Rhonda Leland was serving a life sentence in prison when she started writing letters to strangers.
From the Valley State Prison library, she found the names of psychologists in self-help books. She wrote to them and asked if someone would be willing to come and teach her, and her fellow inmates, about self-esteem.
She was searching, she said, for something she had not yet been able to find on her own.
“I thought that somewhere, somebody had the answers for me,” she said. “I was looking for this magical answer.”
One of those letters reached the mailbox of David Paul.
What happened next would dictate the next two decades of Leland’s life. The workshop began a process of personal change that would extend far beyond herself. It would help reshape the relationships, and the culture, surrounding her in prison.
And after 28 years, she was granted parole.
Today, Leland works for the organization that grew from a letter she wrote. And more than two decades after she first asked for help within those prison walls, that same organization has completed its first year at the Santa Barbara County Jail.
The Freedom to Choose Project, a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit founded by psychologists Bonnie and David Paul, teaches incarcerated people skills centered around emotional regulation, communication and decision-making. During its first year at the Northern Branch Jail, 61 people enrolled in the program’s six-week courses.
At the time, Leland wrote the letter asking for a single class. Neither she nor the Pauls expected that simple request to develop into a decades-long program that would come to reach thousands of incarcerated individuals throughout California.
Today, that work continues in correctional facilities across the state, including the Northern Branch Jail in Santa Maria, where the organization is establishing its newest local chapter.
Bonnie and David Paul were working as graduate faculty at a private psychology school when Leland’s letter reached them. Both wanted to help, but were nervous to navigate unchartered ground.
“We were both like, ‘Yeah, I could do that,’” Bonnie recalled. “I had no idea I was actually going to go to a prison. If somebody had asked me, would I go? I would say, ‘That’s too scary. I’m not qualified.”
The Pauls eventually entered Valley State Prison for Women alongside a team of volunteers to lead their very first workshop, each of them apprehensive.
“We were afraid,” she said. “We didn’t know what would happen. We didn’t know if there would be any common ground or connection.”
For Leland, the workshop challenged the reason she had written the letter in the first place. She had hoped the answers she sought would be provided by someone else.
Instead, “they modeled the skills so they could teach me that the answers are within me,” she said, “and give me the courage to do that self-exploration. And find them on my own.”
The process took place in an environment Leland described as violent and deeply divided. During her early years inside the prison walls, she was angry, got into fights, and frequently hurt others with her words and attitude.
“Most people didn’t get along,” she said. “It wasn’t a culture where we helped one another.”
Over the course of the next few years, however, that began to change.
“The whole culture shifted,” Leland said. Women who at one point avoided one another started preparing fellow inmates for parole, tutoring classmates, leading educational programs and, as she described it, “paying it forward.”
More than 20 years later and roughly 200 miles south of the prison where the program began, another group of incarcerated individuals is working through the same questions Leland once confronted.
On June 18, five incarcerated men sat in a circle of blue and grey chairs inside a classroom at the Northern Branch Jail. Known within the facility as the “fishbowl,” the room allowed those passing outside to see clearly into the class.
Volunteers Donna Kall and Arlene Stepputat led the final session of the six-week course.
One participant, Anthony, was set to be released that very day.
The last names of incarcerated participants were withheld in accordance with the organization’s privacy practices.
During the group discussion, he said that, for the very first time in his life, he now felt he could “really connect with people.” Just as meaningful, he said, was witnessing the growth of the men around him.
Around the circle, others echoed similar sentiments.
Michael, who was now participating in the program for the second time, described changes that extended beyond the classroom. Much of his life, he had believed that it wasn’t acceptable, or safe, to express emotion.
“In the last 10 months, I’ve become more emotionally free than I’ve been in my whole life,” he said.
For Michael, that change had also altered how he understood himself while incarcerated.
“Just because I’m incarcerated, it doesn’t define me,” he said. “No one can take away the knowledge that I know now.”
Pedro, another class member and incarcerated individual, described a similar struggle with opening up to others. He said communicating remained a “mental battle” each day, but that he was no longer closed off to those around him.
“It’s easier to communicate and work with others now,” he said.
And despite being behind bars, “I feel free. Ironically – even being in here.”
The changes described by the men are difficult to calculate or measure within the span of a six-week course. Freedom to Choose’s work at the Northern Branch Jail is still relatively new, but organizers say the skills taught there are intended to follow participants beyond the classroom, incarceration, and into the next stages of their lives.
The program’s core message is that while incarcerated people may have little control over their current circumstances, they can learn to recognize the control they do have in how they choose to respond to them.
Each class teaches different skills that, once accumulated, are intended to assist them in identifying emotional triggers, communicating through conflict and actively listening to others without judgment.
For Bonnie Paul, one of the program’s most important elements is also the simplest. People are given the experience of being heard.
“Its about teaching people how to be present and listen deeply to one another,” she said, “we hear it over and over again, ‘Nobody has ever done that for me in my whole life.”
At the Northern Branch Jail, Freedom to Choose is one of several community partnerships made possible by classroom space built into the newer facility.
April Jones, who helps coordinate programming at the jail, said the mission transcends providing classes during incarceration. Officials hope to connect participants with community resources they can access after their release.
Jones described that process as a “warm handoff,” so that people aren’t simply released wondering, “What do I do now?”
Freedom to Choose is also working toward offering classes for women housed at the facility.
On June 18, the six-week course concluded with a small graduation ceremony. The five participants received certificates and cupcakes before everyone reflected on their time together.
Michael thanked the volunteers for helping them break down barriers. Pedro thanked them for providing a space where men were allowed to speak openly and freely, without being judged. And Anthony, who was set to be released that day, thanked them for the opportunity of connection.
Then the volunteers offered their own words of gratitude – for the inmates – but also for the courage of one individual.
Stepputat acknowledged the woman whose simple request two decades prior was responsible for connecting those gathered in the classroom that morning.
“I’m grateful for Rhonda Leland,” she said, “because she wrote one letter.”
