Jailed Women Read, Write--and Rehabilitate

A simple metal cart--with books, laptop computers and lesson packets stuffed onto shelves and a pencil sharpener and a white board hanging from the sides--holds the tools Lynn Kaiser hopes will transform her students’ troubled lives.

She shoves and drags the “mobile classroom” across her campus, the concrete maze of women’s dormitories at the county’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. Her lessons attract inmates trying to break the cycle of incarceration through education, whether by learning to read or by earning a high school equivalency certificate.

As Kaiser wheels her cart through security checkpoints, she is a bright spot of orange sweater and tweed pants against a backdrop of blue inmate jumpsuits and drab sheriff’s deputies’ uniforms.

“My students have all fallen through the cracks at some time in their lives,” she said. “It’s my calling to help them and try to be a person who brings some humanity to their lives.”

She teaches two classes a day, each a two-hour session for about 20 inmates in a dormitory day room, a fishbowl of an area that resembles a college recreation room with its checkerboard-imprinted tables and vending machine. Deputies at a central post in each dormitory monitor the class as well as the glass-enclosed cells where inmates chat or sleep.

Kaiser is one of about 100 instructors in the Correctional Education Division of the Hacienda La Puente School District, which contracts with the county for the classes. The program offers academic, behavioral and vocational classes to about 2,500 inmates a day throughout the Los Angeles County Jail system. About half of the students are at Twin Towers. When Kaiser enters their day rooms, inmate pupils flock to her and select hand-held computers and dictionaries as well as math and reading packets from her cart. Kaiser gives new students a skills assessment test and tailors packets to meet their needs.

She calls students to her desk to work with them individually for the majority of the session, tackling long division, antonyms and basic grammar. Near the end of each class, Kaiser usually teaches a group lesson on common challenges, such as fractions.

Her goal is to prepare inmates, most of whom are dropouts, for the high school equivalency exam. About five of her students pass the test each month, she said.

Monique Taylor, a 30-year-old from West L.A. who was convicted of forging checks at her last job, hopes that Kaiser’s classes will help her pass the exam before her release from Twin Towers in July.

“I did something so stupid, but God gave me this opportunity to make myself a better person,” said Taylor, looking up from a packet of 12th-grade-level reading comprehension passages. “I’m going to turn my life around. You will not see me back here.”

Helping inmates surmount obstacles to employment is essential to reduce recidivism, said Jack Carey, facilities lieutenant at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “We’d love to not have return customers,” he said.

Along with academic classes like Kaiser’s, inmates can choose from such courses as animal grooming at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic and parenting classes at Biscailuz Recovery Center in Los Angeles.Students who take vocational classes can earn certificates, which the Sheriff’s Department laminates so inmates can’t alter them. The certificates have helped them land jobs in masonry, plumbing and landscaping.

Discipline is not her biggest challenge, according to Kaiser, who said she feels comfortable in the jail and has never been threatened. Instead, she is bothered by all the distractions--medicine distribution and messages from sheriff’s deputies. Still, she has to take precautions such as keeping all of her pens in a black leather fanny pack and making sure she never lays them down, because sharp objects are considered contraband.

“It’s my nature to let what’s in my heart come out, but this has made me a little more skeptical and a little less open,” she said.

Every day Kaiser sees another student leave without notice, some released from jail or absent from class due to a court or Parole Board appearance.

Inmates are in custody at county facilities for an average of 45 days, jail officials said. Most of the instructors use a curriculum that students can complete within six months so that students with longer-than-average sentences don’t have to repeat lessons as often.

In the middle of a recent class, an intercom blasted another interruption, naming a dozen inmates set to be released that day. One pregnant woman in the class stood, gathered her materials, and said goodbye.

“We do as much as we can in the amount of time given to us,” said Don Carmack, director of the Correctional Education Division. “We’re teaching them all like it’s their last day here.”

Kaiser, who used to be a fit model for a jeans manufacturer, started working in the jails two years ago after teaching parolees and high school students.

Besides being aware of potential behavior problems, Kaiser said, she watches for students who appear to be truly intent on learning. “I’m always looking for the pearls,” she said. “When I see my own love of education coming out in these students, that’s really rewarding.”

Inmate Patricia Baldwin started writing poetry about her past crack addiction after Kaiser taught her to use a dictionary.

“She has opened up my mind to doing all kinds of things,” said Baldwin, 42, who is serving time for a string of crimes including drug possession and prostitution. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had the strength to finish anything worth doing.”

Not all of the inmates are as focused, Kaiser said. Some take the classes more to escape the monotony of incarceration than to better their lives.

“We’re offering them the opportunities, but they have to be ready for it,” she said. “I’m hoping something I do or something I say inspires them to ... redirect themselves in a positive way.”