Building emotional intelligence, one cellblock at a time

There’s something unusual happening at the Illinois River Correctional Center.

For a prison, there’s a lot of talk of community, emotional intelligence, nurturing, support — and it’s not just talk. It’s focused in one wing in the prison — 3-A — but the zeitgeist seems to be spreading.

The latest episode of Prisoncast! profiles the Building Block program at the prison, which was started up by several guys who’d transferred in from a maximum security prison. These men — some of whom have life sentences — used the college degrees they got in prison to start a program to help others who will have the chance to be released some day.

“I was afforded the opportunity for education [and] it opened my eyes to my own life and how unhealthy I thought about things…which made me really start asking,’Why did I do the things that I did?'” said one of the program’s founders, Yarmale Thomas. “Once people start getting to that then they can start addressing it and begin to heal. Once they heal, they can help others heal around them.”

Learn more on Prisoncast!, airing Sunday, July 26th from 2 to 4PM CT on WBEZ 91.5 FM, at wbez.org, and on all Illinois Public Radio stations.

In the first hour of the show, Prisoncast! profiles the Building Block program inside Illinois River Correctional Center. We have an update on the state of health care in Illinois prisons. And, how one incarcerated listener’s sound request had us watching peewee hockey on VHS with his parents.

In the second hour, hear a new investigation from The Marshall Project into how the Joliet Treatment Center, designed to treat people with serious mental illness, repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires despite two deaths. We also hear about the importance of learning emotional intelligence behind bars, and get the story of one man’s journey from Cook County Jail to becoming the head beekeeper at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.