Building a “Prison-to-School” Pipeline: Sammie Gilmore Flips the Narrative

May 23, 2019

Sammie Gilmore"I'll admit it — I had preconceived notions about Sammie when I first met her."

Jill Duerr-Berrick, School of Social Welfare faculty and Zellerbach Family Foundation Professor, recalls the first time she saw Sammie Gilmore seated toward the front of her classroom. She arrived to lecture with the eagerness typical of her UC Berkeley classmates. Dr. Duerr-Berrick noted that she looked a little older than many of her peers, and figured she was a transfer student; perhaps she'd taken time off to travel.

During an office hours visit, those expectations were shattered.

"She revealed a history that was hard for me to grasp. I was humbled in learning about the actual path she had taken to get to Berkeley and I marveled at her remarkable accomplishments."

Sammie Gilmore is a social welfare undergraduate by day, a prison educator by night — and a formerly incarcerated person herself.

Gilmore's journey from stability to jail and eventually to school was ridden with trials. As with many people who experience incarceration, Sammie has also experienced its common companions: addiction and homelessness.

"I was 20 when I became addicted to opiate painkillers," says Gilmore. Eventually she transitioned to heroin, and then meth. "From there, it went from bad to worse: I lost my job, crashed my car, broke up with my boyfriend and got kicked out of the place I was living."

In a short time, she was homeless, addicted, and trying to survive. She was eventually arrested, and went to jail for seven months.

For those full seven months, Gilmore was in solitary confinement.

Statistically, Gilmore's situation did not look good. Even when young people find their way out from incarceration, the stigma surrounding their experience, and the lack of resources available to them upon release, often works against them for the rest of their lives.

Gilmore is quick to emphasize that — while her childhood wasn't perfect — she considers her upbringing from a single-parent, white, lower-middle-class background much easier than what many people have overcome. Unlike many victims of the "school-to-prison pipeline," she finished high school. Still, having found her way behind bars and back into the classroom, Gilmore is determined to turn the tide for others and build a "prison-to-school" pipeline, and more generally to challenge the stigma around those who have endured incarceration, addiction, and homelessness.

Indeed, there has hardly been a better time to cast out the scarlet-letter treatment of Americans enduring these hardships, and try our hand at innovative care and rehabilitation. While Gilmore's resounding recovery story is fairly unique, her slide into a dysfunctional care system is not. Worldwide, the United States has the highest incarceration rate per capita. Addiction rates have long since reached epidemic levels: in fact, more Americans died from opioid overdoses in a single year (2016) than died during the entirety of the Vietnam war. Homelessness in the Bay Area has been characterized by one UN rapporteur as third-world, on par with conditions in cities like Mexico City and Mumbai. If our community was ever able to imagine that such hardships were someone else's problem, reality now makes it impossible to pretend as much.

While fulfilling her solitary confinement, Gilmore began a process of intense reflection. She was court-ordered to go to rehab, and arrived to a sober living house, where she was granted a luxury to which many more-privileged people never question their entitlement: she was granted the time and space to ask herself, "what do I want to do?"

"You know, I've always just had to work for a living. I've had to work to pay bills and to live since I was seventeen, living on my own. So I didn't want to just do that anymore. I realized I really wanted to have a job that I loved, that I felt fulfilled by and where I felt like I was making a difference. So that's why I felt social work would be the right choice for me."

Gilmore had both positive and negative encounters with the social welfare system as a recipient of care. She wanted to live up the to role of those who cared for her well, and replace those who lacked. She was also determined to put her stigmatized experiences to good use — experiences that typically hinder people from moving forward, whether via discrimination on behalf of gatekeepers, or by self-defeating attitudes adopted by those who have endured them.

After arriving to SSW, Gilmore quickly found a mentor in Dr. Berrick-Duerr, noting Dr. Berrick-Duerr's generosity of time and energy. "She would sit and talk with me forever."

Dr. Berrick-Duerr also nominated Gilmore for the Chancellor's award for public service: "In addition to being a stellar student, Gilmore leads a busy life, working in the Underground Scholars office, volunteering at San Quentin, helping out at the Berkeley Food Pantry."

Through Underground Scholars, a campus-based organization for formerly incarcerated students at Cal and/or those powerfully impacted by the prison system, Gilmore has also found above-and-beyond support from Dr. Kurt Organista, who is on the board of faculty advisors. At Underground Scholars, Gilmore has especially enjoyed her role as a coordinator for the prison correspondence program.

"We provide academic advising and access to resources and information — anything relating to higher education for people who are currently incarcerated. So we do all that via letter writing. Our program is really special, because it's one of the only of its kind in California — and may actually be one of the few in the United States. We get people writing us from the East Coast asking for our assistance."

Prisoners generally have no access to academic counselors, and this advising is invaluable in helping them achieve their academic goals and avoid pitfalls like for-profit college courses that prove to be unnecessary to their degree. Some of the current Underground Scholar cohort are formerly incarcerated students who utilized the program for advising before being accepted to UC Berkeley.

"They come here and then they have Underground Scholars as a built-in support system to help their transition here. Formerly incarcerated folks that make it this far have generally had to overcome more obstacles and endure more trauma than most, and it doesn't just end when they get here. So being around a community of people who have been through the same thing and can guide us through the process helps us not only find our footing but also shows us that we have a place and belong here at this institution."

Like Gilmore, many members of Underground Scholars also volunteer in the Teach in Prison Program as part of DeCal. The program provides an opportunity for inmates to earn their GED, and even take college-level courses toward an associate's degree. This tutoring experience opened Gilmore's eyes to further nuances of the relationship between education, opportunity, and incarceration.

"There's a lot of older gentlemen that we've worked with that haven't had a chance to learn to read yet. That was a scary, angering realization, that our system allows people to get so far in life without the opportunity to learn. That's why I love being able to be there to help them, to try to make up for how they have been failed and help them make positive changes to their life."

In terms of long-term goals, Gilmore is certain she's going to grad school, but is trying to determine the best time to do so. In the long term, one dream is to bridge the gap between policy and the infantry-level work of direct service and ultimately open her own innovative resource center for homeless youth.

"My thought process was always that I want to do micro practice. I want to work on the ground with the people experiencing these things and make things easier for them. Policy always kind of scared me. I didn't know much about it. But I'm taking my first policy class this semester and I'm amazed at how interested I am in it... I want to somehow combine all these things. I don't know if it's possible to do micro and macro. We'll see."

One example of a disconnect between policy and practice that Gilmore hopes to examine is the age bracket system that many shelters place on their care. She experienced this issue firsthand while homeless. Sammie had been referred to a shelter by a friend — also homeless — who recommended the place for its excellent care. But when she showed up, she was turned away; the youth shelter only offered care to people ages 18 to 24, and Sammie had just turned 25. While it may seem like a small issue, being near peers of a similar age can make a big difference in helping a homeless individual, especially a young woman, feel safe and welcome.

"I kind of get it, but at the same time, I don't, because I did not identify with 40- or 50-year-old people. I identified with younger people at the time. I don't want to judge, but I just did not feel comfortable being around a lot of older men, and it just made me want to stay on the streets, which is way more dangerous. So I want to explore that more and see if there's something we can do policy-wise to adjust that or expand it."

For Sammie, the struggle is not entirely over. She is currently working hard to find a balance between taking care of herself and others. That Gilmore would potentially overextend herself in trying to help others is perhaps not surprising; the first trait Dr. Duerr-Berrick landed on when asked to describe Sammie was "kindness."

"She is deeply engaged in helping those around her, giving back to those who supported her in her own challenging journey to Berkeley."

Still, Dr. Duerr-Berrick encouraged Gilmore to rearrange her schedule to allow herself the time and space she needs to take care of herself. Gilmore took her advice and is taking the time to get centered for her responsibilities next year, when she's looking forward to stepping up as facilitator for the Teach in Prison program.

In the meantime, Gilmore is pleased and a bit overwhelmed with the trajectory her life has taken in the past ten years. She's been clean from meth and opiates for four years. "All of it has been a crazy experience. I never thought I'd be coming to college at all."

Dr. Duerr-Berrick has complete faith in Gilmore's potential to succeed: "Her kindness, combined with her strong academic skills, her drive and determination, will help her realize her goals while helping the world along the way."