Alan Guenther had questions.
No surprise there. Alan, a Prison Society volunteer, spent most of his career working as a newspaper reporter. Lots of questions, and Alan addressed them to the warden of the Allegheny County Jail in a respectful, well-organized, and careful communication.
No surprise there, either, not from a man who made his living as a writer and now, retired, finds meaning in his work for the Prison Society.
Volunteering for the Prison Society “gives me too many things to do. It causes stress. It elevates my blood pressure,” Alan begins, totally deadpan with a reporter’s ironic sense of humor.
He laughs, then gets serious.
“I want to do something worthwhile in my retirement. I want to use my skill set to help people. I feel like my life has meaning. I feel when I’ve concluded a visit and helped someone, I’m here for a purpose.”
As a Prison Society convener, the person who organizes visits to the jail, Alan works with Angela Damiano, the Prison Society’s Western Pennsylvania prison monitoring manager.
“Alan is one of the kindest, and most compassionate people I’ve ever met,” she said. “I knew he would be the perfect convener for Allegheny County because he’s passionate about helping incarcerated people. He’s straight forward, level headed, and a great leader. These attributes have led to him helping create a fantastic team of volunteers at the Allegheny County Jail.”
Angela also credits him with building good relationships with the jail’s administrators, “making significant progress improving conditions for the incarcerated people that reside there.”
In 2021, shortly after moving to Pittsburgh to be with family, Alan got involved in criminal justice protests. Through them, he learned about the Prison Society and became intrigued with both its mission and its legally mandated access to the Commonwealth’s prisons and jails.
Again, for a reporter, access is everything.
Alan underwent the Prison Society’s training and soon began to visit the Allegheny County Jail, a high-rise facility in the heart of Pittsburgh, not far from his home.
Besides visiting the people on the list from the Prison Society’s Helpline, he set himself up in the “pod,” the jail’s recreation area, and as he recalls, “I was swarmed with people who wanted to tell their stories and who needed help.”
“I approach interviews with jail residents like a reporter. I try to talk to as many people as I can. A lot of times, I’ll talk to the parents. I’ll try to follow up with the warden and anyone else. I use my journalism background to lay it out in a way that makes the problem clear.”
“It’s like advocacy journalism. It’s not finger-wagging if it is fact-based when we talk about a consequence and a situation that needs to be changed.”
He also follows up to make sure issues raised have been resolved.
But, as Alan points out, one doesn’t have to have journalism on a resume to be a good volunteer. He counts on his supportive partnership with two of his long-standing volunteers, retired teacher and union leader Sharon Bonavoglia and retired business executive John Bolanos.
“They are determined, thorough, selfless volunteers,” he said.
Alan’s impulse to help others, he said, stems from his education in a Quaker school where he was taught that “all people are created equal. All people deserve respect.”
“For most of my career, I tried to help people who needed help. So often, whether it’s a government or a school or a psychiatric hospital or a jail, people are abused for no good reason, and they don’t know how to be heard,” he said.
“Because I have the experience as a reporter, I can help their voices be heard.”