Daphnie Chandler likes going to school because, for just a few hours, it’s like she’s not in prison anymore.
“It’s like a whole new world when you step into education,” she said.
The classrooms at Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Facility, don’t look like the rest of the prison. They’re set up with dry erase boards, motivational posters, desks and rows of computers along the perimeter. The only striking difference between the classrooms at the prison and those at a high school or college is the blue jumpsuit-clad students who study there.
Chandler is enrolled in a few of the prison’s correctional education programs, including Seeking Safety, a behavioral intervention course, and Getting It Right, a program meant to help inmates transition into the workforce after their release.
Before she was sent to prison for drug-related offenses, she was studying to be an emergency medical technician, but drug addiction derailed her career ambitions. She said she also committed crimes for the “high of getting away with it.”
Chandler, who was in prison once before, said she had since grown spiritually and emotionally. Now is the time for her to start getting things right.
“I just feel if I can’t get it right here, then I’m not going to get it right at all, and I’m definitely going to fail,” she said.
The goal for instructors like Grayce James, who teaches hospitality and tourism to inmates at Florence McClure, is to not only rehabilitate inmates, but to provide a mental escape. She said it has kept her going to work every day with “a sense of purpose.”
James said teaching was challenging in any setting, but teaching students in prison was unique because of the setting.
“They’re inmates, they’re already bound,” she said. “So they’re already coming in here with a weight. Our job when we come in every day is to lift the weight through academics. We can’t lift the entire weight, but we can give them three hours a day of escape. Everything we give them will give them freedom when they leave.”
Florence McClure partners with the Clark County School District to offer education programs that help inmates earn high school diplomas, high school equivalencies or vocational certificates in an effort to rehabilitate those in custody and reduce recidivism rates. This year, more than 500 incarcerated students across the state are being honored for having achieved these milestones, Nevada Department of Corrections officials said. Of those 500, 76 came from Florence McClure.
According to a 2014 study by the Rand Corp., inmates in the U.S. who go through education programs while serving their sentence are 43% less likely to return to prison than those who do not.
Education programs like the ones offered at Florence McClure also yield a benefit of $6 to the state of Nevada for every $1 spent on the program, according to a 2016 Nevada Educational Consortium report.
Alexandria Montgomery thought her life would be on the streets or in prison.
The dysfunction she endured at home growing up, compounded with the death of her son, made her feel she'd been set up for failure. She developed a drug addiction, which subsequently led her to commit crimes like theft to support her addiction.
Now, after being given another chance to earn her high school diploma this year through some of the education programs at Florence McClure, she wants to break the cycle by being a better role model for her daughter, saying she doesn’t want the girl to grow up the way she did.
“Like I tell my daughter, I go ‘Mija, you need to graduate at 18 when you’re supposed to, not when you’re 33 years old like I am.”
Montgomery admitted that she wasn’t always the best student. She thought because of her seven-year sentence, she didn’t need to take her education seriously. But then, after hearing what she described as a call from God, she embraced religion and changed.
“I just did a whole 180,” she said. “People used to say I had this darkness in my eyes about me … now everything in my life is going good.”
After earning her high school diploma last spring, Montgomery had started to build a better relationship with her family. She talks to them every week.
Montgomery is now taking paralegal classes, hoping to use her knowledge to help people like her once she’s released. In addition, she is also enrolled the prison’s cosmetology program with an eye toward opening her own salon when she gets out.
Assistant Warden Gabriela Garcia said Florence McClure partners with Expertise Cosmetology Institute to offer this program. She said inmates who’ve gone through the two-year program have been offered jobs at professional salons, including some on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I’m going to get where I need to be no matter what,” Montgomery said. “Now I know that prison isn’t an option for me anymore. I know that being a mother and being a daughter and having things in my life, that’s where I’m going to be.”
For Tami White, it was drugs and alcohol that brought her to prison. She said although she was raised in a good family, she still fell into the lifestyle. She said her mother was taking care of her five children at the time and she would come and go as she pleased.
White said she knows she needs to be in prison, but she wants to use education to show that she is more than just a faceless number in the DOC.
“To prove to people that we’re going to change our lives when we get out of here is what’s most important,” she said.
During her time in prison, White has been enrolled in addiction recovery programs. She said she’s also religious again, which has helped in her recovery.
Chandler, the inmate who had once planned to become an EMT, said the challenge of the coursework and the passion of her teachers kept her from being “stagnant” while serving her sentence.
“They see our potential,” she said. “This past school year, I was like, well maybe I’ll just slowplay it. But they said, ‘Absolutely not, you only have this one subject.’ They made me fast-track.”
Social studies teacher Bruce Pierce is in his first year at Florence McClure. Before that, he held several administrative positions at various CCSD schools. He said his work at Florence McClure was more fulfilling than anything else he’d done in education.
He noted that the stakes for his students are higher than those for the average student, which compels them to work harder.
“These students, they want to be successful. I feel this is a great challenge for me and is very rewarding,” he said. “I go home every day with a sense of accomplishment.”
Pierce’s challenges include dealing with a classroom of students who have been told all their life that they’re failures.
“I don’t look at them for what they’ve done. I look at them as regular students,” he said. “You have to show them and tell them, ‘I believe in you, I need you to believe in you and that you can do this.’ I tell them, ‘I don’t care what your other teachers have told you, I don’t care who in your life or who else told you you would not be successful.”
That’s because for Pierce, “failure is not an acceptable answer” in his classroom.
Chandler, who said she still had two years left in her sentence in addition to another warrant in Oregon, said she hoped her academic achievements would reflect well on her when she's considered for release.
“I’m hoping (the judge) will recognize how I’ve done my time here,” she said. “If they don’t, I have a year and a half still to do there.”
Chandler is undeterred by this potential outcome. Eventually, she said she would like to open a housekeeping business.
“Those businesses are not too keen on hiring felons,” she said. “But I want to find a way that it can be done.”