Utah Prisoner Advocate Network
UPAN | A nonprofit community advocacy group supporting the families of Utah inmates.
Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting. We will be a general family meeting to update on a variety of issues and discuss any news about the implementation of HB 348 Criminal Justice Programs and Amendments.
Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting. Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting - October 2015. Please join UPAN at the Hunter Library on Monday, October 12th from 6:30-8:30 pm for our next monthly meeting. This will be a family support meeting. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting - November 2015. Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting. Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
There will be no December UPAN Meeting in observance of the holidays.
Get to know your Legislator (Bring Your Legislator To UPAN Meeting)
We are asking our UPAN participants to contact their local representatives and senators and invite them to our January 2016 meeting. You can find out who they are by going to: le.utah.gov. E-mail them, call them, and send them a written invitation. This will only be successful if we all do our part to invite them!
If you wish to speak at this meeting, please arrive about 10 – 15 minutes early to sign up on the speakers list. We will begin on time at 6:30 p.m.
Agenda & Objectives:
1. This will put a face to the names we hear about up on the Hill. And they will get to put a face to the constituents they represent.
2. We can give first hand stories about the real people being affected by the laws they are passing.
3. We can let them know what we would like to see happen with new criminal justice reform. This will be accomplished the same way we did when Ron Gordon of the CCJJ came. There will be a list for participants (you) to sign up in order to speak. Each speaker will get up to five minutes to express their views. We would like this to be a positive experience for all involved, so no negativity will be accepted. Our representatives should come away with an appreciation of everything we as families, and our incarcerated loved ones, are going though. We hope to share, ideas that continue to facilitate positive change. We need their help, they need our experience, and we need them to be on the side of truth, fairness, and healing. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting - February 2016
UPAN Monthly Meeting - March 2016 we welcome Kade Minchey from the Utah Office of the Auditor General to give a presentation on the Legislative Audit of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
UPAN Monthly Meeting - April 2016
Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting. Our guest will be Andrew McCullough who will be running for Utah Attorney General. We will hear from him about what the AG office does. UPAN families can share with him their concerns about Criminal Justice Issues in Utah. While the AG’s office doesn’t have a significant role in criminal justice reform, it does sometimes push legislation that impacts the criminal justice system, and not always for the better. It is also our understanding that the Attorney General’s office works under the Governor, so that office COULD have some influence in how the Governor approaches criminal justice reform. Free and open to the public.
Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting. LEGISLATOR NIGHT. This will be another Share with your Legislator meeting. We will invite our state legislators (you are encouraged to invite your own as well as UPAN inviting them). We are also hoping to invite candidates who are running this year. UPAN families may sign up to share their concerns about the Criminal Justice System and Prison issues. Each person is asked to keep their comments to the point, (3 minutes) as we will also ask if any of our legislators want to share what they may be working on in terms of criminal justice related legislation for the 2017 session. Meet in Conference Rooms A-B-C downstairs below Main Library Foyer. Free and open to the public.
The Impact of Sex Offender Registries on Offenders and Families
Please join UPAN for our next monthly meeting, presented by Matt Duhamel, Metamora Films. This is the presentation he made at the 2016 Prisoner Family Conference in Texas earlier this year. Matt Duhamel, a former TV news and radio personality, has turned his attention to helping others through the power of independent film. He agrees with the idea that film can help individuals, communities and entire societies by increasing compassion, tolerance, understanding and forgiveness. By learning from his own personal trials and past failures, Matt uses his experiences as life changing tools and applies them to his thought-provoking films. You may have noticed Matt and Heather Duhamel attending several of the past UPAN meetings filming for his current production called, "Not for Rent!" about ex-inmates' struggles with the Utah Good Landlord Program. We are very excited to have Matt as a guest speaker, you'll not want to miss his presentation. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
UPAN Monthly Meeting Topics TBD. Free and open to the public.
Imagine your perspective if you are the one who is incarcerated: You have done something terrible to others and fully deserve it. You may have grown up “on the streets” or may have had a good life that you threw away because of some terrible choices. You are now stuck behind bars. You want to change but everything around you prevents it. Everywhere you look there is rampant corruption. You feel like you are living in a cesspool. Every day you worry that you will anger the wrong person, inmate or guard. Every day you wonder if this will be the day that you are beat up or thrown in Special Management Unit (SMU, a secure holding cell), sent to a county jail or worse. Every time you dare think you can change and make the attempt to do so, the reality of where you are, and all the obstacles, including the “system” are staring you down.
Imagine you are a guard: getting up every day with no hope. Imagine going to work every day knowing full well that the environment where you are going is hopeless and meaningless. In the beginning you had hope. You are charged to guard inmates. You imagined you could make a difference. You thought that you could help. After a short time, however, you realized that the system and the environment are too overwhelming to do anything positive. Every time you try, you run into a roadblock within the system. You are criticized for trying to create meaningful change. You are told that it won’t make a difference. You are told that those you wanted to help don’t deserve it. You are considered a traitor because of the “us vs them” attitude that prevails at your work place. You are stuck in a job that provides little in the way of positive outcome for you or for the people you are supposed to be serving. You spend your day in boredom.
Now imagine my perspective as an educator and seeing 1,500 students who need help, lots of help. Many of these students made grave mistakes. Most have done serious damage to someone or something. Many were remorseful but saw no clear path to correcting their behavior. In fact, they are living in a world that encourages and develops criminal behavior. Imagine being there with your “students” and having your hands tied. Your responsibility to help is real. However, because of a broken system, you are not allowed to do anything positive. You come every day to work with 200 students who are mostly passive. You know full well that there are many, many more out there who need your help, though they may not want it. Your predecessors told you that you would have nothing to do, that you would spend your days reading the paper and standing in the hall during “movement” of prisoners between classes. They advised you to keep your door closed so as to not invite the “students” in.
Imagine, through either providence or sheer dumb luck, that, you as an educator, find your way to help all these parties see a better path. In your daily interaction with these “students” and their jailors, as well as your faculty and staff – eliciting the help of all – you are able to see the many flaws in the current system and develop a program that, in a small way, opens the path and opportunity of growth for many of them. Imagine a grown man, 58 years old, standing in the doorway of your office pitching a fit because he had to come to school. Then imagine him two and a half years later as he stands in the same doorway, this time in tears, thanking you and your staff for the opportunity of learning. For the first time in his life he felt he has hope for the future. Imagine an officer, who at the beginning of your tenure, was critical and mocking as you started to try to make change. Now he comes to see you before you retire, thanking you for the positive effect the changes have had on those with whom he worked, as well as on himself. He was dreading the “next 15 years” but now comes to work with hope and a vision.
This is an account of how our group of teachers, inmates and some Corrections staff, over the course of eight years, effected real change inside the Gunnison prison (CUCF).
UPAN Monthly Meeting After a six-month hiatus we're pleased to offer our first virtual monthly meeting format. TONIGHT's UPAN Monthly Meeting will be mainly focused on you: When: Monday, Sept 14, 2020 @ […]
