January 25, 2006
On Education
Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules
By MICHAEL WINERIP

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JEFF KAUFMAN, a teacher at the Rikers Island jail, has a reputation as a good educator who cares about his student inmates. In 2004, without the aid of computers, his students finished first in a citywide stock market game competition against more than 50 high schools.

Elizabeth Lesher, who oversees the competition, said that at most schools, "students gather around computers, research stocks via Web sites such as Yahoo Finance, Market Watch or Nasdaq and enter their transactions online."

"The classroom environment at Rikers was very sparse," said Ms. Lesher, a director for the Foundation for Investor Education. "No attractive bulletin boards, no computers with Internet access and no industry specialists visited the classroom to provide investment ideas." Mr. Kaufman's students relied on the newspaper and his class lessons. That, she said, "speaks volumes about the teacher. Obviously I was very impressed."

In 2003, Mr. Kaufman's students won a citywide playwriting competition. In 2000 and 2001, he arranged for the student chorus at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens to visit Rikers at Christmas and perform for his students.

Don Murphy, a fellow teacher, said Mr. Kaufman became so popular during his eight years at the jail that in 2004 he was unopposed in the election for union representative at Island Academy, the Rikers school, which serves about 1,000 teenage inmates.

David Lee, an inmate serving time for assault, who earned a General Educational Development diploma with one of the highest scores ever at Rikers, said no teacher worked harder. Mr. Kaufman made special arrangements for Mr. Lee to take college correspondence courses, spent his lunch hours tutoring him and then proctored each of the three-hour exams from Excelsior College.

In July 2003, Mr. Kaufman was off for the summer, but made special trips to Rikers so Mr. Lee could take his next college exam. "All the teachers were on vacation and school didn't begin until September," Mr. Lee wrote in a letter sent to this reporter from Rikers. "But Kaufman comes here to Rikers not once, but twice just so that he could give me the test on a hot summer day. He didn't have to come; he could have stayed home with his wife and kids."

"Mr. Kaufman wasn't only a teacher or test proctor," said Mr. Lee. "He inspired me to aim higher in life."
But on Friday, Mr. Kaufman received notice from his principal that he was no longer permitted to teach at Rikers.

His crime? "Undue familiarity."

Mr. Kaufman had given Mr. Lee his home address so the two could correspond by mail and try to arrange for Mr. Lee to take another of those Excelsior College exams while the inmate was in solitary confinement in the summer of 2004.

There is no allegation of anything improper about the content of those letters. Copies of 20 letters provided to a reporter by Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Lee mainly talked about learning. In one, the inmate thanked the teacher for sending books to him in solitary ("the Bing") and wrote that he was spending so much time reading, up to 12 hours a day, that he was getting headaches. "I don't mind being here at the Bing but I want to be able to take the test," wrote Mr. Lee.

Mr. Kaufman wrote back urging patience, saying that he was trying to work out arrangements with correction officials. "If your head begins to hurt from reading, stop. Your body is telling you it's enough."
How did school and correction officials know that Mr. Kaufman had given out his home address? Mr. Kaufman told them.

On Sept. 12, 2005, the Rikers principal, Frank Dody, sent out a security memo, in which he spelled out in writing, for the first time, what was meant by the prohibition against undue familiarity: "All contact with current/former students outside of the school area (home, upstate facilities) in the form of letters or phone calls must be authorized by the principal."

MR. KAUFMAN read the memo, requested authorization and showed the principal a recent letter from Mr. Lee. Within days Mr. Kaufman was yanked from Rikers and placed in a holding room in Brooklyn for teachers under investigation.

Mr. Kaufman says he thinks the real reason he was investigated was that he had testified at a City Council hearing in December 2004 about how bad the Rikers school's services were for inmates being released. "That really upset Frank Dody," Mr. Kaufman says. "He wouldn't talk to me for months. He's using this incident to get me."

Mr. Dody said he was upset, but that's not why there was an investigation. He said that even though he had been principal six years and had only recently spelled out the rules in writing, anyone who had been at Rikers as long as Mr. Kaufman knew you weren't supposed to give out your address. "Teachers here have to live by the corrections rules," Mr. Dody said. "While the rules don't always make sense, even to me, they're in place for a reason, to keep everyone safe."

Mr. Dody acknowledged that the letter Mr. Kaufman showed him had nothing compromising in it. "From my reading of it, I didn't really see anything of any nature that would raise my eyebrows," Mr. Dody said.
Thomas Antenten, a correction spokesman, said that once the principal made the decision to refer the case, officials had to investigate. "We take undue familiarity very seriously," he said. "Giving an inmate a personal address could lead to deadly consequences."

Inmates like Mr. Lee say Rikers has lost a rare, good teacher. "It was a wrong decision to demote Kaufman," Mr. Lee said. "I'm the one who initiated contact in order to see what options I had in seeking a better education."

David Lee was a 16-year-old junior with a B+ average at Francis Lewis High in Queens in January 2002. He says he got mixed up with the wrong people, and was at a Flushing apartment when a fight broke out and a man was stabbed to death. Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in return for an eight-year sentence and is being held at Rikers pending the trial of a co-defendant charged with murder.

Within four months at Rikers, Mr. Lee took the G.E.D. In the middle of the test, he says, a brawl broke out and someone threw a chair at him, bruising a rib. Still, he comes from a family of good students, and even bruised, he finished with a top score. His younger sister, Sonia, is an A student in her sophomore year at George Washington University, and travels from Washington every other week to visit her brother in jail, bringing books he requests.

At the Rikers school, Mr. Lee became a favorite. He showed Mr. Murphy, the computer teacher, how to use several desktop publishing programs. He was given a job doing janitorial work. With Mr. Kaufman's help, he took three college business courses and got A's. Neither he nor Mr. Kaufman knew what material was going to be on the tests and which chapters to focus on, so Mr. Lee read everything. "I would read 450, 500 pages of a textbook from cover to cover three to four times so I would truly understand," he said.
As Mr. Lee was about to take his fourth college exam, in May 2004, he was caught with 17 packs of Newports. Smoking was banned at Rikers in 2003; cigarettes are considered contraband. Mr. Lee said he was offered a "slap on the wrist" if he'd give up his supplier but did not. For each pack of Newports, he was given 15 days in solitary, 9 months altogether in a 6-by-9-foot cell.

Mr. Antenten, the correction spokesman, said he did not know the details of the case but added that Rikers makes no distinction between cigarettes and heroin when it comes to contraband. "It can lead to disputes between inmates that have bloody consequences," he said.

Mr. Lee said the teacher's letters helped keep him sane those nine months. "Not only did Kaufman help me pursue educational studies, but he offered moral support through the letters," he said.
At times, in the letters, Mr. Kaufman sounds like a stern father. Referring to the cigarette infraction that got Mr. Lee removed from the school and landed him in the Bing, Mr. Kaufman wrote, "We were all upset at your sudden leaving, but we have talked about consequences."

Mr. Kaufman, 50, said his background - he is a Cornell grad, a former police officer and lawyer for the indigent - makes him well-suited to teach inmates. He will appeal the decision. "It's a place I feel I can be of most use to my students," he said.

In December, after spending more than two months in the Brooklyn holding room, Mr. Kaufman was sent to Queens Academy, where he is mentoring three new teachers. An Education Department spokesman, David Cantor, said Mr. Kaufman would soon be given a job teaching at an alternative high school.

Mr. Dody, the principal, said Mr. Kaufman's removal was solely a Correction Department decision. But a November 2005 memo by the department's investigator, Capt. Matthew Boyd, indicates that the principal had a significant role. "Dr. Dody reports that he has determined that Mr. Kaufman's actions violate undue familiarity and I concur," the memo says.

Mr. Dody says he's not a doctor and the corrections memo is wrong.

Mr. Lee's younger sister, Sonia, wrote about his jail experiences in a term paper at George Washington that won a top a prize and was featured at a student lecture series. The paper includes the hardships her brother knew growing up, including the suicide of their mother, who suffered from manic depression. Sonia Lee plans to get a master's degree in public policy specializing in the prison system. Her prize paper calls for prisons that devote more resources to rehabilitation and education.
E-mail: edmike@nytimes.com

Rikers Jails

Andre's World
A kid needs imagination to survive high school and jail on Rikers Island
by Victor Buhler
October 10th, 2005 1:43 PM

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I met Andre Blandon in April 2004, as he began his "bullet." That's jail slang for a year-long sentence, commonly reduced to eight months good time. Andre was hunched over a light table, sketching Jason, the principal character of a comic book he was creating. Other teenagers hovered around him and, like commuters around a kid who plays paint buckets as Clyde Stubblefield plays drums, they gazed at Andre with blank curiosity. Andre was pending his bid in Rikers Island jail, the largest city correctional facility in North America, drawing cartoons. His jail moniker was simply "Artist."

For over three years, I'd pursued the opportunity to make a documentary ("Rikers High," in rotation on Showtime this fall) about Austin MacCormick Island Academy. That's the school on the wrong side of the barbed-wire fences and swirling currents of the East River that separate Rikers Island jail from the rest of our city. Divided into three sections, including one for girls, the school takes in the 2,000 inmates, 18-years-old or under, who are locked up in Rikers. Attendance is mandatory, enforced by correction officers, who shuttle the kids through the adult sections of the jail and to the school. For many teens in Rikers, Island Academy is their first experience of formal education for years.

To teach students of vastly different abilities and educational backgroundsmany of whom have woeful, often violent, disciplinary recordscan seem a Sisyphean task. A teacher can make considerable progress with a student only to arrive one morning to find him transferred, released, or sent to the "Bing" (or, worse, the infirmary) after a fight. Still, the Island Academy keeps functioning. And over a hundred teenage inmates receive their G.E.D.s there every year. Like a truck stop on the edge of the desert, the facilities the school provides seem essential.

Many of these kids, however, don't understand the scope of that desert and, as a result, spend most of their lives caught up in the prison system. This reality hits hard when you see a line of teenage inmates, dressed in tan uniforms, shuttle past adult prisoners, who wear green. The adults' faces are weathered, cheeks drawn in, teeth knocked out by fights or drugs. Comparing the adults to the restless, bright-eyed teenage population seems a gruesome before/after slideshowand is enough to make the system appear vast and inexorable. Gus Rodriguez, who has been a special education teacher at Island Academy for five years, stresses that there is a way out. His first ambition for an incoming teenager is to shift his perspective away from the streets:

"They've no idea where they are in the scheme of things. So we start literally. With geography . . . maps. We look at continents, at countries, at states. You're sitting on a chair in Rikers Island. But where is that exactly? I try to teach them that there is great deal more to life than the one square block they live on."
Mr. Rodriguez's students have accelerated past all previous stop signs: group homes, special programs, foster care, detention centers, even, as in Andre's case, drug programs. Many have alienated themselves from their families and instead clutch onto tenuous support systems, such as gang allegiances. Their psychology is entrenched in the world of survival, whether that means through drug-dealing, guns, or robbery:

"What breaks my heart is that there's a lot of guys who already think their life is over. They're eighteen and they think they're done. How do you convince a kid like that to take an interest in education?"
Mr. Rodriguez's plaint stayed in my mind as I shot my documentary.

It is hard to overstate the degree to which television has already mythologized jail. And it is hard not to resent this when you come face to face with how petty life at Rikers can (and, many would argue, should) be. As John Hopson, a correction officer for 32 years, told me:

"RIkers has changed over the years. Now it's more like a shelter. A place you go when you're out of options. Most of these kids are out of options."

Rikers does not reform these teenagers and they return with virtual certainty: Eight out of 10 are re-arrested within a year of their release. The New York Times estimated that it costs $100,000 to house an inmate at Rikers. Teachers at Island Academy point out that a year's specialized education outside of jail costs a tenth of that figure.

While mindful of jail's many hazardswho can forget that prison is hell?it is easy to dismiss many teenage inmates as thugs. But often the toughest guys are those most wrapped up in their surroundings and who have the least perspective on the absurdity of their situation. A kid from the Bronx, the Sonny Corleone of "5 Main" dormitory, held aloft several bags of Soft-Batch Cookies and informed me that he had "taxed" (beaten up) an inmate to get them. Food, even cookies, he explained, equates to money and, once you have money, then, well, you have power. I nodded my head benignly as I imagined the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony Montana in an alleyway, a small mountain of castor sugar about to change hands.

The Doughboy, minus neckerchief, resembles one of Andre's cartoon characters who meets a grisly end when sliced in half by Jason's nemesis, the Dark Lord, who has spikes for hands. It is an especially gruesome image when you consider the potential of art to imitate life in prison. But it's skillfully drawn and, in another context the "Artist" would be heading to art school, portfolio under his arm, and would be on first-name basis with the dudes who work at Forbidden Planet. Instead, Andre's seven siblings, father, mother, and step-mother (both women awkwardly with the same name) live in a three-room apartment next to a Staten Island scrap metal yard. And Andre set a car on fire for a reputed $300, which he may never have received. This, and a run of minor incidents resulting from Andre's reckless drug habits, landed him in Rikers Island.

When a teenager crosses that bridge from Queens he must have a strategyeven if it is only an extension of his street personafirmly in place. Some count on brute strength ("diesel"), others enmesh themselves in gang politics, a few have "connects" to obtain the cigarettes or weed that makes them untouchable, yet others have enough commissary money to buy their protection with Soft-Batch cookies. But Andre's singular defense is his creativity. He used his drawing skills as both a bartering toolthe tough guys wouldn't hurt him (at least not as much) if he added cute cartoons to their letters homebut also as a bubble to withdraw into.

"I have this little construction in my brain called 'Andre's world.' If I'm in the dorm and people are pissin' me off, I just lay down, close my eyes, and I go into this world that I can explore. I can do anything I want. It's crazyI can fly and all that, run at top speeds. And it's a city, so there's a whole, big thing."
The genesis of "Andre's world" is simple to trace. An old, half-strung guitar seems to mean more to the Blandon family than a decent pair of shoes. His father is a musician, like his grandfather, and creativity has a stranglehold over practical issues in the household. As Andre preps for his G.E.D. in jail, his mother preps for the same test outside. But she fails to show up for the predictors on two occasions.

Andre, whose attendance is not an issue, passes his G.E.D. The school rightly fetes him and 12 other inmates and presents them, in caps and gowns, with their degrees in a ceremony that marks the end and the highlight of the academic year.

Mr. Rodriguez: "The bottom line is that you're going to leave here with your G.E.D. But that's just the beginning. You need to find an art school, do something with this Marvel Comic, cartoon book thing."
Andre: "That's just a dream, man."

Mr. Rodriguez: "Have a little confidence in yourself."

Andre's talent is impressive enough to lead him to new opportunities but his perspective is limited enough to forgo the idea of student loans and long commutes to school. Andre doesn't even own a picture ID. And he couldn't afford the bus fare that would take him away from the metal yard. The only way to help himand to stop him from spending years of his life in jailwould be to immerse him in a sustained positive environment, a creative "boot camp" that could actually build up his confidence and could support him over a period of time. But to suggest that a young man, convicted of arson, should go to such a place could never jibe with most politicians' stances on crime. In fact, "zero tolerence" policies are at the root of why the number of teenagers in Rikers has risen so dramatically. Despite their political censure, however, arguments for radical prison reform make economic sense. By estimate, over half of the teenagers in Rikers will spend at least 10 years of their lives behind bars. Translate that to a tax expenditure of a million dollarsfor no return valueand you wonder why we let the doors keep revolving. We are continuing to build on our reputation as ambitious jailersa full quarter of the world's prisoners are in the United States.

When Island Academy closes down for the summer, I see Andre's state of mind falter. School had protected him from the realities of jail. His teachers' admiration gave him momentary refuge. Now, disconnected from them and from daily structure, he seems vulnerable. Things get worse when his dad explains how his "dumb-ass brother" has run away from home. Although Andre continues to draw, Jason's adventures become impossibly convoluted. His story becomes an asymptote, an arc that aims toward a finish line but with little intention of reaching it. I start to notice Andre walking around with his pantlegs pulled down over his feet. He's lost his pair of orange slippers (known in jail as "Air Patakis") that he customized with a "Slayer" illustration on one foot and a "Metallica" one on the other. Andre always moved to a beat different from everyone else's in the dorm.

On his 19th birthday, Andre is transferred to the adult section of the jail. He trades in his graffiti-covered tan uniform for a green one that is harder to customize. He brings his folder of cartoons and travels through the jail to "East Mod." The adult dorm is an entirely different vibe: The tough guys are "dieseled" to the max, the guy in the bunk next to Andre is midway through a sex-change, and a lecherous dude skulks a few feet away from him. Andre makes his new bed and then immediately gets out his pencil and pad. He starts sketching. Jason, who has the power to regenerate himself via a magic crystal, remains locked in an eternal fight against the Dark Lord and his spiked hands.

Victor Buhler is a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. His film "Rikers High" won the 'New York Loves Film' award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.