Nine members of the Saint Mary's Psychology Club went to the Red Wing Correctional Facility Friday, February 24th to tour the facility and learn more about the juvenile correctional facility. Once in the facility, the group split in half, and the two groups followed juveniles as they explained the facility from their point of view. The tour guides were not given scripts, and they were only told where to go. The two groups each saw where the delinquents sleep, eat, learn, work, and visit. The inmates of Redwing are first detained for about a week, then they are slowly released into the larger Redwing facility. They work together toward the goal of being released into society. Redwing uses a peer program that is geared towards allowing inmates help one another learn how to improve. The two tour guides in each group were higher level inmates meaning they were much closer to leaving than lower level inmates.
Though we were surrounded by juvenile delinquents, we were very safe throughout the entire tour. The correctional facility is surrounded by cameras and security. The tour guides told a few stories about fights that often broke out in the facility, but they also assured us that inmates only targeted other inmates when looking for a fight. They also said that inmates living in Redwing can be reprimanded for many things (including walking on the grass instead of the sidewalk).
This small blog cannot possibly contain all of the information we learned while on our tour in Redwing. We encourage anyone who has not been to a correctional facility to take a short tour to expand their knowledge of juvenile delinquents and how correctional facilities function.
