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Jean Bell first became involved in the study of criminal justice issues in the mid 1960's when she joined the League of Women Voters group that was studying conditions in Massachusetts prisons. By the late 1970's she had developed a focus on prisons and an interest in getting involved in a direct manner. One member of her local parish suggested to its social ministry group that they didn't need to go to Boston or Lowell to assist the disadvantaged--they had opportunities right there in the Concord prisons. Negotiations with several superintendents at the Northeast Correctional Center, the minimum security facility in Concord, finally produced a breakthrough--an invitation to round up Concordians to sing Christmas carols for the inmates on the first Monday in December! Forty people showed up and a tradition was born. By 1986 Jean and her colleagues had raised enough money from local churches to hire a part-time organizer to help establish a much more evolved program of community involvement in the prisons. This organization was Concord Prison Outreach (CPO), after twenty years still a model of community-prison involvement. Jean joined the board of CPO and became chair in 1988. She was a board member for ten years and learned how many ways there are to bring the community into a prison and how beneficial it is for the volunteers as well as for the inmates. She began one of her most valuable experiences with inmates in the 1990's when she began participating in the Alternatives to Violence Program. AVP participants are on an equal footing with prisoners as they spend a weekend exploring their own anger, violent impulses, and ways to transform anger into personal growth and compassion. The program enabled Jean, as it does all participants, to move from consideration of prisoners as an abstract cluster of people in need of help, to understanding them as individuals sharing many of the shortcomings common to all. Her career as a lobbyist began when she and other CPO members became focused on the problem of illiteracy among inmates. They consulted with the head of educational programming for the Mass Department of Correction (DOC) and drafted a bill to create a program of mandatory basic education for the state system, based on the successful model then in place in Suffolk County correctional institutions. With support from then state representative Pam Resor, Jean learned the use of outside sections of budget bills to fund new programs. The legislature passed a budget that included a line item for a basic education program and the DOC instituted it in several prisons. In the late '90s Jean turned her attention to restorative justice. After attending a 1997 conference at Suffolk University she and a few other local activists arranged a meeting with a Concord District Court judge to consider a restorative program for that court. As with her earlier experiences with local prison superintendents, the court bureaucracy was slow to respond. However, Jean persisted and in 1999 the Concord Police Chief said that he would cooperate in the establishment of a Restorative Circle in Concord without the involvement of the district court. A restorative program for juveniles resulted, based on referrals from the police department. Volunteers underwent training in the spring and fall of 2000 with experienced community reparative board participants from Maine and they took their first referral in December, 2000. The Concord Restorative Circle is still going strong. It can be viewed as a model of court diversion, moving offenders away from the usual criminal justice path that begins with arrest and often ends with a criminal record, instead providing for a tailored treatment program for offenders which benefits them as well as the larger community. Jean's involvement in CJPC begins at the beginning, with the initial organizing efforts in 1996. She attended early educational programs and shared her experience with incorporating Concord Prison Outreach with CJPC organizers as they incorporated and built an organizational structure for CJPC. In time attendance at Boston meetings became too difficult but Jean's enthusiasm for CJPC was rekindled by her participation at last September's conference, "Harm or Help? Responding to the Criminalization of Substance Abuse and Mental Illness." She recognized the importance of CJPC as a grassroots coalition and information clearinghouse for individuals and organizations interested in the range of criminal justice issues. Efforts to build on the momentum created by the conference included grassroots fundraising efforts to allow for the hiring of an executive director. Jean called on her contacts in Concord and surrounding communities. CJPC benefited from her years of community service and her reputation for good judgment. Volunteer, educator, activist, lobbyist, fundraiser and organizer--Jean Bell has been all of these in the pursuit of a more humane and just prison system and criminal justice policies for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She honors us by accepting our first Criminal Justice Public Citizen Annual Award. James Hannon, for the Board
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