Opinion: Outdoor recreation a necessity for those at Centre County jail
I remember being 7 and 8 years old, at home in my family’s old row house in North Philadelphia, hearing my mother say, “Boy, go on out and get some of that fresh air and sunshine.”
In 1969, as a 22 year old, I was a hot-headed and troubled young man just beginning a long, 52-year stretch of a life sentence. My incarceration started at the infamous Graterford Prison. There, Warden Robert Johnson sat me down and admonished me and other young men: “Stay on the right path while you’re here. You’ll be tempted by ignorance, boredom, ill advice, anger and regret at your lot but I’m going to provide you with three things that will help you to get through this experience and maybe to even overcome it.”
The three things:
1. Work!
2. Food
3. Sunshine and fresh air
Warden Johnson then promised: “I’ll make sure to provide those three things for as long as you’re here. You make sure to take advantage of them and do your best to get out of here alive, sane and a better man.”
He kept his promise. I followed much of the warden’s advice. By the grace of God, hard work, and plenty of fresh air, exercise and sunshine, I was blessed to be granted a Commutation of Sentence five decades later in March 2021 and paroled to State College, here in beautiful Centre County, Pennsylvania.
It’s been two years now that I’ve been home, and each day has been continually wonderful. I have a job. I have an apartment. I have neighbors who know my “story” and treat me like any other human being. So much of what is commonplace now did not exist in 1969; I was incarcerated before police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City, human feet landed on the moon, and the national anthem sprang from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar at Woodstock. I have a host of angels and saints and just good kind human beings in my life that make sure I understand much of what is going on in this amazingly beautiful world of today.
Through a friend I learned of a situation occurring at the Centre County Correctional Facility (CCCF) that I thought just could not be happening in this day and time. I heard that CCCF had no outdoor recreation for the people — members of our local community — housed there!
Something as simple, yet so vital and necessary, as outdoor recreation was not in practice at that facility? How could that be? I knew full well that there were laws governing exercise in Pennsylvania prisons that had been on the books for decades.
My inquiries showed that CCCF does not provide outdoor recreation opportunities for the men and women housed there, even though the Pennsylvania Code specifies a minimum requirement that states: “Jails shall provide all prisoners at least 2 hours daily, physical exercise in the open, weather permitting. If the weather is inclement, each inmate shall have 2 hours physical exercise daily indoors.”
Unlike our loving and knowing mothers, and progressive and wise wardens, somehow the administrators and policy makers of this era have forgotten the fundamentals of ensuring a healthy lifestyle and the basics of running a facility that should have the health and well-being of its charges as one of its primary concerns. Don’t they know these things? Or do they even care?
I care! I believe our community does as well. Any human being should care.
Along with a growing chorus of advocates for outdoor recreation at CCCF, I implore the Centre County Prison Board of Inspectors, which oversees CCCF, including our three county commissioners who all sit on the prison board, to change the policies that prevent those incarcerated at CCCF from having the mental, emotional and physical benefits that outdoor recreation provides.
We need this to happen now because the suffering continues and because it’s the right thing to do. We need all in our community to speak out and support this call for action.
Irvin Moore served 52 years in prison and now works for Penn State’s Restorative Justice initiative and in the Centre County area, where he now lives in State College.
