Prison School Gives Inmates Key to Future

With maps, books and pencil sharpeners, the school looks no different than any other. Report cards are handed out each term, and students are kicked out after seven absences. Tests give them the jitters.

But there are no field trips, no parent-teacher conferences.

Welcome to school inside the Southern Nevada Correctional Center, 27 miles south of Las Vegas.

Each morning, about 200 inmates leave their cells and head to school across the prison grounds. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., they attend classes, hone computer skills and learn new languages.

It’s here that Royal Wilcox escapes into a world without cells, a place where he has a job--and some freedom.

With funds from the state Legislature, the Clark County School District operates the education program at this prison and several others in Southern Nevada. The program is voluntary, but Principal Tim Sands still visits every cell, looking for recruits.

Prison officials want the program to do more than produce inmates with marketable skills. They hope for model prisoners who set goals and handle discipline. Donald McHenry, area superintendent for the district’s alternative schools and programs, calls it the prison’s only real rehabilitation program.

Most of the students didn’t complete the ninth grade, and many don’t speak English. In the prison school, students can take high school classes, work toward their GED or take community college and vocational classes. Each month, about 900 books are checked out from the prison library.

As an incentive, completing a program earns time off a sentence. A high school diploma equals 60 days of “good time”--a small amount that can make a big difference near the end of a sentence.

As in other schools, each spring students graduate before an audience of their peers and families. For some, it’s the only success they’ve ever achieved. For administrator McHenry, “it’s the most fun we ever have around here.”

Wilcox, 45, has been in this same prison for 20 years. Even though he is serving a life term for sexual assault, he pursues skills that he can use if released. His next chance for parole is still a few years away.

An 11th-grade dropout, Wilcox has worked for five years as the principal’s clerk. After earning his GED and an associate’s degree, he now keeps track of student records and attendance for the principal.

“This place has taught me to appreciate my own self-worth and the self-worth of others,” Wilcox says.

Like Wilcox, Freddy Gutierrez also helps Sands by running a database for the school. Now 38, Gutierrez is serving 15 years to life for drug dealing.

“I learn in here how to achieve, how to be a success, to recognize wrong values and good,” Gutierrez says, a gold and maroon graduation tassel hanging on the bulletin board behind him. “I enjoy learning and I love this.”

Gutierrez, Wilcox and the other teaching assistants earn $20 a month. Eight dollars goes to a victim-restitution fund, and the rest is spent on the perks of prison life--soap, toothpaste, razors or candy.

Every day, at lunchtime, there’s a reality check as inmates return to their cells for lockdown and a head count. But, Principal Sands says, discipline is rarely a problem because the students enjoy school. For them, it beats the alternatives of sitting in a barren cell or playing sports in the prison yard.

Most of the six teachers don’t seem to care if some students are murderers or sex offenders.

“Usually I don’t even want to know,” says Patrick Quinn, who has taught English, reading and GED classes for six years. “If they’re nice to me, I’m nice to them.”

But inmates do break down, often in a class that the principal teaches to boost self-esteem. “These are not bad people; they did bad things,” Sands says.

“Every one of these guys has the potential of being your next-door neighbor. How do you want them coming back?”