Craig Lenahan could have been pulled over in any county in Indiana and charged with possessing methamphetamine. But it happened in Brown County, and he’s glad it did.

Now, Lenahan is a step closer to getting his high school diploma.

He was sentenced to serve two years in jail after a jury found him guilty of a Level 6 felony in May.

“I think everything happened for a reason, though. Not to go spiritual on you, but I think the Lord had a big hand in this,” Lenahan said as he sits in the resource room at the Brown County Law Enforcement Center.

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“Amazing things are happening here. Amen.”

Lenahan has been working toward getting his diploma since July.

“Not only am I here trying to become a better person for myself, I’m getting a chance to have a refresher and build up some of the things I’ve lacked over the last 20 years or so,” he said.

“Not graduating high school was a small hiccup in the road, but at the same time, I’ve been able to overcome it with good social skills. I was a salesman for most of my life. I sold cars for a living, so as long as you could talk in that business, they didn’t care. … Being able to check this on a job application or instead of being untrue about it has been a big motivator.”

As Lenahan prepares to leave the resource room, he shakes hands with the jail education instructor, Tim Allanson.

“I appreciate your time,” Lenahan says.

“I appreciate you,” Allanson responds with a smile.

Productive time

The Brown County Literacy Coalition started the jail education program in November 1997. The Brown County Career Resource Center took it over in June 2013. Allanson has been teaching there for three years.

The program is designed to give inmates an opportunity to obtain their high school equivalency, or brush up on their math and literacy skills for college or a job after they get out.

“The goal is for them to use their time productively,” said CRC adult education coordinator Kathryn Kabe. She writes the lesson plans and grades tests.

“As long as they have the hours available to them, why not?”

Over the years, the CRC has had a number of graduates from the program, including one in July and another in September.

It took one inmate several tries to pass the math test required for his equivalency, and he continued to try at the CRC even after he was released until he passed.

Inmates who already have their high school diploma can choose to increase their math and reading skills for employment after jail.

Kabe will also write a narrative to the judge on behalf of students, stating how many hours they spent in the program over so many weeks along with their pre- and post- test scores.

“It may be they still aren’t very high, but if they started at mid-third-grade and now they are at upper-fifth-grade, that is more than two grade levels of gain, and that is commendable because it took a considerable amount of work on their part to do that,” she said.

Once inmates are beyond the fourth-grade reading level, they are considered literate. Anything below is considered illiterate.

Nationwide, 50 percent of adults who do not have a high school diploma read at a below-basic level.

“There are 44 million American parents who are not able to read their children a story,” said CRC Director Christy Wrightsman, a former elementary school principal. They also might have trouble reading announcements that their children bring home from school, or the instructions on a medicine bottle, Kabe added.

A person without a high school diploma earns, on average, about $22,000 a year, so one of the hopes for this program is to give inmates a brighter future for themselves and their families. More education can ultimately open doors for new opportunities, Wrightsman said.

“They have much more of an opportunity to be gainfully employed, because we are well aware they can get money in lots of different ways. We want to kind of stop the recidivism. We don’t want them to go back (to jail); we want them to be able to move forward,” Kabe added.

A student has to complete 12 hours of course work to be enrolled in the adult education program at the jail. Last year, 11 inmates enrolled and three of them graduated. Others were brushing up on their skills or increased their levels. The goal for the program this year is to enroll 20 inmates and graduate 10 of them, or show that 10 inmates had academic gains, like moving from a second-grade reading or math level to a fourth-grade level. Currently, there are 15 inmates in the program.

Wrightsman said it’s important for inmates to come to the CRC immediately after they are released from jail to continue the program. Classes and tests are free to inmates, but there’s a 60-day time limit to finish all of the testing after they take the first test. Any test they fail, they can retake.

After they obtain their high school equivalency, the CRC can then help former inmates get involved with a training or getting a certification, and help them find ways to cover the costs.

This summer, the CRC received a $10,000 Dollar General Literacy Foundation grant to help pay for the jail program for 2019-2020. Previously, the CRC had been receiving a $3,000 grant from Dollar General. The increased grant funding will allow for Allanson to be at the jail more often. The CRC also received $1,000 from the Brown County Drug Free Coalition.

The CRC’s vision statement is “giving residents skills for life and pathways to success.” “And that’s for every adult,” Wrightsman said.

“Clearly, the jail program is important to our mission, part of our vision, and it’s a team effort we want to see increase.”

For the better

Allanson teaches inmates three days a week. He teaches men on Mondays, women on Tuesdays, and checks in with all of his students on Thursdays.

“He’s the best teacher ever. He’s just the smartest guy I ever met, he really is. He knows everything. You can ask him anything and I feel like he knows everything. … He makes my time so much easier,” inmate Angie Hayes said.

“I so look forward to every Tuesday and Thursday.”

Allanson had retired from teaching English and journalism at Indian Creek High School before he was approached about taking this post at the jail.

“It’s the most rewarding job I ever had,” he said.

“I enjoyed teaching high school for the most part. But here, this is life-changing for these guys. Many of these guys have never really had opportunity at an education.”

Some inmates had to drop out of high school or had other obstacles to completing their education, like addiction.

“Being incarcerated gives them an opportunity to do this because many of them have drug-related issues. I find that after being in jail, incarcerated for a while, you sober up and your brain starts to work again,” Allanson said.

“They are all very grateful to me. I don’t get any guff back. There’s no sending them down to the principal’s office. I don’t have any of the issues a public school teacher has to deal with.”

That’s because the inmates choose to come down for their lessons or assessments.

If they achieve their equivalency, inmates will get a six-month deduction on their jail sentence, which is a “carrot” inmates can chase.

Allanson said he remembers when one inmate passed the tests necessary to get his high school equivalency and was sentenced to serve 14 years in prison. “The day after he passed his high school equivalency test, his final test, I called him down to congratulate him. He just had a big ole smile on his face. He said, ‘You know, Tim, I may go to prison for 14 years, but that six months I get out early, I’ll be thinking of you buddy,’” Allanson said.

Those moments stick with Allanson.

“I sense that what I’m doing for them is something they haven’t had before,” he said.

Plus Allanson can relate to them, he said. He, too, has made mistakes in his life, which resulted in him having run-ins with law enforcement.

“I don’t look down at them. I don’t think they are any different from how I am except, for the grace of God, it could be me sitting there. I’m as grateful to them for what they give me as for what I give them. It’s a reciprocal relationship,” he said.

“Sometimes when they need to talk, I listen. We talk about things you wouldn’t have in a normal classroom. They have to learn to trust me,” he said.

“They’ll talk about drug policies. Since I’m much older than they are, they’ll ask me about what it was like back in the 1960s. A lot of them, when they are in jail, they come down for religion classes. Many of them want to discuss that. … I can empathize with these guys.”

When his students have sentence hearings, Allanson makes it a point to attend and testify on their behalf.

“I get up and I talk about how hard they worked in class and how they’ve had a great attitude. This isn’t for the judge or the prosecutor; this is for my clients. I want them to realize they are not as bad as what has been laid out,” he said.

“It’s not like we’re going to be buddies or anything, because it is a professional relationship, but I don’t hold it against them for whatever they did. We’ve all got our issues in life.” Like that inmate who was sentenced to 14 years in prison: During his sentence hearing, he shared how his parents were both drug addicts and that he began stealing drugs from them when he was a child.

“Why didn’t somebody just say, ‘Wait a minute, this is a use problem, not necessarily a criminal problem’? I think our society is beginning to understand that these people need treatment, not necessarily incarceration,” he said.

But Allanson notes that if it wasn’t for jail time, some inmates would never take advantage of this educational opportunity. “This gives them a time-out to focus and re-evaluate what their lives are,” he said.

The first student Allanson had graduate through the program had children who were in high school. They came to his graduation at the CRC.

“I was thrilled for him because he worked really hard to study and to get his high school diploma. He was so proud in front of his children. His mother was there,” he said.

For an inmate like Lenahan, the potential time credit for earning his high school equivalency means he can get back to Louisville, Kentucky, sooner to spend time with his father and other family.

For Hayes, earning her high school equivalency will mean she is one step closer to attending college and earning her degree in psychology. She is set to get out in December if she doesn’t earn her equivalency before then.

“I think it’s great because it will help me change my life and better myself,” Hayes said.

“Hopefully I might even be able to get a little bit of a time cut out of it. That would be nice, too.”

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Do you have free time and want to help impact the lives of inmates in the Brown County jail? The Career Resource Center of Brown County wants to hear from you.

The CRC is looking for volunteers to help administer testing or do tutoring with the jail education program, which allows inmates to obtain their high school equivalency or brush up on their math and English skills to help get a job or get enrolled in college, training or obtain a certification after they are released.

Inmates have to take and pass multiple tests in different subject areas to get their high school equivalency. A volunteer would help administer those tests along with readiness tests that are given to inmates to help gauge whether they will pass the HSE tests or not. Inmates also take pre- and post-tests that help show any level gains.

Anyone interested in volunteering should call the CRC at 812-988-5880 to set up a time to meet with Director Christy Wrightsman.

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