Adopt an Inmate is preparing to launch our campaign, Drop a Dime on Injustice, before the end of 2024. Siblings Rick and Melissa began their work ten years ago. Rick was arrested in 2013 for something he didn’t do, and the two officially started the nonprofit Adopt an Inmate the following year. The heart and soul of our work is matching outside volunteers with people on the inside seeking mentoring and support. Rick was released in 2019 after nearly six years of wrongful imprisonment.
To mark our decade of work, we’re collecting dimes to represent the ~2.3 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S., along with millions more on community supervision, those impacted by loss of voting rights, criminal records, and the countless family members doing time alongside them. Reliable estimates indicate that as many as one in three Americans have been touched by the system – yet because of the stigma and shame, it is rarely openly discussed.
The term “drop a dime” carries a symbolic meaning in prison culture, often referring to someone who provides critical information, or a “snitch.” We’re adopting this concept to to emphasize the systemic failures of incarceration: the lack of rehabilitation and resources available to incarcerated individuals, and the harsh conditions (food labeled not for human consumption, medical neglect, and the list goes on) faced by people in prison, and demonstrate that our current system warehouses people rather than preparing them for reintegration.
Phase I: Launch & Fundraising. We’re kicking off with a social media campaign ‘Who’s your dime?,’ an invitation for people to share who their dime(s) represent – it can be themselves, a loved one, or they can choose from a list of people, such as Albert Woodfox, who spent nearly 44 years in solitary confinement, or the Central Park Five, who spent a total of 41 years in prison before being released and exonerated.
Phase II: Build. Volunteers who are justice-impacted will build a mobile prison cell furnished with authentic prison fixtures. It will have no windows, and a recording of prison sounds will play to further a realistic experience (many people are not aware how loud prison is, due in part to the metal and concrete furnishings). The build will happen locally in Veneta, Oregon, an easy stop off of the highway that runs between the coastal town of Florence, and Eugene. The exhibit will be housed there when it is not on the road, and include additional displays and multimedia presentations to educate about prison conditions.
Phase III: Tour. The mobile cell will travel across the country. At each tour stop visitors will be invited to spend ten minutes in the cell. Each tour stop will be hosted by organizations that support criminal legal reform, and justice-impacted people will volunteer to help manage the visitors and activities.
The vast majority of incarcerated people will be released and return to our communities. With limited skills and resources, many face near-insurmountable challenges securing housing and employment, which are often conditions of parole. These policies drive recidivism rates, making our communities less safe.
Drop your Dimes – together we can create change.