San Quentin Rehabilitation Center

    

(Left to Right) Sr.Mavis, me, Sr.Mary Sean, and Lucy in front of the gates of San Quentin

    Today we visited San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, and honestly, there were moments when I forgot I was even inside a prison.

Before coming to California, I imagined prisons as cold, silent places built entirely around punishment. But San Quentin felt different. The men there were constantly moving between programs, workshops, and creative spaces. There was energy in the room. Purpose. Conversation. People eager to learn, reflect, and contribute.

One of the spaces that stood out to me most was the media center, home to Uncuffed, a podcast created by incarcerated people. The project allows men and women in California prisons to tell their own stories in their own words, revealing the humanity that exists behind prison walls. Listening to their work made me think about how often incarcerated people are spoken about, but rarely spoken with.

Walking through San Quentin forced me to sit with an uncomfortable reality: I was surrounded by people convicted of serious harm: murder, sexual violence, crimes that changed lives forever. I do not want to romanticize that reality or erase the pain experienced by victims and communities. Yet at the same time, I found myself focusing less on the labels attached to these men and more on the people standing in front of me.

What struck me was their willingness to engage.

The men we met genuinely wanted to be part of these workshops. They spoke openly about accountability, harm, and the work they are doing to better understand themselves and the choices that brought them there. Many of them were not asking to be excused for what they had done. Instead, they spoke about taking ownership of their actions and trying, in whatever ways they still can, to repair some of the damage they caused.

I think before this experience, I viewed accountability and humanity as opposites. But the more prisons I visit, the more I realize both can exist at the same time. A person can be responsible for terrible harm and still remain human. A person can deserve accountability while also being capable of growth.

Of course, no amount of programming changes the fact that these men are incarcerated. At the end of the day, freedom is still freedom. No workshop, podcast, or rehabilitative program can fully replace the experience of living outside prison walls, surrounded by the people you love.

Still, today challenged me to reconsider what rehabilitation can actually look like. Not perfection. Not erasure of harm. But honest reflection, accountability, creativity, and the difficult work of becoming more than the worst thing you have done.

I left San Quentin thinking about something I keep encountering throughout this journey: people are always more complicated than the labels society gives them.