I spent the evening attending my first meeting of Phoenix Rising Transitions, a local nonprofit that helps inmates transition from incarceration back into the community. The founder was himself incarcerated and decided to start an organization based on a “triad mentoring model,” which pairs an inmate ready for re-entry with an ex-convict who’s been through the process already and a member of the community the inmate is soon to be a vital member of. The mentorship begins while the individual is still incarcerated and continues after his release. The organization provides person-to-person support as well as practical workshops and life skills classes.

I’ve been working on a book about a nonviolent paradigm for the future of our corrections system and up until now everything has been entirely academic. I’ve been analyzing statistics and studying various penal philosophies and ideas about punishment, retribution, mercy, and forgiveness. What struck me the most about tonight was how different an issue it is when you are sitting next to the person who has existed only as a concept in your mind up until that point.

It is quite easy for most people, when forming their beliefs about corrections, to imagine criminals. In their minds they construct images of toothless bruisers with tattoos and attitude problems, men and women who have forsaken our orderly society, who deserve to be locked up, who don’t have much to offer anyone.

The men I met tonight are some of the nicest people you could ever hope to know. They were welcoming and kind, considerate of one another, and deeply driven to better themselves as much and as quickly as possible. When a member of the community spoke about how to cultivate resiliency and develop healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with life’s challenges, they took notes. When they found out I was writing a book on corrections they offered their stories and their perspectives to me. They supported and looked out for one another. They were engaged in turning their lives around.

My hero Fred McFeely Rogers once said, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story,” and I’ve been repeating that to myself as I try to come up with a new, more compassionate paradigm for corrections. The men of Phoenix Rising are living proof that Mr. Rogers was right, that if we dig past the anger and the judgment, all that’s left are good people trying to be better.