Since its inception in 2002, the Insight Garden Program (IGP) has provided prisoners in residence at California’s San Quentin State Prison with an unusual route to rehabilitation: organic gardening.

The hands-on program walks prisoners through every stage of maintaining their 1,200 square-foot organic flower garden, teaching them how to plan, budget, irrigate, and work with the soil, as well as identify and propagate the plants they wish to grow. In doing so, IGP is helping prepare inmates for meaningful jobs in landscaping and agriculture upon their release. Proponents of the program believe that this will help reduce the number of people caught in the cycle of incarceration, which sees over 70% of inmates back behind bars within three years of their release.

IGP has also benefited the social dynamic of the prison. While segregation may have ended officially for the United States in 1968, prisons had been racially segregated by prison administrators since the early 80s. While this practice officially ended by virtue of a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, prisoners often self-segregate, reaching the same effect. As membership in the program equally represents all ethnic groups, the garden has become an area where the men can mix freely without fear of retribution from other prisoners. Today, the flower garden is the only area in the entire prison yard that is not racially segregated.

It’s unfortunate, though, that the program is limited to roughly 40 of San Quentin’s 5,256 prisoners (which, incidentally, is nearly double the population the prison was designed and built for). Although limited by finances and available teaching space, IGP hopes to expand the program’s capacity, and plans to develop a continuum of care, by helping released prisoners find landscaping, gardening, or other “green” jobs.

Despite the troubled economy, program manager Beth Waitkus is optimistic about creating a vegetable garden this spring, saying, “We’ve been teaching sustainable agriculture for years, and we really need a learning lab for that.” She is further hopeful that the vegetable garden will provide an opportunity to teach prisoners about nutrition, as well.

To learn more about the Insight Garden Program, or to make a donation online, please visit their homepage, http://www.insightgardenprogram.org/.

To learn more about in-prison and post-release horticultural vocational training programs, please see James Jiler’s Doing Time in the Garden.

- Ilya Bernstein

Image courtesy of Insight Garden Program.