Spoke with an old timer at the county jail about his vinyl record hobby program

Last weekend I was helping run a community art thing up in Spokane and this guy in his 60s who did 15 years in the state pen starts talking about how they let him start a record repair workshop inside. He said inmates would bring in busted turntables from the donation pile and he taught them to fix belts, replace needles, that stuff. He told me it gave guys something quiet to focus on instead of the usual jailhouse drama. I never thought of a hobby program like that as actual rehabilitation but he said the patience it taught them carried over to how they handled arguments. It hit me different because I always thought reform had to be about big programs or counseling but maybe small steady stuff like learning to fix a record player matters just as much. Has anyone else seen a weird specific hobby program actually change how people act inside?

3 comments

3 Comments

west.casey1mo ago

My uncle taught crochet in prison and it dropped fight rate by half.

jamieb801mo ago

Remember when I tried to teach knitting to my brother when we were kids, and he ended up using the needles as drumsticks on my head instead. I think his fight rate went up that day, not down. Your uncle sounds like he had way more patience than I ever did.

hannah3201mo ago

Yeah, the "using the needles as drumsticks on my head" part got me. That's exactly the kind of thing my little cousin would have done too. I mean, maybe it's not about the activity itself but more about finding something that clicks with them. Your brother probably just needed a different outlet for that energy, something that didn't involve hitting you with sticks. It's crazy how something like crochet can chill people out though, even in a place like prison. Maybe some people just need that repetitive motion to calm down, you know?