A way back: Safe Harbor helps inmates prepare for life on the outside

Inside the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Yaphank, 11 men have assembled for a weekly meeting on Monday night.

Seated in rows and dressed in “greens,” which look like surgical scrubs with “SCCF” emblazoned across the back, the inmates range in age from their 20s to 50s. They are collectively glued to the story of an elephant.

This particular pachyderm is leashed by a small rope tied to one leg. It could easily break the tether and free itself with a tug, but it doesn’t even try. Why? As a baby, the slim rope is enough to hold it. Growing up, the beast was conditioned to believe it couldn’t escape. Now an adult, the elephant still believes the rope can hold it. So it’s stuck.

“What’s the message?” asks Kyle A. Braunskill, who’s facilitating the session.

“Don’t be that elephant!” says one of the men.

All laugh. Braunskill high-fives the respondent then offers his take on the meaning: “Stop listening to the negative story you tell yourself about yourself.”

They’re words to live by — and he does.

Betting on the lesson

Braunskill spent five years behind bars two decades ago, a chapter in his life he has turned the page on. Now 44, a family man with a trucking business, the genial but tell-it-like-it-is Braunskill turned his life around. He is dedicated to helping ex-inmates do likewise.

The Safe Harbor Mentoring Program — which inmates gather for on Mondays — is that vehicle for change. It aims to prepare men and women for life after release. Braunskill has stepped up as a volunteer for the organization for 17 years, the past two of them as its executive director. Throughout that time, Safe Harbor’s mission has been helping people with a criminal past to break the cycle of recidivism.

That’s no mean feat. A 2018 U.S. Department of Justice special report on recidivism rates that followed more than 400,000 prisoners released in 2005 in 30 states, including New York, found that 68% of released prisoners were arrested within three years, 79% within six years, and 83% within nine years.

Teamwork and creating a rapport are keys of Safe Harbor. It offers a support system to help incarcerated men and women effectively reenter society by building a relationship with them before they are released and continuing it afterward. Among counties' facilities, they work with about 90 men and women each week, Braunskill estimates. The mentoring program has been recognized by Long Island political and religious leaders.

“You have to start moving in the right direction before they’re released and reenter society,” says Braunskill. “If you don’t, it’s like jumping onto a moving treadmill.” Safe Harbor helps former inmates navigate obstacles and challenges they’ll encounter out in the world — housing, transportation, employment, sobriety, to name just a few.

The Rev. Roy Kirton, 69, knew that when he founded Safe Harbor in 2000 and officially incorporated it as a nonprofit three years later to raise awareness about recidivism. The program is an outgrowth of the Circle of Love Ministry that Kirton launched Copiague in 1997 and focused on the disenfranchised.

“That meant people coming out of prison,” says Kirton, who volunteered at the Nassau County Correctional Facility in the 1990s. “I met men who’d get released, and after a year they’d be back in,” says Kirton, who’s had “maybe had a traffic ticket — once.”

The in-and-out-of-jail revolving-door, he says, “blew my mind.” Then it spurred action. He says he took on the role of a “Dutch uncle,” a mentor offering firm, frank and beneficial advice. “The plight was overwhelming,” he says, adding that he would ask ex-inmates, “‘Why do you keep going back in? Do they put chocolates on your pillow?’”

They don’t. High fences and barbed wire help set the tone at jails.

Providing a safety net

Safe Harbor began by recruiting volunteers to go into jails to teach life skills and about job readiness, self-worth and decision-making. The program taps into spirituality but is nonreligious. Currently about three dozen volunteers serve in the Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow and the Suffolk County correctional facilities at Yaphank and Riverhead. Because of health issues, Kirton has retired from day-to-day work on the program but remains in contact with Braunskill, volunteers and mentees.

“Making the transition is hard,” Kirton says. “We help people to rise above that.”

For one ex-inmate, the value of Safe Harbor Mentoring is the safety net of support. Kirton and Braunskill “believe in people as they’re helping them,” says the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It helps you get out of the funk that you’re a criminal.”

Heloise Sulyans-Gibson, 65, who lives on Staten Island, was incarcerated from 1999 to 2003 in the upstate Albion Correctional Facility on a drug conviction and has since become a chaplain. Upon her release, she learned about Safe Harbor and relied on the Rev. Kirton, as a “one-on-one sounding board,” she says. “Readjusting to freedom is a lot,” she says. “It’s overwhelming.”

After getting out she called Kirton “every other day.” Among the issues: finding a job, drug-testing, a curfew. She calls his encouragement “the best thing.”

Colleen McKenna, director of the Suffolk Sheriff’s Addiction Treatment Program, was at the meeting on Monday in Yaphank. She says that “substance use disorder is a driving force behind” many of the inmates’ criminal actions.

The importance of having someone come in and establish a rapport and a relationship can’t be overstated, according to McKenna. “There is nothing more valuable and effective than such a continuum,” she says. “It is setting people up to succeed.”

Ask J.P., a 24-year-old woman incarcerated for a DWI who’s been attending Safe Harbor meetings weekly. She credits Safe Harbor for giving her “a better perspective of myself and my future … At one point in my life I was not very fond of my future, but today I am excited and anxious to begin a happy, healthy lifestyle.” J.P. is set for release on March 17.

The program can help toward that goal, according to Suffolk Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr.

“Volunteers at the Suffolk County Jail provide immeasurable support to our inmate population. Safe Harbor Mentoring is one agency that truly understands our population and has had a great impact in the jail and in the community,” Toulon tells Newsday. “Their programs prevent recidivism and help individuals move on with their lives with a positive and more productive mindset.”

For an awards ceremony for Safe Harbor in October, Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone praised it as “a vitally important organization in our community providing formerly incarcerated individuals with the tools necessary to be productive citizens.”

Building on relationships

Yaphank inmate Brian Cook, 50, a former teacher who has been behind bars a few times, is counting on that. Cook was asked if he was willing to speak to Newsday because he has been through SATP and Safe Harbor twice and knows the inner workings of the programs.

“When we go to a meeting like Kyle’s, when we come back to the dorm there’s usually a big buzz going on after leaving that meeting,” says Cook. “A lot of people feel very inspired and feel they’ve learned a little bit more about themselves. Having a few more tools in the toolbox, so to speak, for self-change.”

“This might be hard to understand,” Cook continues. “It’s taken me the better part of 30 years to really get honest with myself about certain things — being an alcoholic, being an addict … It’s very difficult.”

What about his future plans, after he gets out? “I think that my experience and the changes I’m going through would be most advantageous if I could pass them on to others,” he says.

Later on Monday, Safe Harbor advisory board member the Rev. Regina Ravenell-Carr guides a women’s group of inmates, one usually led by Braunskill. Kirton had arranged for her to head up the session. Carr uses a large yellow flip chart. Written on it are the words: Our perception. Our reality. Our mobility.

As they discuss those issues, at times the leader’s hard-line delivery seems to inhibit responses to questions. But when she asks if anyone present has struggled with choices, one inmate loudly says, “Hell, yes.”

The same goes for Evan Kagan, who was released from Yaphank last month after being incarcerated last June. “That eight months made a total of 97 months,” he says. “That’s eight years and one month incarcerated.”

Kagan is 32. “It’s a quarter of my life. It’s pretty sad.” He says Safe Harbor has sparked a change as well as self-recognition.

“I’ve blamed someone else my whole life for everything,” he says. “Everything that has happened is my fault.” If owning one’s decisions is a sign of progress, the challenge remains a great one.

Braunskill knows that re-entry is a challenge. “Our program is effective because we stay in contact. What’s most important is that we’re committed to making a difference. Everyone has their own issues.”

It’s a lot for ex-inmates to confront, as well as for Braunskill and volunteers. Two years ago he founded A New Day, an organization that mentors and coaches youths and adults on Long Island to keep them out of jail in the first place. Mentoring happens on an as-needed basis and takes place face-to-face or over the phone.

“You can’t keep mopping up the water,” says Braunskill. “You have to turn off the tap.” He recharges, he says, “by coming in and giving 100 percent. That’s how I go on.”

Before the men’s session wraps, talk turns to rocket ships. To escape the Earth’s atmosphere, a spacecraft requires an enormous amount of energy. “To me that’s what this time is all about,” says an inmate who compares getting out of jail to blasting off. “I’m not waiting until I get home. I’m building momentum so I’ll be ready.”

Braunskill nods. Then he gives a down-to-earth reminder. “Remember, there’s a ground crew. There's a man in the tower. There are others,” he says. “You need other people.”