Music inspires Walker prison inmates
The program teaches a variety of classes focusing on education and character.
ROCK SPRING (AP) — Holly Mulcahy stands with her violin, her back to the wall of the gym at Walker State Prison in Rock Spring, Georgia. Next to her is Mary Corbett with her violin. Between them and 128 inmates serving time for a host of crimes big and small are a microphone stand and about 5 feet of open gym floor.
A lone female officer sits off to the side. The men are seated in chairs fanned out in a semicircle facing the stage, quiet and staring at the two women, who are smiling and relaxed.
The place is so quiet, Corbett steps to the microphone and says with a laugh, “Talk amongst yourselves. We have to tune up.”
It’s a relatively simple moment, but it sets the tone for how the rest of the evening will go. part of the curriculum. Others are there to learn a vocation such as welding and will remain there as long as that program takes.
“Half of the men there are lifers, but to be there, they must be eligible for parole,” says Alan Bonderud. He’s been volunteering there since 2010 and was involved in mentoring new mentors when the prison added the Faith and Character Based program.
“Every crime you can imagine is represented in the prison population there,” he says.
The goal is to give the men skills that will help them increase their chances of reacclimating into society upon release and to reduce the chances of the men ever returning to prison.
Education is a key component as the men take a variety of classes — a few have earned Master of Divinity degrees, for example — but so is character development.
Mulcahy first visited Walker State about three years ago after a chance meeting with Bonderud at a Chattanooga Symphony & Opera-sponsored gala. When Mulcahy, the CSO concertmaster, learned that Bonderud mentored at Walker State, she expressed an interest in performing there.
“I didn’t want to just go there and perform,” she says. “I wanted to do more.”
Bonderud says the recitals “have been very effective. They continue to increase the numbers of men who attend, and reports from the men are that they now share their programs with family members, and it gives them something new to talk about. It encourages them with their families. Some even have had family members take up the violin.” The Associated Press
ATLANTA — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab is making progress in a years-long effort to test thousands of backlogged sexual assault evidence packages, authorities said.
The agency’s goal is to clear out the old rape kits by the first of next year, allowing it to then concentrate on new criminal cases coming in for analysis.
“We see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan said.
The push to test a backlog of almost 10,000 sexual assault kits began after 1,351 untested rape kits were discovered in storage in 2015 at Grady Memorial Hospital, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The 2016 Georgia Legislature responded by passing a law requiring all Georgia law enforcement agencies to send stored rape kits to the GBI headquarters in Decatur for testing. Eventually those numbered 2,476, which was in addition to the old evidence packages from Grady.
The lab already had more than 5,400 evidence kits from sex crimes prior to 1999 that had not been processed because the technology did not exist at the time, the Atlanta newspaper reported.
Also, the lab was logging in an average of 250 new sexual assault kits each month.
“We’re in this position because the system failed, but I am encouraged we’ve taken action to fix it and we’re making progress. But it never should have happened in the first place,” said state Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, one of the sponsors of the 2016 legislation.
The backlog has since been cut by more than two-thirds and is now less than 2,900. The GBI has contracted with an outside lab to process the older cases while the state’s 50 scientists and technicians focus on new cases.