Breaking the ice after years behind bars
By: Christie Smythe
Tags: Journalism, Criminal Justice, Prison, Prison Reform, Activism

How a game called Recharge changed the way I viewed rehabilitation for felons.

Leslie Robinson’s email landed in my in-box like a heat-seeking missile. A psychotherapist who had invented a game to help formerly incarcerated people readjust to society, she sniffed me out as a journalist who might be interested in her pitch.



Her instincts in this instance were especially on point. For about a decade, I’d covered the legal system in New York but from a very different perspective. I’d worked my way up to a large financial news service, where I focused on courtroom drama involving rich executives and big corporations. Not the gritty realities of ordinary people caught in the system — social justice wasn’t part of my beat.



It was a good job, as far as journalism jobs go, but I lacked the freedom to write what I wanted and tell the truth as fully as I saw it. The agenda wasn’t mine to set; I was a cog in a media machine. By July 2018, I had enough of those constrictions, and I left to follow my own personal ambitions and passions. One of those interests was looking for stories to tell about criminal justice reform. When Leslie emailed me in late 2018, her timing was perfect. Well, almost perfect.

She invited me to an event showcasing her game, called Recharge. There would be speeches from people involved in the prison system, and individuals who had been wrongfully convicted. There would be poetry readings and music. And then we would play the game. It sounded like a decent way to be introduced to the criminal justice reform space. There was only one minor problem: It was scheduled in mid-December, the same week my parents would be in town visiting from the Midwest.



No matter, as it turned out. Mom and Dad, ever eager to show enthusiasm for their children’s pursuits, were as happy tagging along for an event discussing rehabilitation for felons as they were attending my school plays and soccer games decades ago.

“Will there be any…felons…there?” My mother asked hesitantly, as we walked past rows of brownstones on our way from my apartment to the event space.



“Probably,” I answered with a shrug.



“OK!” Mom answered brightly.



Privately, I thought to myself that maybe we’d stay for a few of the speeches, mingle a bit and leave quietly before the end. Walking into unfamiliar activities full of people I’d never met was par for the course for me as a reporter, but it was a little awkward having my parents in tow. I didn’t know how they would react.



We stepped inside a cheerfully decorated, cavernous room, with a few rows of round tables taking up the back half of the space. Around 50 or 60 people were seated at them, or milling around, loading up on plates of macaroni and cheese and salad supplied by a local “soul food” restaurant. A petite blonde woman in a jewel-toned dress spied me the moment I walked through the door, and brandished a dazzling smile. Without having to ask, I knew she was Leslie. We exchanged firm handshakes, and she directed us toward the tables.

Once we sat down, I realized slipping out Irish goodbye-style probably wouldn’t be an option. We were at a nearly empty table, populated only with a slim white man who identified himself as some sort of writer or producer, and a soft spoken black man named Leroy. I looked over my shoulder and noticed we were close to the front of the room. A microphone stood just a few feet from my elbow. On the table, also, was one of Leslie’s games — a tin with the word “Recharge” emblazoned on it. It would be rude to leave our pair of table mates in the lurch to try to play it on their own.



I shouldn’t have worried about my parents, though. Mom and Dad proved to be a good “wing” couple. Dad chatted up the writer/producer guy about his career plans, and mom, always bubbly, coaxed a smile out of Leroy.

We learned that Leroy — Leroy Harris — had served almost 30 years of an 80-year sentence for robbery and rape. Lawyers from the Innocence Project had looked into his case and turned up problems with the evidence, suggesting he had been wrongfully convicted. To save face, prosecutors let him out in exchange for an Alford plea, an unusual pleading in which a defendant acknowledges he or she would likely be found guilty at trial despite maintaining their innocence. He had been out for a year and was trying to rebuild his life.



My parents fell silent after he finished telling his story, as they absorbed the sobering reality of what he had been through. We didn’t have time to pick up the conversation then, however. Leslie appeared at the microphone near my elbow, and announced the beginning of the night’s festivities. It was a motley mix. A woman spoke about the horrors of working in a state prison, a formerly incarcerated woman read an uplifting poem about her experiences, individuals involved in advocacy organizations discussed their work, an a group of young women sang and danced to a pop song.



When it seemed like the night was drawing to a close, and people started angling themselves toward the door, Leslie popped up again at the microphone. Now it was time for the game! Of course, we couldn’t forget the game. I reached for the in in front of me and opened it, withdrawing two stacks of cards with questions written on them and a sleeve of tiny black poker chips.



The concept was simple, Leslie explained: We would each go around a circle withdrawing a card and posing a question from it for us all to answer. If we heard a particularly moving or insightful answer, we would award the speaker one of our chips. The person who accumulated the most chips in theory “won,” although really the game wasn’t about winning.

A mini wave of anxiety swept over me. I took a deep breath. Answering deep personal questions seemed like a moderately acceptable activity around strangers. But I had my parents sitting next to me. That was, well, weirder. I wondered if perhaps they were thinking the same thing about me.



We all nominated Leroy to begin, and he drew a card. He paused and looked contemplatively at it before he spoke: “Ok, here is the first question,” he said. “How do you feel about the human race?”



My parents and I, and the writer/producer guy waited in respectful curiosity as he gathered an answer. He had a generally positive view of the human race, he told us. Sometimes people make mistakes — including defendants accused of crimes, cops trying to solve it, judges issuing their decisions. But most people fundamentally were good, and decent at heart despite their lapses. Despite what had happened to him, he didn’t have a negative opinion of the human race, he told us. He was programmed to look for the best in people.



Reflexively, we each handed him a chip.



The same question was then posed to each of us in turn, and a bizarre magic started to happen. The little cloud of anxiety hovering over me lifted, and I no longer felt concern about what my parents, or anyone else, might think of what I said. Thoughts stirred in my head about how I wanted to answer, and I felt comfortable speaking my mind. My parents, the writer/producer person and Leroy looked more relaxed, too, as the game went on. Body language changed. Faces broke into easy laughter and smiles. I realized Leslie had cleverly tricked us all into participating in a session of group therapy.



When it was finally time to leave — the event space was closing — I found myself not wanting to go. We said our goodbyes to Leslie and our new friends, and I gave a warm hug to Leroy.



In my ignorance, I had thought of rehabilitation for former prison inmates as primarily a mechanical problem. Surely the biggest challenges to reentry were not having financial resources, or a job, and limited ability to get one as a felon, or at least so I thought. But as I walked back to my apartment with my parents, I realized Leslie’s game had revealed another obstacle that was perhaps even greater. Talking, really communicating with people on the outside after years behind bars, could be a huge problem. Life experiences were so vastly different. What common ground could they find?



“When people are released from correctional institutions, there is no talk post-incarceration PTSD; no talk of formerly incarcerated persons, and their loved ones, needing healing or resources for understanding, communication and connection,” Leslie’s company, Trance4mation Games, says in its marketing materials.



“Unfortunately, therapeutic approaches to mental and emotional health are frowned upon both in prison, in the African-American and Latinx communities. As a result, latent mental and emotional health issues fester, often leading to breakdowns in communication, destabilized families and communities, and high rates of incarceration.”



Although unlikely to make her rich, the game was spreading in popularity. According to Leslie, it was used in more than 70 prisons and jails, including New York’s notorious Rikers Island. She had collected numerous testimonials from prisoners describing the game an “eye opener,” or similar words to that effect.

“The program got me thinking of things that I have blocked out or haven’t had to think of in quite some time,” one inmate said. “It also made my communication skills with others betters, as well as learning to trust in others again.”



I was glad I had made it out to Leslie’s event. The evening provided a lot for my parents and I to chew on after we got back to my apartment. It was fascinating to us how a tool that seemed so simple could have such a visible impact.

Criminal justice reform and rehabilitation for former inmates were weighty, usually depressing topics. The problems just seemed too numerous and complex to tackle. But Leslie offered a glimmer of hope. If she could find a creative way to use her professional skills and experience to make a difference, maybe I could, too.