Prisoners Piece Together
Their Lives One Quilt Block
at a Time
STORY BY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
Meribah Knight
Chris Mottalani
The last bit of the drive to Jefferson City Correctional Center,
a maximum-security state prison nestled in a small valley about
four miles east of the Missouri state capitol building, begs reflec-
tion: Its address is 8200 No More Victims Road, and its mission
statement is clearly displayed on roadside placards that line the
approach. The words “effective,” “community,” “committed,”
“accountable,” fly by like a patient hitchhiker down on his luck.
As you come over the hill, a sprawling mass of structures looking
unmistakably like a prison, shiny and new, beckons. The roofs
are a bright sky blue, their walls the drab hue of concrete, and the
yards of razor wire lining the reinforced chain-link fence glisten
in the sun like a mangled crown. Here, amid the fences and steel
doors, a group of male inmates quilt for charity, attempting to re-
pair a fraction of the damage they caused.
They quilt, from 8:30 a.m. 103:30 p.m. five days aweek,as
part of a program called restorative justice, an ancient practice
turned curriculum that equates a crime committed with a debt to
be repaid. The world at large was introduced to elements of it by
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which
sought to heal the wounds of apartheid through conversation and
confrontation between the victims of human rights violations
and the perpetrators. In the last decade, restorative justice pro-
grams, which promote similar dialogues between victims of crime
and their offenders and reparative activities like quilting and gar-
dening, have emerged in prisons and communities across America.
The men
I
met at
JCCC,
which opened in 2004, never imagined
they would be sewing while behind bars, nor did they think it
would be a key to confronting a life of crime. Now, they say, quilt-
ing quiets their minds and helps to rectify their pasts. They earn
between $ 20 and $ 25 a month (a fraction of what they could earn
malting uniforms in the prison’s industry), but the act of giving
back, although a veiled interaction with society, makes their lives
relevant and the possibility of rehabilitation within reach.
Behind six steel doors and one metal detector, Patrick Starr,
a well-built, caramel-skinned man whose looks betray few of
his hard 41 years, greeted me with a smile. Starr is serving three >
Left to right: Travis
Canon, Christopher
Maldonado, Patrick
Starr and Gerald
Toahty, who are mem-
bers of a quilting group
at Jefferson City Cor-
rectional Center, dis-
play their handiwork.
june/julyio american craft 057
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