Update

“I have a passion for people who are hurting, who feel lonely, or that nobody cares [about]. If I could be that person who brings comfort or a smile – it just fills my heart.”

Prison Society volunteer Destiny Brown lives that passion in her regular visits to the Dauphin County jail as a prison monitor – helping incarcerated people and their loved ones resolve issues, everything from relations with corrections officers and cellmates to food quality and medical care.

“By any means possible, I’m going to try to find an answer to their situation,” Destiny said.

Most important, though, is her work to bring humanity and compassion to the people she meets. “If I could bring a change where your frown could turn upside down for just the hour, if I can be that comfort for you when others have given up on you,” then, Destiny said, that makes the work worthwhile. 

Even the corrections officers ask Destiny for help to resolve issues that make the jail unsafe and uncomfortable. “I get along with them, and because I’ve been doing it for so long, they know me. They know I’m rough when I need to be, and I’m soft when I need to be,” she said.

Destiny is a convener for the Prison Society, a volunteer who helps organize other volunteer prison monitors.  ma When she receives a request for help, she either handles it herself or funnels it to another volunteer prison monitor.

The Prison Society is the only organization in Pennsylvania with the legal authority to speak privately with residents of the state's 86 prisons and jails. Prison monitors – a network of 250 trained volunteers – talk one-on-one with incarcerated people experiencing problems and help resolve them.

Once a month, Prison Society staff, Destiny, and a team of other volunteer monitors walkthrough the Dauphin County Prison. Most of the people incarcerated at county prisons are serving short sentences or awaiting trial – sometimes for many months.

“As a monitor, you are looking after their basic needs,” she said. Someone says, ‘I need medical attention,’ or ‘the CO [corrections officer] did something wrong.’ If there’s any kind of bullying, we advocate on their behalf. ” 

“I’m glad the Prison Society is there,” said Destiny, who has been volunteering with the organization since 2018. “If it wasn’t, I think a lot more things would be swept under the rug.” 

The situations are varied and complex.

“You have to be sharp to find out what the real reason is – what’s the underlying current,” Destiny said.

Destiny applies that same sharp listening when she talks to volunteer monitors. Some, she said, come in expecting immediate change and get discouraged. “They say, ‘Nothing’s changing, so what’s the use?’ I tell them, ‘If you see a speck of light, keep going until the light gets better. You just continue to chisel and chisel and chisel until you see the change.”

And there have been changes. 

“We got [the prison] to change some of the meals,” she said. “Now they give them an actual meal for Christmas,” plus a gift package that includes candy, stamps, and socks. More special meals come at Easter, New Year’s, and on Super Bowl Sunday. 

“We were also instrumental in getting the men and women on salary – [people] who work in the kitchen, also the women in the laundry area,” she said. They hadn’t been paid before.

Destiny noticed that the Muslim men had bruises on their foreheads, and found out they did not have prayer rugs or head wraps to protect their foreheads when they lowered their heads to the floor during prayer. She got them prayer caps and rugs. 

Part of the prison is old and cold, she said, so “we advocated for thicker blankets, and they got thicker blankets. We advocated for them to get thermal shirts and they got thermal shirts.”

Destiny’s work is rooted in her faith, and it is her faith she leans on when the situation gets personal. 

Her husband and her sister have both experienced incarceration, and both were beaten while they were in jail, she said.  A pregnant niece nearly lost her baby while she was in jail when she began to bleed and could not get immediate help, Destiny said. Earlier this year, her cousin was found dead in his cell.  So far, Destiny said, there has been no explanation for why or how he died.

But it is not changing her commitment to the work.

“No matter how it is, I’ll fight for anybody. The fight is there,” Destiny said. “Nothing is going to change my heart.”

• Jane M. Von Bergen

Join Us

• Volunteers are the backbone of the Prison Society, and we are always looking for committed individuals who care deeply about human dignity. Interested in joining us? Call us at 215-564-4775 or reach out via our website at www.prisonsociety.org/services/volunteer