At the beginning of my incarceration within the Massachusetts state prison system access to postsecondary educational opportunities were mostly nonexistent. Educational attainment was capped at the high school diploma/GED level, so possession of such credentials meant the doors to advanced learning were solidly closed. My peers and I creatively used an existing program platform (Toastmasters) as our launchpad for higher learning.  We started out in 2006 by staging internal debate events within Old Colony Correctional Center on relevant public policy topics. Our team-based debates quickly became popular outlets for the thoughtful analysis and synthesized presentation of some complex academic subject matters. Our non-traditional process made higher learning accessible to people of all educational backgrounds and our internal events generated a great deal of inspiration within our incarcerated community. As my teammates and I continued to challenge ourselves, and each other, our self-confidence grew and we began looking to test our skill beyond the walls.

Since none of us could attend college at the time, we invited the colleges to come to us, and Bridgewater State College (now renamed Bridgewater State University) was the first to accept our challenge in 2009. We beat them so convincingly during our first contest in the Spring of 2009 that we really opened a lot of eyes to the true potential of incarcerated people.  Even tough, old MA-DOC officers and administrators were openly complimentary. All of a sudden we were changing the entire culture of the prison environment and I was selected to meet with then Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) to discuss our programming.

We hosted another successful, and winning, debate against Bridgewater State in the Fall of 2009 and that led to the formation of the first Inside-Out Prison Exchange Pilot Program in Massachusetts in the Spring of 2010 wherein a group of incarcerated learners were given the opportunity to spend a semester with a co-ed group of criminal justice students from Bridgewater State College. It was a very enriching and transformative experience for us all.  The dynamic discourse which bridged our two social worlds and created a unique space for the sharing of different experiential and cultural viewpoints. We concluded the semester with another fantastic debate event, and this time we integrated the teams for the first time ever with a mixture of Old Colony and Bridgewater State debaters.

Later in 2010, I transferred to MCI-Norfolk to pursue the college programming offered there by Boston University and I took my debate training model with me. It took a while to convince the administration to give us a chance to officially revive the legendary Norfolk Prison Debating Society and engage local universities but I eventually sold my proposal. In 2016, we hosted Boston College’s Fulton Debating Society and won. Norfolk went on to host bi-annual events against MIT, Harvard, and Cornell as well. COVID-19 then hit the world and prisons especially hard and stalled all programming indefinitely.

Since my release from prison in June of 2022, I’ve been working to replicate the successes of our prison education model here in Massachusetts in an effort to provide empowering new opportunities for incarcerated men and women everywhere. Thanks to our organizational partners and amazing volunteer network of coaches and teams, NPDL.org is decarcerating minds on both sides of prison walls. Join the movement.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/06/07/the-inside-story-of-a-legendary-prison-debate-team