowed

me to juggle all these experiences with now students and saying, Hey, if you have this experience, this experience, this experience, guess what God can use that. And we're gonna figure out a way to connect dots. And so I got to work with students who, engineers, high school teachers, business people, and ask, all right, what are you gonna do in this career that is distinct in terms of your doing it in such a way

that you're tilting it towards the kingdom of God? And if you know about it, I'd love for you to go into it more, but John Perkins's beloved community and also Martin Luther King Street sweeper speech And I'm sure you know both of those that are way deeper level than I do But I don't think we've actually talked about them on the podcast. Well, that's just it. So I've actually taught that so Charles Marsh wrote this wonderful book. He's a prophet University of Virginia He cut his teeth on Bonhoeffer but he's a good friend of John Perkins and he wrote a book called the beloved community and he uses Martin Luther King jr. As

as the kind of reference point and He has a whole chapter there on John Perkins and we actually started a Perkins program at Calvin And tell people what the beloved community is. I still don't even know myself enough about Perkins his background Tell us bring us more. Yeah, so so for Perkins the beloved community is. I still don't even know myself enough about Perkins is background. Tell us, tell us bring us more. Yeah, so so for Perkins, the blood community is this idea that we're called to love our neighbors. But we don't know who our neighbors are, are until we move into the neighborhood. And

so you have to literally be willing to change your proximity. So he said said especially and Perkins is African American. And he said especially white people, they come in as the great white hope. They kind of implement programs, they throw money at problems, they maybe even do like a spring break week trip, and they go home. And he actually would joke about this with the ministry he had in Jackson, Mississippi He would say we would look at our buildings and we would save The the roughest looking part of a building for those spring break trips

Because we had to give them something to do and They had to complete something so they had to be able to paint all four walls, and they could go home thinking they did something. And he said, but it was kind of a joke. Right? So he always argued, a beloved community from John's gospel via Martin Luther King Jr. is really about proximity. It's truly about becoming neighbors shoulder to shoulder. And for those with the power, it's about going in becoming a neighbor, and not

saying this is what your needs are, but saying what are your needs? Maybe I don't know. And that made so much sense to me when the first time I started reading Perkins and King, given my experiences, all the way back to elementary school with Latino friends, and people talking about them in a way that just that expose them to say you don't even know who these people are. You have no idea. I go to school with them shoulder to shoulder. That's not who they are. And finally, I could put words to that. And so that's when I

realized if you're not willing to put your body in certain spaces, your words ring hollow. And the other part, like if you're an engineer, how do you show up in the marketplace? Yes. Always remind. I mean, I love if people haven't seen it, you really need to go on YouTube and watch the street sweeper speech. Yeah. Even just the 90 seconds of it. If it's your lot to be a street sweepers sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures Yes, it's some of the most beautiful lines I've ever come and that resonates with John Kelvin Right who's the the spine behind all these reformed traditions including the Dutch reformed tradition that he kind of rethought Reimagined what the word vocation meant in the 16 17th centuries reimagine what the word vocation meant in the 1617 centuries,

where back then in the medieval Catholic Church vocation was reserved for priests and nuns and brothers. The rest of us we didn't have vocation, we worked. And what was the significance of your work? Well, you ate, you were able to provide shelter for yourself, you worked and it was toil. And was there anything good about work? Not so much. Luther Calvin looked at and said, wait a minute. God gave us the ability to create God gave us the ability to till the ground. God gave us the ability to sweep the street. Let's pause for a second. This is Bill. Oh, hey, we'll be right back.

Lately on the NPR Politics podcast, we're talking about a big question. How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy? Schools? Healthcare? Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises.

On the NPR Politics Podcast, listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Well, sorry, guys. I just finally heard from Bill and he had a fire at the lumber yard last night and I guess was there until 4 15 a.m. Yeah, that's you. But that sucks. But I'm glad he's alive. Yeah, we're going to do with this podcast.

Yeah, he gets a pass. So sorry, Todd. All right. So I interrupted your thought. Is there any more you want to share there about Calvin and work? Well, just this idea that yeah, sweeping a street can bring glory to God. And I will add this, that has become a key point working with incarcerated students. Because when we started the program, if you're 17 18 years old and you get a natural life sentence a life with no parole

In that 17 18 year old kid's mind life is over I Have no life and So all they talk about is you have to learn how to do time and don't let time do you So they come up with all these little routines And so all they talk about is you have to learn how to do time and don't let time do you So they come up with all these little routines Groundhog day every day same routine. I don't care if it's Christmas. I don't care what it is You know, they go to the weight pit. They do this they do that and they do it every single day and they do it for years then decades and That is their life in their minds. And so when we step in

And say guess what? your life has tremendous meaning and you're important they go what and then we say You have a calling and like no, I don't like no you really do in fact your daily activities bring can bring joy to God and Here's how we're gonna do this. We're talk about this. And you literally see them open up. And all of a sudden, their life and its daily routines have meaning. And then we can work to say, you don't have to just sweep a floor though, either. Now we're going to train you to be a peer

mentor training to be an academic tutor for someone who's trying to get a GED. your life can have real purpose and impact and then they start saying oh my gosh even though I'm locked up I'm not dead I'm alive and and I can live a meaningful life even if it isn't incarcerated there's a similar I think you guys have at least one act in Academy in the Grand Rapids area yes and they have a similar way of talking to students of saying you have a unique calling that can change the world Yes, and it could be I mean you don't need to be the president or run a company You can have a dry cleaner as example the founder uses and you're gonna have five people work for you

Yes, and a thousand people show up at your funeral. Yes, and you change the world That's just that's it. That's it and there's nobody talking to students that way. There's nobody talking to prisoners that way. And it's really a beautiful perspective on life that most of our culture is missing. Absolutely. And this is where in the prison environment, this is where we say, because everyone wants prison reform. I don't know anybody doesn't want prison reform. Right? You talk to a governor prison reform, you talk to state politicians, prison reform, you talk to people working prison, oh, sure, it

could be better. Of course, it could talk to prisoners prison reform. And we're all looking at the government to do it. And I'm saying it's right under our nose. That's all these people right here who are locked up. You are the ones as we say, Calvin, you become an agent of change. And you're the ones who are going to reform this thing. And so when we started our program, our prison was called gladiator school. It was one of the most violent prisons in the state. They would

send guys young there, as they said to learn how to jail to learn how to do prison. So they have sent him to gladiator school, send him to the worst place. Yes. Yeah, it's very intentional. They would send him to the worst place. After about four years, I asked the warden, he was doing his interview report, I said, how are things here? He said, normally, we would have anywhere from 125 to 150 major violent incidents a year. It's okay. He goes, we had eight this year. Eight. It got one administrator there to say we've

gone from candy or from gladiator school to Candyland All right, as bill would say you're jumping ahead too much Actually hate the game candy like yeah, there's it's all luck. I mean all I'd be some skill is an intentional candy land This is agents of change candy land be some skill intentional candyland agents of change candyland All right Calvin prison initiative, yeah wasn't your idea no so tell us Yeah, it wasn't even Calvin's idea Calvin seminary. So that's where it started a donor Gave some money to Calvin seminary and said hey, you need to send some of your props down to Angola prison in Louisiana

He said I'm connected with that place. And I've seen tremendous transformation at that prison. And we think it's by way of the seminary program they have there. So the seminary Calvin seminary sat on that money for two years. Didn't do anything. Is this the donor we were talking about in the car on the way down? No, another one. And the donor eventually asked he goes, Hey, how's that trip to Angola? And the then president said, Yeah, didn't happen. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. Because the donor said, Well, if you're not going to spend it, give it back. And the president said, I'll have them on a plane right now. So he went to a guy, Professor of preaching john rotman and

said, I need you to go down to Angola prison He goes I don't want to go to a prison and they explained the situation And he said all right, I'll go so they sent a few of them down there, and it was life-transforming They all of a sudden were at this place that supposedly is a maximum security prison 6200 inmates largest penitentiary in the country At back in the 80s it was called the the most violent prison in America and you could go around the place then now with this trip no violence prisoners no cussing no

swearing nothing like that in a prison which is crazy and they came back and said my word really no swearing there was a rule the warden made a rule no swearing okay and wherever you went you wouldn't hear swearing. There was a rule the warden made a rule no swearing Okay, and wherever you went you wouldn't hear swearing Nothing and that's not prison and if a warden could pull that off with basically over 6,000 people Like what happened? How do you do that? So I've been there several times. I've never heard swearing So who's the warden and how did he do it? Burl Kane was there at the time he came he got there in 1995 The prison was such a mess that the governor tapped him and said I need you to go change this place

And did you tell me before he was an English high school teacher? So how did the governor decide this? He had broke he had political aspirations and so he's a known quantity And so I guess maybe the governor's testing him I don't know, but he put him in there and Kane said I didn't know what to do other than as a teacher educate and he said I just assumed that education was gonna be somehow a key to all this Kane's a Christian with the Southern Baptist Church and so he got New Orleans Baptist Seminary to come in and offer courses he started New Orleans Baptist Seminary and And they just started an MDiv program basically. And

so they started noticing really positive results from this. And they kept it up, they kept it up. Now at the time, they also had about 30 prisoner led churches in Angola. And that's a long tradition there that goes way back to 1800s. And they were training these guys then to give them formal training to be pastors, associate pastors, evangelists, the whole bit. So that was going on before Burl got there. The churches were.

Yeah. And then he infused it with these really rich resources not from a seminary. And again, had extremely positive results. And that went on, and after about 15 years, violence dropped 85% there so everyone's happy and Kane pulled it off so that's what the Calvin Seminary profs there is one story from that I remember that shocked me they get there

and feel free to rub me if you know it yeah they see the prisoners like driving around yes cars yes like they're driving. They're out on these little ponds with boats fishing There's 12 guys who live in a house by themselves Guys have cell phones Guys have keys to the tool sheds They become your instructor that day. I remember going to the automotive program I'm talking to guys got the automotive shirt on the whole bit and he's running the thing. And I said,

Oh, so what do you do? I teach guys this I teach him that and he said, you know, I've just learned that, you know, sometimes they need help at night or on the weekends, and I'm willing to do that. And I said, Well, when you go home, he says, What do you mean go home? I'm a prisoner, I got a life sentence. But he was in charge of the whole program. There wasn't an officer in the place.

And he oversaw all the tools. And so there's a huge amount of trust given to these guys. And they lived up to it, not down. And so, yeah, they changed. And that's when these pros from Calvin said, wait a minute, if that can happen here, could it happen in Michigan? So that's how it started. And then they contacted this prison in Ionia, Michigan, Richard Hanlon Prison, where we are.

And they just said, hey, we'd like to offer a seminary course. And it took a while for the department and the prison to kick their heads around this. Why would you want to do this? But that's how it started in 2011. And then of course, the students are all doing great. And they're like, hey, we want to earn a degree. Are you the founding director? Yes. Okay.

But not in 2011. We, it was a non program, if you will, just profs offering courses. Starting 2011, the students demanded a degree. The seminary said, well, we the seminary said well we're a seminary or graduate school you have to first earn an undergraduate degree so that's when Calvin Seminary went to Calvin College they tapped me and said would you help us navigate the college if we were to put a program together so we spent a year working together on a proposal and this is kind of funny I think I got this right and not to shame your college, but they originally said no.

They did. It would got them to say yes. It's pretty funny. Yeah. So we went to student or faculty senate, made the proposal, and the senate voted it down. We're like, this is spot on to the mission of these institutions.

What are you doing? And so we said, fine. So we went out to other colleges, the seminary, and said, hey, do you want to do this? And they said, yes. So we went back to Calvin College and said, fine, if you're not going to do it, we're going to go to the Christian University down the street, literally. And then all of a sudden, I was like, wait a minute, don't run away. And then we did another proposal and they accepted it. And then that's when they asked me to be the director. So I started June 1 2015. Formally now we had a

program. Then we got accredited, we offered a BA with a major in faith and community leadership. And after about a year or two, the guys kept saying, you know, what we really need are social work classes. So that makes sense. So we put a social work minor. Why if they're never going to get out of the person? Yeah, right. No, I know you are you're all right. And that this is the Perkins move. So I remember saying, I'm not going to assume I know what you need to become a moral and spiritual leader inside. I don't

know. You tell me and that's when they said we need social work. I said that's we're gonna do them. So we had a social work minor. Explain why they what was behind their thinking of why they wanted it. So they recognize that most problems that men have in prison are from maladaptive social behavior, whether it's dysfunctional families, homes, running with the wrong crowd making. So we kind of had to redo these

things. So they needed to know about family systems. They needed to know about issues of class and race. They needed to know these things because the better understand trauma informed mentoring. And so the social work degree was spot on. It really is the degree that you get the most out of in terms of serving a prison community. And they then, oh there's a social work class on the helping interview. On the what?

Helping interview. How to interview someone who has needs but that person may not know how to express them well. And so you interview and you help them be able to identify and name what it is they need. Again, the Perkins thing, right? And so it was hugely successful. It got to the point where we wanted to have a double major, faith and community leadership, and then a social work major. But the social work major comes with a 400 hour internship.

And we just finally said we don't think we can pull it off there. So now we have a human services major, which is like a social work major without the internship. So they double major, they'll end up with a BA in five years. And much of the shape now of the program has really been by way of our students. And just to put a finer point on the social work part, what percentage of the participants in the program will never get out of prison and then there's a percentage that do but either way they can serve their fellow man either in prison or out of it. That's right. When we started the program formally, we learned

that in Michigan at the time, this has changed. At the time, the Department of Corrections would not offer programming to someone doing a natural life sentence or a sentence a life sentence without parole. They literally said we're not gonna invest in you because you're gonna die in prison. So their thinking was the only way we invest in a prisoner is if we know he's going to get out. And we're not gonna invest in you because you're gonna die in prison. So their thinking was the only way we invest in a prisoner is if we know he's going to get out. And we're doing something so we won't come back. I get that. That's

important. But then you have this population of men whose lives are in the department's minds kind of over. So we said we can't do that. And we reasoned, these are the guys who own the culture. They're there. They're there for decades. They're the ones who can set the culture. Why not empower them give them resources, because they also will have a positive influence on the guys who get out. And so you win when it's a win win. So we always said two thirds of our incoming class each year will be guys with life sentences, the

other third with long sentences. So at first, the Angola model is more about we are going to raise up leaders who, as far as we can tell, are going to die in prison. But they're the ones who are going to transform prisons, they're the ones who are going to live these lives driven by a sense of location. Really, they're the one they're the they're the engine. They're the engine. And that concludes part one of what was supposed to be my

conversation with Todd Choffee and ended up being Alex's conversation with Todd. But nevertheless, you don't want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. We're about to dive deep into Calvin Prison Initiative and Alex does a great job with it so keep listening. Together guys, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. Lately on the NPR Politics Podcast, we're talking about a big question. How much can one guy change?

They want change. What will change look like for energy? Drill, baby drill. Schools. Take the department of education, close it. Healthcare. Better and less expensive. What will change look like for energy, schools, healthcare? Follow coverage of a changing country on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.