‘Friends Outside’ Brings Human Touch to Those Inside Prison Walls

Lying on a vinyl mattress, Meredith Kelly cried through her second night back in jail.

With no family here and no friends, Kelly, 54, did not expect visitors.

But the next morning, Kelly found out she wasn’t alone after all.

“Thank God, Joyce is coming today,” she said at Sybil Brand Institute for Women near Monterey Park. “I don’t really have anybody else.”

Joyce Ride of Encino is a volunteer for Friends Outside, a national organization providing assistance to inmates and their families. Ride, the mother of astronaut Sally Ride, has spent the last seven years helping women like Kelly cope with life behind bars.

Sometimes, as in this case, it might mean offering friendship to an inmate with no other visitors.

But frequently, Ride said, inmates are really more concerned about their families than their own welfare.

“Either they’re lonely and they have nobody to visit them or they have family problems,” Ride said. “Often, they say that this is the first time they’ve been treated with respect or like an individual.”

Offenses Not Known

The volunteers don’t know whether they are speaking with a murderer or a shoplifter, she said, because Friends Outside never asks why the person has been incarcerated.

Another volunteer jail visitor, Mary Stetson, agreed that the visits are an important part of inmates’ lives.

“You can get awfully sentimental and think that you’re bringing joy and cheer into these people’s lives,” said Stetson, who lives in Sierra Madre and has been visiting at Sybil Brand for the last six years. “Sometimes the inmates even seem to exaggerate, saying that we’re super or marvelous while we’re talking. But I really am convinced that some good is being done.”

With 19 chapters in California, and one each in Idaho and Nevada, Friends Outside is the largest volunteer organization in the country providing assistance to inmates and their families.

About 250 volunteers work with the Los Angeles County chapter, which is based in Pasadena. The organization is nonsectarian, nonprofit and financed almost entirely by private contributions.

4,000 Inmates Visited

Last year, volunteers visited more than 4,000 inmates at Sybil Brand and Los Angeles County Jail. In addition to offering friendship, jail visitors provide information on housing, employment, transportation and drug and alcohol programs.

Often, they are the first to notify families that a relative has been incarcerated.

“It expands your horizons,” Stetson said. “You get to really know somebody. You are meeting human beings on a different kind of level than you would ordinarily.”

One woman, for instance, who had been at Sybil Brand Institute for more than a week, said that her husband and three children still didn’t know that she was in jail. She asked Friends Outside to tell them.

Another woman lost her apartment after she was arrested. She asked Friends Outside to help her two children find a place to live.

“I relieve a lot of anxiety felt by inmates,” said Richard Markham, a Friends Outside employee at California Institute for Men in Chino and one of five paid representatives stationed at prisons throughout the state. “When you’re out on the street, you take a lot of things for granted. When you’re inside the institution, even little things make a difference.”

Markham said that prison representatives are like “friends inside,” offering many of the same services as jail visitors, as well as providing information on prison visiting hours and dress regulations.

Both prison representatives and jail visitors are trained by Friends Outside staff to be good listeners and to reserve any personal or moral judgments. Usually, they will listen as long as an inmate wants to talk.

Volunteers, who visit county jails for several hours once a week, are often the only visitors inmates get.

“Many of these people haven’t had much encouragement,” said Jean Nicholson, who works part time for Friends Outside and volunteers at the Pasadena office. “People have let them down all their lives. When somebody comes from Friends Outside, that means a great deal to them.”

At a time when public sympathy seems to be directed toward the victims of crime, the people at Friends Outside say they must battle prejudices against the offenders.

‘Not Like Apple Pie’

“I have to explain to my friends carefully what I do,” Nicholson said. “If I told them I was working for the American Cancer Society, there would be no problem. . . . But we’re not like apple pie.”

Ride said that problems for inmates and their families are particularly aggravated because, while one-third of state prisoners come from Los Angeles County, most state prisons are in Northern or Central California.

Moreover, in Los Angeles County alone, there are 40,000 children under the age of 6 with a parent in prison or jail.

“Sometimes when a person is incarcerated, the family suffers just as much, if not more,” said Sheila Ryder, executive director of the Los Angeles County chapter. “They’re lost. They don’t know what to do.”

The origin of Friends Outside reflects the focus on families. In 1953, Rosemary Goodenough toured the Santa Clara County jail near San Jose at the invitation of the local sheriff. She was disturbed by the visit, especially by one inmate who had a wife and five children who had no food or money. When Goodenough went to check on the family, she discovered that they had not eaten for three days. She organized a relief effort and encouraged friends to visit the family. That effort became the foundation of Friends Outside.

Today, volunteers continue to provide emergency food, clothing and medical assistance for the families of inmates. Ryder said that although Friends Outside will occasionally provide emergency assistance, it works more as a clearinghouse, directing inmates to a network of counseling, employment and medical services.

“Success is hard to determine on a numerical scale,” Ryder said. “But if there is success, I don’t think that it’s us. It’s the people themselves.”