Students Emma Demers, Jamison Walsh and Mia LeTourneau learned about prison careers and life behind bars while attending a class at Berlin Middle High School.
Convicted murderer Gary Place talks recently to students from Berlin Middle High School.
PROVIDED BY NH DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Convicted murderer Gary Place talks recently to students from Berlin Middle High School.
MICHAEL COUSINEAU/UNION LEADER
Warden Corey Riendeau stands outside the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin this month.
MICHAEL COUSINEAU/UNION LEADER
Warden Corey Riendeau stands outside the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin this month. Mount Washington is in the distance.
MICHAEL COUSINEAU/UNION LEADER
Students Emma Demers, Jamison Walsh and Mia LeTourneau learned about prison careers and life behind bars while attending a class at Berlin Middle High School.
BERLIN — A class of teenagers watched a trained dog sniff out a hidden cellphone, heard from prison employees discussing their work, and talked to a convicted murderer during a tour of the state prison.
The 14 students at Berlin Middle High School got school credit. The Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility hoped for a few future recruits.
What’s Working
“Maybe it’s a career path that I can get into,” said sophomore Jamison Walsh, who completed the course this month.
Employers across the state are clamoring for workers after the pandemic worsened an existing worker shortage in many industries.
“Everybody’s looking” for workers, Principal Mike Kelley said in an interview, along with several students. “They can’t find people, so it’s a great pipeline for kids to get into a profession.
“I’ve always been a big proponent of why don’t you go try it before you commit to it, and this is a way to go do that,” Kelley said inside a classroom.
The nine-week course included writing six short essays and listening to prison workers speak about their jobs, including their work in teaching and counseling inmates.
“I think it’s eye-opening for the students to see that you do have teachers there,” warden Corey Riendeau said during an interview in a prison office.
“You don’t need to have size to be effective,” Riendeau said of corrections workers. “I think the main thing you need is the communication skill.”
Essays that students wrote “guided you to stay focused with the course but also kind of made you think in their shoes,” said senior Mia LeTourneau.
“I liked when each person came in and showed their roles in prison and then going on the tour and seeing that role in action,” said LeTourneau, who plans to major in forensic psychology.
“I was left with a good impression, because I didn’t really realize that their whole purpose was to rehabilitate, not to punish the people that were in there,” said LeTourneau, whose father works at the prison. “So it made me feel like it was kind of like a good place to go into. The environment felt very positive.”
Riendeau said he already has gotten his wish that other schools adopt the program.
Groveton High School in Northumberland plans to incorporate it into its existing criminal justice class next school year.
Like others, the warden’s aim is to find more workers.
“That’s definitely the main goal for me, recruitment from it,” Riendeau said inside the prison. “I think the more education you can get out of what corrections actually is and the successful career you can have in corrections, I think it’s better for the team and better overall.”
Part of getting students involved in corrections jobs is giving them an accurate picture of prison life.
“When you watch TV, and you see what prisons look like, it can look pretty aggressive,” said Heidi Guinen, deputy director of forensic services.
“At least they solve the crime within 20 minutes,” she said, chuckling. “ It’s not real life. They don’t get to see that you can do real good clinical work behind the walls.”
The state prison and nearby federal prison are listed as two of the city’s top three employers, according to Employment Security’s city fact sheet from 2021. The federal prison had 229 workers, about 50 more than the state prison, according to Employment Security.
The state prison currently has dozens of openings, including vacancies in about 35% of its security-related jobs, according to prison officials. They didn’t want to release more specific figures for security reasons.
The federal prison advertised for jobs on at least two billboards in Berlin, including one offering a $11,000-plus hiring bonus for correctional officers.
“The State of New Hampshire unfortunately does not have a mechanism to offer sign-on bonuses,” Richelle Angeli, a public information officer in the state corrections department, said in an email.
“When it does have a mechanism to do so, we will be first in line to offer one,” she wrote.
Hiring signs welcome visitors at the state prison entrance on East Milan Road, not far up the road from two cemeteries and a sawmill and across the street from near where the area’s first house was set up in 1824.
The prison, with its parking lot offering a scenic view of Mount Washington, is about a five-mile drive from the school, where prison employees interacted with students.
Student Emma Demers said she enjoyed learning about prison life.
“The tour was cool in seeing how everything happened,” said the sophomore, who didn’t rule out a job in the corrections field.
During the prison tour this month, students talked with inmate Gary Place, who is serving a life sentence for the 1983 stabbing and strangulation of his estranged fiancee, Wanda Olsen, in Concord.
“It made you see a human side to him, and it … opened your eyes up that prisoners are not like all bad people,” LeTourneau said. “And he really tried to push on us to better ourselves and make a difference around us.”
The principal said he expects the course to fill its 15 slots each quarter.
“It’s going to work great for both sides,” Kelley said. “We’re going to have kids that are going to have a profession to go to right after high school and they’re going to have a pipeline for employees, so I believe it’s going to be very positive.”
What’s Working, a series exploring solutions for New Hampshire’s workforce needs, is sponsored by the New Hampshire Solutions Journalism Lab at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and is funded by Eversource, Fidelity Investments, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the New Hampshire College & University Council, Northeast Delta Dental and the New Hampshire Coalition for Business and Education.
