State officials describe Paula Jordan as a nonviolent inmate at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. That made her a perfect candidate to work at a Howard County horse farm as part of a rehabilitation program.
Here is what the 41-year-old from Baltimore did to get locked up: In January 2005, she chased after her boyfriend swinging a butcher's knife, stabbed him in the leg, mopped up the blood, cleaned the blade and put it back into its holder before police arrived.
Jordan pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but two months suspended. She violated the terms of her probation by committing another assault, and in June 2006 she was sent back to prison for six years
Classifying her as nonviolent may seem absurd to most people. But bureaucrats have indeed decided that an assault can either be violent or nonviolent, depending on the severity of the injury, and regardless of whether the term "nonviolent assault" is an oxymoron.
Jordan's stay at the 58-acre Days End Farm Horse Rescue center, where she helped create more grazing pasture for abused horses being nursed back to health, lasted just two days. No one told the neighbors or the parents of the young volunteers that prisoners would be working there, and a storm that ensued once it became known forced the state to indefinitely suspend the program.
Now, there are questions about how state prison officials can describe Jordan and other inmates as nonviolent when they were convicted of assault-related changes.
"I made wrong choices, and I'm paying the consequences," Jordan told a reporter who visited the farm a few weeks ago.
Officials at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services readily admit that they bungled the horse farm endeavor.
At the very least they should have held a meeting to talk with the parents and the kids who volunteer there about letting inmates onto the farm. They should have waited until the kids had returned to school in the fall before adding prisoners to the mix.
It hardly matters that the prisoners were off in the pasture, guarded and far away from the children attending to the horses. Parents were understandably shocked. And it's too bad that a program that does appear beneficial has now been shelved because of a communication failure.
Under "Restorative Justice," inmates over the past year have planted more than a half-million trees, spruced up the Antietam Battlefield, built oyster cages, planted grass in the Chesapeake Bay, helped restore Mount Auburn Cemetery and a town hall in Williamsport. Having inmates work at a horse farm strapped for funds and staff seemed like a good fit.
But should Jordan, or any inmate convicted of assault or a similar crime, be eligible for this kind of prison work?
It's important to note that most inmates will at one time or another get out of prison. Jordan is due to be released in October 2011, and even if the odds are stacked against her making it, I'd rather have her emerge from her cell energized about having helped horses than influenced by gangs.
I researched Jordan's criminal record, and her two most recent convictions are the only violent crimes she has committed. But she has been arrested 28 times in Baltimore since 1993 and convicted many times of selling and possessing drugs, soliciting, trespassing and disturbing the peace.
Cathy Batz, who lives almost adjacent to the Lisbon farm, said her 20-year-old daughter has ridden horses at Days End since she was 8 years old and was at the stables when the inmates were in the fields. "She didn't even see them," the mother said, adding that Jordan's criminal record didn't bother her a bit.
Batz told me that inmates are always out picking up trash along nearby I-70. "If nobody has a problem when prisoners are picking up trash a block away from our homes and a half-mile away from a school," she said, "why do they have a problem when they work on a 58-acre farm?"
I also did a background check on another inmate in the program. Whitley Neal, 22, has been arrested 11 times as an adult in Baltimore City and Baltimore County and is serving a two-year sentence for selling two gel caps of heroin to an undercover police officer on Pennsylvania Avenue. She has two other prior drug convictions and four charges of assault that prosecutors did not pursue.
The spokesman for the prison system, Rick Binetti, points out that it wasn't easy to get the job on the horse farm. "If you are an inmate and you are getting a good job or one that is highly sought after, you've done the work you need to inside of prison," he said.
Binetti wouldn't comment directly on Jordan, but it's more than simply behaving. Inmates are credited with attending school, completing anger-management classes and learning a trade. "You've worked your way up the ladder," he said. "You've shown a willingness and a desire to rehabilitate yourself, and you've proven you are serious about transitioning back into the community."
Maybe a few years in prison was what Jordan needed to get back on track, and if so, then getting a taste of freedom by helping abused horses isn't a bad way to ease back into life outside of prison.
Statistics show that many, if not most, women in prison have been abused. I can't say that's what happened in Jordan's case; her court file is in storage in Annapolis and not accessible until next week, and the police report doesn't say why she stabbed her boyfriend.
But classifying Jordan's offense as nonviolent is not only silly, but it also makes officials look like liars when they say they only admit nonviolent offenders into the program.
Still, it doesn't mean she should be automatically disqualified from helping horses, or planting trees, or restoring a Civil War battlefield. Outrage from politicians and Howard County neighbors about how the program was handled is justified, and a debate over whether a "nonviolent assault" is even plausible is legitimate.
But the overblown rhetoric shouldn't diminish or stop efforts to ease prisoners back into society.