30 Years Behind Bars: Trials of a Prison Doctor
How Education, Art, And Creative Writing Can Keep An Inmate From Becoming A Zombie
by Karen Gedney MD
I remember Izzy, a young Hispanic inmate, telling me how he watched some of the inmates’ shuffle around the yard, stooped over with soulless eyes. He said that he would have become one of them, if another inmate hadn’t told him that he needed to start doing programs or he would turn into an old man with no soul, no purpose to light up his eyes, a zombie.
Izzy was 23 and had already done three years behind bars, with a life sentence stretching before him, when he heard that message. It was the soulless eyes that haunted him that night. When he woke up that morning and walked toward the culinary for breakfast, he stared at the education building and stopped. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the sky. It was bright blue without a cloud in the sky, he smiled and walked toward the education building.
That decision changed the trajectory of his life. He not only took college classes, he signed up to take a creative writing course with Shaun Griffin. Shaun is the poet laureate for the state of Nevada and one of those extraordinary teachers who loves to teach, loves poetry, and loves to help others tap into their true feelings and express them in a safe place. Why he chose to teach in a prison was at first a mystery to me, as it is not the place to show vulnerability, or feel, or express any deep emotion, except for anger.
Shaun taught that class every Wednesday night from 1990, until COVID in 2020 closed the prison to anyone except prison personnel. He told me that over the years he marveled at the quality of their work and described what they wrote and painted as ‘bone work, the etching of flesh to paper, to canvas. They write poetry and paint to carve from the depths of their experience some reason to stay alive.’
What I saw as a prison doctor was the impact of how an educational program like creative writing and art could help individuals process the traumas, adversities, injustice and regret in their lives in a unique way that was safe. The men gathered in that class every Wednesday to celebrate the gift of creation and survival. Survival and keeping hope alive is not undertaken lightly in a prison, and the act of learning and creating is an intentional act to take back their lives. For some, the exposure to literature and poetry expands their world, for others writing is a way to understand and document their lives and for many it is a way to express grief and be open to redemption.
I saw first-hand the impact this program had on the inmates as I had a career in the prison that lasted 30 years. The men in Shaun’s classes had something to look forward to every week and had the opportunity to express and deal with their emotions in a creative way that was safe and respected, if not even treasured. Shaun every year published examples of their work in a small paperback book called, ‘Razor Wire.’ Izzy for decades did the artwork on the cover, called ‘scribble art.’ Izzy found out that he was not only a gifted poet, he was a gifted artist in that class. In fact, when I wrote my memoir, 30 Years Behind Bars:Trials of a Prison Doctor, I contacted him and asked him if would do the artwork for my book. My publisher said that every chapter in the book brought up visuals for him and he asked me what I thought about putting art work at the beginning of every chapter. At first it sounded odd to me, and then I thought about Izzy and then it made sense. Who better to draw a visual than someone who had been in the system as long as I had been and knew all the characters and things that had happened to me.
When I finished the book, I didn’t know where Izzy was, and I asked Shaun. He told me that Izzy had been paroled and was working and going to graduate school. His artwork is now in my memoir. He also published a poetry book called, ‘Indelicate Angels.’
Izzy and many of the men in Shaun’s creative writing class have continued to pursue education and are in the outside world doing well. Shaun shared with me that none of the men who took his class have returned to prison. I feel that the men who decided to pursue creative writing, poetry and art still had hope and wanted to not only learn, they wanted to feel and understand what moved them. They also wanted to feel that someone cared, and Shaun deeply cared.
Izzy once asked me. “Do you know what you have to do to make an inmate cry? You treat him like a human.” Zombies don’t cry, they don’t feel, they just create problems, and nothing changes in their soulless eyes.
I had many men cry in my exam room, and it wasn’t from physical pain. Trying to care and heal in an environment that is designed to judge, shame and punish is an uphill battle.
Shaun fought that battle and so did I.
Karen Gedney MD is an internal medicine specialist, who in 1987 was the first woman doctor in Nevada placed in a male medium security prison. Against all odds she stayed three decades and turned it into her calling. She is recognized in both the medical and correctional fields. She won the "Heroes for Humanity Award" in Nevada and was noted as "One of the Best in the Business" by the American Correctional Association. When she retired from the prison, she became an activist in the holistic prison reform movement and wrote her memoir 30 Years Behind Bars: Trials of a Prison Doctor. Today she advocates for prison reform and inspires individuals and groups to become involved in reforming the prison system.