Lengthy Island inmates in jail on drug expenses use photograph program to get clear: ‘I used to be doing medicine with my mom’

Suffolk County jail inmates locked up on drug convictions used a photograph program pushed by the sheriff to get clear — and now their pics are a part of an artwork exhibit.

Twenty nonviolent offenders within the Yaphank Correctional Facility are having their pictures posted within the visiting foyer of the power by way of the month of September as a part of the Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr.’s Addiction Treatment Program.

“This program has changed my whole life,” mentioned Skyler Davis, who was launched from jail in late August after serving his time on drug possession expenses. 

The five-week images program paired individuals with photographer Saskia Keeley, who taught them portrait images and guided them by way of constructing collages that captured the place they’d been, the place they had been and the place they hoped to go, Keeley defined. 

Keeley, who has run related packages in jails and prisons across the nation, mentioned the thought is to empower folks to place their felony pasts behind them.

Another inmate, Sean Hughes Jackson, mentioned that it wasn’t till he was incarcerated that he realized he wasn’t dwelling a “normal” life.

“I was doing drugs with my mother — and I thought that was normal,” Jackson mentioned.

Sheriff Toulon, a Democrat, mentioned this system has helped change folks’s outlooks over the past 4 years.

“Incarceration is [not] a substitute for rehabilitation or treatment, but while someone is in our custody, we have a responsibility to give them every possible tool to make a different choice when they leave here,” Toulon mentioned.