Crusading Cons

Many states tend to keep their criminals hidden away, but Colorado's are highly visible. During the past two years, teams of convicts from the state penitentiary at Canon City have been al lowed to leave prison -- each team with only one unarmed guard -- to go on speaking tours throughout the state. As a result, Coloradans outside the walls are gaining an understanding of the convicts, and have begun to take an interest in their problems.

All the convict lecturers are from the maximum-security section of the penitentiary, and a few are bank rob bers and murderers. Yet nobody has tried to escape so far. The men realize that one escape would doom the whole program, and they themselves choose the five four-man teams who go -- with the approval of prison authorities. So far, the teams have traveled a total of more than 200,000 miles across the state and have spoken to some 750,000 Coloradans. Their message usually goes like this: "I'm on the road to nowhere.

Don't follow me." They make prison life real for their audiences, leaving be hind vivid impressions of bars, walls, guard towers and, above all, their own cipherlike existences.

Free Meals. The show is a hit. "We get blizzards of mail," says Prison War den Wayne Patterson. "There's no short age of speaking invitations." So enthusiastic is the public that Denver area Kiwanians recently raised $4,000 to provide the convicts with two station wagons. Some restaurants give them free meals, and a motel in Denver lets them stay overnight for nothing.

The self-help idea has spread to 600 other prisoners who have enrolled in service organizations that are part of Warden Patterson's rehabilitation program. Among the clubs is an authorized chapter of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, which this fall is sponsoring a charity football game between the prison team--the "Rockbusters" and the semipro Colorado Colts. The proceeds will go to a parolees' halfway house and a judge's youth program. The convicts have become so respectable that last summer they were invited to the Colorado state fair where about 70 of them set up their own booth featuring prison products and a replica of a 6-ft. by 8-ft. cell.

Solid Achievements. They went home with a stack of business cards from people who were sufficiently impressed to offer to help get jobs for prisoners seeking parole (a man cannot get a parole unless he first has some assurance of a job). Such constructive energy is bringing solid achievements. A committee of the Colorado state legislature has just announced that it will soon propose two laws to help the convicts. One will reform parole procedures; the other will permit indeterminate sentences so that a prisoner can win an early release if he shows signs of rehabilitation. Warden Patterson says that it is too early to tell whether his program has really changed the inmates. But he does give the men credit for sincerity. "They believe that they are saving kids from a life of crime. And that begins to work at a prisoner's innards."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.