full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Pacholke: How prisons can help inmates live meaningful lives

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Let me be clear on what's going on here, though. Inmates are highly adaptive. They have to be. Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems than the people who run them. And they're here for a reason. I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them, but I do think they can have dnecet and meaningful lives even in prison. So that was the question: Could iaments live decent and meaningful lives, and if so, what difference would that make? So I took that question back to the deep end, where some of our most violent offenders are heusod. rebmemer, IMUs are for punishment. You don't get perks there, like programming. That was how we thought. But then we started to realize that if any inmates nedeed programming, it was these particular inmates. In fact, they needed intensive programming. So we changed our thinking 180 dergees, and we started looking for new possibilities. What we found was a new kind of chair. Instead of using the chair for punishment, we put it in classrooms. Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control, but now inmates could ietcnrat safely, face-to-face with other inmates and sftaf, and because control was no longer an isuse, everybody could fucos on other things, like learning. Behavior cehagnd. We changed our thinking, and we changed what was possible, and this gives me hope.

Open Cloze


Let me be clear on what's going on here, though. Inmates are highly adaptive. They have to be. Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems than the people who run them. And they're here for a reason. I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them, but I do think they can have ______ and meaningful lives even in prison. So that was the question: Could _______ live decent and meaningful lives, and if so, what difference would that make? So I took that question back to the deep end, where some of our most violent offenders are ______. ________, IMUs are for punishment. You don't get perks there, like programming. That was how we thought. But then we started to realize that if any inmates ______ programming, it was these particular inmates. In fact, they needed intensive programming. So we changed our thinking 180 _______, and we started looking for new possibilities. What we found was a new kind of chair. Instead of using the chair for punishment, we put it in classrooms. Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control, but now inmates could ________ safely, face-to-face with other inmates and _____, and because control was no longer an _____, everybody could _____ on other things, like learning. Behavior _______. We changed our thinking, and we changed what was possible, and this gives me hope.

Solution


  1. decent
  2. remember
  3. changed
  4. focus
  5. issue
  6. housed
  7. degrees
  8. staff
  9. needed
  10. interact
  11. inmates

Original Text


Let me be clear on what's going on here, though. Inmates are highly adaptive. They have to be. Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems than the people who run them. And they're here for a reason. I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them, but I do think they can have decent and meaningful lives even in prison. So that was the question: Could inmates live decent and meaningful lives, and if so, what difference would that make? So I took that question back to the deep end, where some of our most violent offenders are housed. Remember, IMUs are for punishment. You don't get perks there, like programming. That was how we thought. But then we started to realize that if any inmates needed programming, it was these particular inmates. In fact, they needed intensive programming. So we changed our thinking 180 degrees, and we started looking for new possibilities. What we found was a new kind of chair. Instead of using the chair for punishment, we put it in classrooms. Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control, but now inmates could interact safely, face-to-face with other inmates and staff, and because control was no longer an issue, everybody could focus on other things, like learning. Behavior changed. We changed our thinking, and we changed what was possible, and this gives me hope.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
system change 3
failed social 2
social policy 2
men streamed 2
pretty good 2
small experiments 2
behavior changed 2
small prison 2
repopulating endangered 2
meaningful lives 2
provide humane 2
humane environments 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
failed social policy 2
provide humane environments 2

Important Words


  1. adaptive
  2. behavior
  3. chair
  4. changed
  5. classrooms
  6. clear
  7. control
  8. decent
  9. deep
  10. degrees
  11. difference
  12. fact
  13. focus
  14. forget
  15. forgive
  16. highly
  17. hope
  18. housed
  19. imus
  20. inmates
  21. intensive
  22. interact
  23. issue
  24. job
  25. kind
  26. learning
  27. live
  28. lives
  29. longer
  30. meaningful
  31. needed
  32. offenders
  33. oftentimes
  34. people
  35. perks
  36. possibilities
  37. prison
  38. programming
  39. punish
  40. punishment
  41. put
  42. question
  43. realize
  44. reason
  45. remember
  46. responsibility
  47. run
  48. safely
  49. staff
  50. started
  51. systems
  52. thinking
  53. thought
  54. violent