Q&A with Dougie Abner
Dougie Abner, a peer recovery coach for Project Rebound, spent 23 years of his life in prison. He first started out with eight years in Mt. Olive, West Virginia’s only maximum security prison, located in southern West Virginia. After exhibiting good behavior, he worked his way to St. Mary’s, a lower security correctional facility that gives inmates more opportunities for activities and work. With six months left of his more than two decades in prison, he started a weekly publication called Rumor Has It while inside the prison. This Q&A feature dives into the creation of Rumor Has It and its impact within the prison system, revealing the power of storytelling, no matter the environment.
Why was the newspaper started?
The idea was first approached because we felt like there was a gap between inmates and staff. When inmates needed help finding places to live, or needed help to get ready to get out, staffers would help them, but they didn't put forth their best effort. We also had the stigma for a long time that inmates shouldn't be talking to staff. How are you really prepared to get out of prison, and prepare to be successful in society, if you don't have anybody to help you get out? And the only people who can help you get out is staff? They’re the only people who can help you prepare. And how are you supposed to approach them and talk to them if there's a stigma from other inmates that you ain’t supposed to be talking to staff. That’s just the way it is, that’s the convict rule. We felt like if you bridged that gap, and made it more acceptable to talk to staff, then at some point, staff would become more approachable. So, the idea for that was to start a newspaper to let staff know exactly how inmates felt, and vice versa.
How did the publication process work?
When I started, the paper was only me. I was the only one in the office. And I knew right away, I wasn't going to keep up with everything by myself. So as I went along, I pulled in other guys. And I started having them do all the interviews with the staff. And what I did was that point, since I was still the lead, I designed the paper, the pages, the borders. I designed how the layout would be. Sometimes when we just put stuff in just regular paragraphs, sometimes we put them in columns, because they fit better. We would edit. What we didn't edit though, like if someone wrote a poem, we didn't even retype it. We scanned their poem, saved that as a JPEG. We would let them keep their own words, the way they spelled and everything. We would let them keep that because that's their creativity, it’s their original piece, it shouldn't be changed for nothing. I don't care if they didn’t spell nothing right. Because oftentimes, there's art in the imperfections. When we first started we made print copies, and it was obviously too much paper and too much ink. So I came up with the idea. I was like, why can't we go digital? You know, we got the tablet system. Why can't we just put it on the tablets?
What kind of impact did the paper have on the prison population?
It kind of changed the culture at St. Mary's. If you just open the door, like when the inmates would write a story about their experience being locked up, staff will say, “Well I didn't know that about you, why don't you tell me this or this.” And it just started the conversation between the two. And then the next time you know, that inmate was going to that staff member and getting information, getting resources for when they were getting close to getting out. Trying to find out how they can better themselves. One of the inmates at the prison had written a story and put it in the paper thanking me for starting the newspaper because it gave him an outlet to write. It gave him an outlet for his poetry, for his art. But it also gave him an outlet to understand that he did need the staff. He needed resources, he needed staff to help him solve issues. That was a great thing.
There's always going to be a line between staff and inmates, and we know that there’s supposed to be a line. But it’s not supposed to be a gap. It's just a line. So that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to close that gap. And I feel like we did that. I feel like the gap is still closing.
I was told about a month ago that Huttonsville was trying to start a newspaper. And Mt. Olive was in the process of figuring out how they were going to do one. So it’s kind of a thing that I think is growing through the system.
Can you tell a story that encapsulates the transformative power of the paper?
There was this one guy, a law library assistant, who was always negative about the newspaper. I think he had been locked up for 28 years. One day he was talking about how he wanted to do something positive. I said, “You want to do something positive?” He said, “Don't start with me Dougie. I’m not getting involved in the newspaper.” I said, “Listen, just hear me out. Everybody knows you're negative towards the newspaper. We already got a lot of people involved, and a lot of contributions to the newspaper. But I think if you contribute, not only will it be positive, but it will say a lot about the newspaper. Where it was at, where it's at now, and where it can go.” So he was like, “What do you want me to do?” I said, “Listen, you’re always quoting Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. We're gonna make a quote of the week. It's gonna be your job to give us that quote. That's what we want.” So he started doing that.
Before I left, about a week before I left. He was like, “Listen man, I appreciate the opportunity. I’m gonna stick with it after you leave. And what I really want to tell you is that I'm sorry, that I talked bad about the newspaper and that I was being negative about it. Because it really is positive, It allowed me to share things. And it’s opened up a door for me to have conversations with inmates and staff that I never would have had a conversation with before. It’s helped me with my personal growth.”
But, I think the most positive story about him was that he had just developed a relationship with his kids again, about a month before I left. I went and talked to Mrs. Adams (?) and asked if I could print a couple of the newspapers off for him. I wanted to encourage him to send them home to his kids, so they can see what he's doing. And she was all for that.
So I printed the papers off. I gave them to him. He didn't want to send them at first.. He said, “It's just the prison newspaper.” I said, “Send them home. See if they have an impact.” He sent him home. And he told my brother about a month ago that his daughter had actually framed the newspapers. And actually framed them page by page. So he was really happy about that. It really made him happy.
I think also it gives people purpose, even for the outside, to be able to show their family and their loved ones that hey, this is what I'm doing here. I've kind of changed my attitudes, my views toward how I'm doing my prison time. And he's actually enrolled in college now. So I kind of feel like him writing the quotes and the recipes and stuff has motivated him, because he likes to write. He’s in college now. And in college, you write a lot. So now he's writing essays for classes. He's doing good, he got an opportunity next year when he sees his parole board to go home. After being locked up for so long.