A Dog in Prison Can Melt the Most Hardened Criminals

It’s quarter of nine on a Thursday morning, and save for the fact that the setting is a maximum security federal penitentiary in the far northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, there’s nothing too remarkable about the situation.

There is, however, a certain “something” in the air. There are several inmates huddled up by the main entrance to the housing unit, and they all seem to be focused on a particularly menacing looking convict by the name of Lee. Lee is pacing back and forth and having an animated conversation with himself about a guy named Fred. It sounds like Lee has been waiting on Fred for some time, and Lee is not the type of person that you would ever want to have waiting for you.  For any reason. Ever.

Lee is serving a life sentence. Two of them, actually, to be served consecutively, but Lee is no cat, so after the first one, why bother counting? Lee’s incarceration stems from his part in a particularly violent disagreement over a drug transaction three decades ago. In the early 90s, Lee was one of the largest narcotics distributors in Chicago. He did a brisk business and, despite a quick ascent to the pinnacle of his vocation, he still took an active part in the street-level, day-to-day operations, often performing his own collections and settling his own disputes. It was one of these disputes, to the tune of $75,000, that landed him behind bars for the remainder of his current life, as well as the entirety of the one that he will never live to see.

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What happened was this: One of his distributors flat-out refused to pay for several kilos of product. Lee was, and still is, a businessman first and foremost, as are most successful drug dealers of quantity. In any manner of commerce, things happen, and Lee, like most everyone else in The Game, subscribed to the old adage of slow money being better than no money. Even so, such blatant disrespect simply could not be tolerated. Criminals are people too, and as in any business, be it illicit or not, reputation is everything. One person rips you off, everybody’s gonna try to do the same.

A message had to be sent, a statement needed to be made, and Lee’s statement was made with two well-placed 9mm slugs. Two lives in lieu of $75,000, and everyone in The Streets knew that Lee’s money was not to be played with. Unfortunately, though, several other statements were made, by witnesses to the police, who wasted no time in putting Lee away.

“Hey y’all, here they come!” someone shouts.

An electricity of sorts cleaves the air. Excitement is probably not the right word, but it’s certainly something palpable, an expectation of something beyond the sheer boredom that is the day-to-day life of most prisoners. Lee arrives at the housing unit’s entrance door just as it opens, and there stands Fred.

Lee shouts his name, their eyes meet, and time seems to stop. Fred just stands there with a dopey, mildly endearing, hangdog-ish expression, and his big, rheumy brown eyes take in each and every one of the hundred-odd inmates, Lee chief among them, who’ve gathered for his arrival. His tongue falls from his mouth and he swaggers toward Lee, followed closely by a dozen or so prison staff, from the warden on down to a couple kitchen cops, all of whom walk rounds of the prison’s six individual housing units every Thursday.

Fred and Lee find themselves mere inches from each other, and despite the abundance of correctional officers present, nobody makes any move to get between the two. Lee sinks into a crouch, and in doing so, morphs into a strangely touching caricature of the wide-eyed, wonder-filled little boy he was once upon a time, before real life and some horrible choices had their way with him.

“Hiya, Freddie!” he yelps, giving Fred a brisk scratch behind the ear. Fred’s tail is wagging ferociously, turning his whole stout, rust-colored body into a fur-covered pendulum. A casual observer would be hard-pressed to decide whether Lee or Fred is wearing the bigger smile. One dog has effectively turned over 100 hardened criminals into a sea of giddy little boys.

Despite Lee being a 50-something convicted murderer and Fred being a five-year-old pitbull/golden retriever mix, the two have much in common. They’re both lock up—Lee in United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, and Fred in a nearby animal shelter. They are both doing time for certain bad breaks, and both have been pretty much given up on by polite society. In addition, both are undoubtedly receiving something therapeutic from this interaction. The main difference is that Fred is, with a little more socialization and training, going to get another shot at life. And Lee, for one, couldn’t be happier for him.

Fred is one of three dogs currently enrolled in the Second Chance Dog Program, a program that the prison runs in partnership with the Dessin Animal Shelter in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The program is aimed at helping to give shelter dogs the training and socialization they will need to become adoptable. Most of the work takes place at the minimum security prison camp adjacent to the penitentiary. While at the camp, each dog is assigned an inmate handler who lives with the dog and is responsible for providing basic obedience training as directed by a certified animal trainer. Inmate participants at the camp complete a 4,000-hour vocational training apprenticeship toward animal trainer certification.

Throughout the Federal Bureau of Prisons, numerous camps and minimum security facilities have some version of a dog program, and the recently enacted First Step Act, an act aimed at strengthening and broadening the scope of rehabilitative programs the Bureau can offer, even goes so far as encouraging facilities to enact some type of canine-based program.

The Second Chance Dog Program at Canaan is unique in that it allows maximum security inmates to participate. Penitentiary inmates who are enrolled in the program meet once a week and get to do some hands-on work with the dogs, working on basic socialization and obedience commands.

But it’s not only the inmates fortunate enough to be enrolled in the program who benefit, as prison staff try to bring at least one dog with them as they make rounds every Thursday. This helps the inmates as much as it helps the dogs, as it gives the dogs a chance at socialization and getting comfortable in a crowded, noisy environment. Not every dog in the program ends up cut out for making rounds, though. It can be too much too soon for some of the dogs, and if at any time the staff in charge of the dog sees that it is getting stressed or anxious, they will cut short their participation in that week’s rounds.

So far, the program’s been a success for everyone involved, with one staff member at the prison, speaking under the condition that she remain anonymous, remarking that she never fails to be amazed and touched by the dog’s ability to turn even the most hardened criminal back into an innocent child.

Perhaps, however, Lee puts it best: “Prison’s just a hate factory. These dogs love us despite where we’re at, despite whatever we’ve done. Until Fred started coming around, I never figured I’d get to pet a dog again, to play with one. I’m locked up in a cage, a type of zoo, so how crazy is it that, thanks to an animal, for a few minutes a week anyway, I can feel human again?”

Dan R. Grote #22670-424
USP Canaan
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 300
Waymart, PA 18472

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