Open Road Prison Education Project
I’m no longer a volunteer with the Oregon Department of Corrections, but for 13 years I had weekly 3 hour meaning-of life dialogues with men in prison. I also directed Shakespeare plays in prison. I met a lot of interesting people. Currently, I have a lot of pen pals who are serving time in prison. I get and send lots of letters. In addition to our correspondence through the mail, I get regular half-hour-long phone calls from men in prison. I visit friends in prison. In the phone calls and visits we have deep conversations, like we used to have together when I went regularly to prison as a volunteer.
The Open Road sends books to men in prison that will enrich their life experience and change their inner landscape in positive ways. I think about what books have meant the most to me, what books changed the way I understand and experience the world. And I ask myself: “If I was in prison, what book(s) would I want to get in the mail?” (In 2024, the Open Road spent just over $1,000 on books for prison residents.)
One of my pen pals, who had never read a play before coming to prison, was in some plays that I directed at Two Rivers prison. He decided that he wanted to read every play on a list of “The One Hundred Greatest Plays of All Time.” He has now done that, and kept going. He’s read more than two hundred plays. He is educating himself in a way that gives him pleasure. He is following his heart’s desire.
Along with some friends, we have started an education fund for a man in his mid-thirties who is taking courses and earning college credits. He was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 17.
We have been sending a weekly peace, love, happiness & understanding newsletter to men in prison since March 19th, 2020. Currently, we’re mailing it to 17 prison residents. Many of our friends have now graduated from prison, and receive the email version “on the outside.”
One of the central ideas behind The Open Road is that most of what we learn in life we learn outside of school. The Open Road Prison Education Project is a small-scale personal approach to a “learning dialogue.”
If you would like to make a donation to support this work, please go to the DONATE page on this website. Thanks.
peace & love
–Johnny