It’s 1250 in Eastern Washington and for the first time in a while, I’m feeling nervous. I’ve found myself, once again, with an annoying but familiar pang of anxiety swelling in my gut.

Five years ago I had the same feeling. It was dark, but I could see thanks to the green blur of my night-vision. Surrounding me in the metallic interior of the Chinook were my brothers, armed to the teeth with the latest in military weaponry.

Today I have found myself a part of a different war. Instead of guns, there are pencils. Instead of a grenade launcher, I’ve got a calculator. Replacing my body armor is a faded “teacher’s aide” vest while my combat pay is now an attractive 70 cents an hour.

To this day, I can still remember the anticipation I had on the way to my first mission in Afghanistan. Becoming a teacher’s aide has elicited such feelings again because, in prison, anything can happen. By putting myself out there by taking this job, I accept there’s a greater chance of finding myself in an unfavorable situation.

As a teacher’s aide, I’m not fighting the “war on drugs” nor am I fighting the “war on crime.” As my teacher put it: “you don’t fight wars on inanimate objects such as drugs or abstract concepts such as crime…You fight wars against people.”

I’ve been sent to clean up the mess that’s left over from those wars. After the prosecutors, judges, and correction officers have their say, getting basic education in the form of a GED is often the starting point for the new, and quite disoriented, inmates.

I use the term “disoriented” because of how fitting it is to describe new prison arrivals. After being metaphorically smashed in by their prosecution, inmates can expected to be strung along a chain of different locations like an animal. Being transferred from county jail to state prison is a dark odyssey involving claustrophobic and filthy living conditions, excruciating boredom, and hoping your next cell mate doesn’t try to kill you. And yes, this happens and continues to happen.

Because of the way the prison reception is set up, guards have no “eyes on” the tiers of cells. Because of their obstructed vision due to the guard kiosks being out of view outside the tiers, they are incapable of witnessing rapes, fights, or murders. They do, however, leave their offices once in a while to see if anyone has been killed, committed suicide or has been incapacitated.

When a prisoner is finally put “on the chain” to their main institution, they are chained to a white painted school bus floor. There, on the cold plastic seats, they sit for hours watching anti-rape and anti-tattoo videos on repeat until they arrive.

After a quick screening and clothing issue they are released into their “tanks”. Depending on their custody level they are often hounded by different gangs either trying to recruit them, take advantage of them, or in the worst cases, make them a sex slave.

When their assigned counselor gets a chance, the inmate is then given a brief interview for program placement. If the inmate cannot produce a record of a high school diploma or GED they are automatically signed up for GED classes.

What led me to getting involved in GED was that I felt upset, angry and irritated that the Department of Corrections, in all its fantastic archaic ideologies, doesn’t fulfill its primary function: to correct.

Recently I happened upon a PEW report that measured the progress of every state’s recidivism rate. As a veteran who wants to see social improvements in our country, I felt frustrated when I learned that Washington State’s recidivism rate was one of the worst rates in the country and actually climbed from 10% in 1999 to 42.9% in 2007.

The first question that came to my mind was why? Is it the diabetes-causing food they feed us? Untreated mental illness? Negative attitudes? Stressful environment?

Statistically, all of the above is responsible for recidivism (though the negative attitudes could be caused by the not-so-great living conditions, which also, because of inmate overpopulation, has led DOC to convert 2-man cells into 4-man cells). While I can certainly agree that DOC recognizes these problems, I don’t believe they adequately address them.

In other words, I’m walking into a classroom to help convicted felons get their education because I, like the teacher who hired me, believe it’s the right thing to do. The American thing to do. Quite simply, I believe I can be a drop of humanity in an ocean of primitive, bureaucratic nonsense.

When I was a child I used to believe that prisons are designed to punish people because they deserved it. I believed that prisoners were society’s evil denizens that went out of their way to plot ways to live lifestyles conducive to villainy. The term “prisoner” was synonymous with uncontrollably violent psychopaths for me, despite never having actually visited a prison or the people inside.

Now I’m here and, quite frankly, I can see first-hand the damage this shared mentality actually causes.

I would like to take the time to put this in perspective for you. I was once an active member of Special Operations. Therefore, I’ve been conditioned to be mentally able to, not only deal with people trying to kill me, but overcome tactical situations at a platoon level and lower as well. I have been trained to understand the mechanics of leading a fire-team into a building against armed combatants. I know what it means to carry upwards of 100 pounds of gear up and down hills while being sleep deprived and stricken with hunger. Please believe me when I say living in this environment isn’t easy.

Argue we deserve to be punished with public and government promoted suffering, I don’t care. The point I’m trying to make is that I’m trained, educated and supported by a good and decent family and despite this, even I’m having a difficult time getting treatment for my mental, dental and medical concerns.

Now take a young minority who has no support system, no educational background, is suffering from addiction problems, and has no idea, not the faintest of clues on which direction to take in life. Then throw him into an institution where the people who run it have been psychologically conditioned to emotionally detach themselves from his needs. Now surround him with thousands of other people who are suffering from similar, if not worse, issues. Feed him a diet that violates state legislation on account of how unhealthy it is while simultaneously denying him adequate medical and mental health treatment in all its various forms.

Close your eyes for about ten years. Open them. Do you think he has “learned his lesson”?

“Ah but he’s a criminal,” you may say “Who cares for him? Let him rot! He deserves it!”

He’s also an American. Just like you. While I won’t attempt to “play God” and pass out judgement by asserting who deserves what, however what I will do is point out that he’ll one day be walking on the same sidewalks as you, shopping at the same stores as you, and taking in the fresh breeze of the Northwest, just like you. Who would you rather have out there? Someone who got a decent education or someone who spent the last 10 years being treated like an animal? A tough choice considering 95% of America’s 2 million inmates will one day rejoin society.

Although the state has mandated that every incarcerated offender must get their GED in order to stem the tide of increasing recidivism rates, I want to stress that there are big differences between getting a “normal” education through an actual public high school and obtaining a GED through a prison educational program.

I learned today that my job is to literally throw educational packets at inmates. So instead of actually teaching, the program’s policy essentially mandates that prison GED students aren’t entitled to being taught a lesson plan or even to be given a graded curriculum. Instead, DOC policy dictates that prisoners have to teach themselves.

My job as a teacher’s aide is to go from student to student and try to convince them to overcome the tedious boredom of “death by packet.”

I, like the contracted teachers who have actual degrees in teaching (many whose degrees are of a Masters level or higher and have been teaching for many years) think it’s ridiculous to expect people who have no educational background to teach themselves. DOC actually expects to get results from corralling 25 uneducated prisoners into a small room and motivate them to teach themselves through the tree-killing and mind-numbing packet method.

The sad part is that the teachers and most of the students want this to work. However, there is such a backlash from the administration that anyone who goes outside their primitive, archaic policy are shot down, put under investigation, infracted, or even fired.

Some officers and staff are so dogmatic, so resistant to common sense, that they go out of their way to target students or other staff members. Why? I believe they’re afraid themselves of being targeted. Totalitarianism runs deep here my friends, and its shadow covers not just the inmates, but every faculty member as well.

Regardless of whether we’re living the Orwellian dream or not, why can’t prison GED be more like an actual high school?

You may be thinking that it’s a matter of funding. Allow me to express why this theory is incorrect.

DOC spends more tax dollars (for every inmate you are spending more money and the more people coming back, the more you’re spending) for every additional inmate in their institutions. Providing prisoners with a legitimate education will dramatically reduce recidivism rates state-wide. If the rate went down just 10% then the state would save millions of dollars a year. The surplus in budget could then be used to fund, roads, hospitals, social services, and other community projects like parks and wildlife conservation projects.

When you look at the prison system this way you can see how connected everything is. A deficit in one area will affect all the others. It can be said that the reason that pot hole outside your condo wasn’t fixed is because of excessive amounts of money spent on a dysfunctional justice system. In short, the way prisoners are handled not only effects the individuals within the system but also the quality of life of those who aren’t.

During my first day of being a teacher’s aide I learned that most of the students want to learn and want to live lives of worth. Yes, they may have come off a little rough around the edges but despite this the students showed me they were no less capable of learning than a basic trainee in the army. In fact, today when I got up to lead a lesson on math I had nearly the whole class captivated about how to find the area of a square. Seeing the rate at which they were able to pick up on knowledge has once again affirmed my army team leader’s belief: “Anyone can be molded.”

Already there is momentum for prison reform in from both political sides. Not only is there a push for better educational policies within our government, there are outside organizations contributing as well. Some colleges, such as Walla Walla Community College, are offering college courses to inmates. I, for one, am more than grateful to be enrolled in its Associates Degree program–a program that has a near 0% recidivism rate for all those who complete it.

Now, I ask you reader to take a moment to see us prisoners as your fellow citizens. Citizens who want the opportunity to redeem ourselves. At the end of the day, I believe prisons can become places of redemption instead of punishment.

As I sit in my cell writing this in the hopes that it will positively affect the people around me who, just like me, are doing their best to overcome the suffering that this environment has been designed to induce. I request of you, reader, that for a moment you see us as your fellow citizens. That you, for just a brief flash of the infinitum that is time, allow yourself to believe that we are capable of redeeming ourselves. That we too, are capable of contributing to our community, our state, our country as human beings endowed with the potential to make this world a place worth living in. That we, just like you, contain the tinder of understanding that can be ignited by the wisdom that education endows to its seekers.

I believe prisons can become places of redemption instead of punishment. Furthermore, I believe adequate education is the first step to realizing that vision. In the name of all current and future generations of Americans, let us help our country realize its potential. Let us help our fellow citizens help themselves. Let us do what we can.