University of Virginia Library

OAR: Brightening Dark Lives

By MARGARET ALFORD

Lives of prisoners at the
city and county jails might be
worse than they are at present
if not for the efforts of the
Offender Aid and Restoration
(OAR) program.

Unique to Virginia, the
OAR program works under the
notion that the greatest area of
rehabilitation comes not in
teaching a prisoner a trade or
to read and write, but in
teaching him to become
self-motivated, instilling
self pride and self-interest.

The OAR program is
financed by a federal grant and
by private funds, and
monitored by the state. Six
cities in Virginia have OAR
programs: Richmond, Newport
News, Fairfax County,
Washington County, and
Roanoke.

Most prisoners, OAR Asst.
Director Steve Rosenfield says,
are isolated and feel rejected.
The local jails have taken away
any dignity left, and inmates
need someone to talk to who
will listen to them.

The OAR program sees
prisoners from two points of
view. In one sense, "they are
the reason for our local crime
problem (since) many are
repeaters, having been jailed as
many as 20 times and more,"
according to an OAR leaflet.

In a second sense, the
prisoners are "almost all
outside the mainstream, of
community life, frustrated and
embittered," and represent the
center of the hard-core poor,
wasting their lives by returning
to jail again and again.

Under Director Wayne C.
Shannon and Mr. Rosenfield,
about 90 volunteers work
individually with offenders in
the city and county jails,
attempting to help restore
self-respect, motivation and
understanding.

Requirements for
volunteers are to display
stability, integrity, maturity,
and a quality of sympathy.
Charlottesville's volunteers are
mostly middle-class adults,
former prisoners, and a few
University students.

The volunteers attend three
consecutive training sessions on
dealing with offenders, and
then in a courtroom ceremony,
are affirmed as volunteers and
given credentials to enter the
jails. A volunteer must spend at
least six hours a month with
his assigned inmate.

CD/Mike Powell

OAR Director Wayne C. Shannon

The program handbook
describes its volunteers as an
"elite group which can change
offenders' life styles, and can
become a guiding example, a
rock in a weary land."

The program's only
drawback might be that it
requires no particular
educational background of its
volunteers in psychology or
sociology. Reading such
handbook descriptions, some
may join who envision
themselves as saviors, hoping to
show the offender a "happy
life" like their own. The
program's intentions may be
misunderstood by persons who
merely want to confirm the
significance of their own life
styles.

Encourages Participation

On the other hand, the lack
of stringent requirements
encourages participation from
all members of the community,
which is vital to improvement
of jail life.

OAR emphasizes that its
volunteers must act merely as
friends to offenders, and not as
psychiatrists or lawyers. Its
success lies in the volunteer's
ability to inspire confidence
and represent understanding
and concern.

In an attempt to improve
prisoner morale at the jails,
Mssrs. Rosenfield and Shannon
have begun libraries for the
prisoners. Most of the books
which have been donated are
serious and intellectual writing,
however, and local high school
students are presently
collecting westerns, mysteries
and comic books, which
prisoners seem to prefer.

Through the combined
efforts of OAR and the
University Adult Education
Center, inmates also may now
work for a General Educational
Development (GED) high
school equivalency diploma.

Televisions were very
recently installed at both jails
as a diversion from the endless
monotony that is jail life.

In the way of
entertainment, OAR arranged a
bluegrass concert for prisoners
before Christmas.

Mr. Rosenfield has also
encouraged prisoners to write
poetry or letters to vent their
feelings. "Although most of
the prisoners have limited
education, it is surprising what
they come up with," he said.

Becoming caught up in
sympathy for the inmates'
plight is easy, and the
magnitude of the crimes they
have committed may begin to
fade, but the OAR program
does not intend to coddle
prisoners. Volunteers are
expected to show displeasure if
inmates express pride in their
crimes; nothing is glossed over.

Probation Change Recommended

A recent report by the
National Advisory Commission
on Criminal Justice Standards
and Goals recommended a shift
from the present traditional
incarceration philosophy of
imprisonment toward
"community based
correctional programs" which
would release offenders on
parole or probation, with help
in rehabilitation from local
residents and groups.

"The idea is to prepare the
offender to carry on life in the
community, not to prepare
him only to live in the
unnatural lifestyle of an
institution," the federal
commission said.

OAR is attempting to
rehabilitate prisoners in just
such a fashion: as well as to
inspire local citizens to become
aware of jail conditions and to
upgrade the facilities.

City Sheriff Raymond C.
Pace is skeptical about the
program's value, however. He
believes that few prisoners are
motivated to want to return to
society. "I can't figure out
where the OAR program has
done any good. I want to think
that rehabilitation would be
good, but the prisoner
population is going up, not
down. Crime is costing society
so much."

Albemarle Sheriff George L.
Bailey believes that the
program's benefits are mostly
long-range. "You can't see
results right away, but after
awhile, I think it will be
beneficial," he said.

"The worst crime is
ignorance about crime,"
criminologist Karl Menninger
wrote. In the same vein, OAR
seeks to make the public aware
of jail conditions.

Though results of OAR's
work may not be obvious yet,
they care and are trying to do
something about the pitiful jail
conditions, which is more than
anyone else has ever tried to do
here.