June 21, 2016
Courtesy of Brenda Harris/for PhillyVoice
Bobby Harris, in red, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole and is now president of the LIFE Association for SCI Dallas, stands with his children, from left to right, Bobby Jr., Tahirah and Shephone.
There's a quote from the movie "Gladiator" – actually, a paraphrased quote from actual Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius – that says: "What we do in life, echoes in eternity."
The words are simple, yet evocative. What we do in life will reverberate through time.
But, for convicted murderer Bobby Harris, he's hoping that what he does in life will simply echo loud enough to make an impact outside of the walls of the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania.
Convicted of murder in 1989 at the age of 15, Harris has spent the last 28 years behind bars.
He was sentenced, as a juvenile, to serve life in prison without parole.
However, since 2005 Harris has been working to turn his life around, he said in a phone interview with PhillyVoice recently. And now, as president of the LIFE (an acronym for Life Isn't For Ever) Association in SCI Dallas, where he is housed, he's been working toward helping inmates serving life sentences grow, learn and rehabilitate, even if they will never be released from prison.
"There's more to life in here than just being written off," Harris said.
As a juvenile, Harris was convicted of killing 18-year-old Terrence Smith, who was found shot in the chest at the intersection of Broad and Jerome streets in Philadelphia on March 16, 1989.
He was sentenced to serve life without the possibility of parole – a punishment for juveniles that has since been determined to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. That ruling could result in the review of the cases of nearly 300 Philadelphians who were convicted as juveniles and are currently serving life sentences without parole.
With juvenile lifers, like Harris, potentially able to be paroled at some point in the future, Harris said that there's no time like the present for the work he's been doing as president of the LIFE Association.
"Let's begin to look beyond the reality, and lets talk about the humanity aspect here, because they can be rehabilitated," he said, talking about cases of fellow inmates sentenced to life in prison.
"It's about growth and development," he continued.
Harris said he was initially angry at the prison system after his conviction.
He told the Inquirer in 1992 that the "white community" created the monster that he had become. It wasn't until 2005 that Harris began to change his mindset, settle in and reflect on a life that could be spent entirely behind bars.
"I finally said that I would no longer allow someone to beat me. No longer would I let someone else write my story," Harris said.
Since then, he has devoted himself to his rehabilitation and furthering his education.
Among many changes he's made, Harris has completed a correspondence course in child psychology through the Stratford Career Institute, and he regularly teaches reading to other lifers who are unable to read at all.
Matthew Garcia, vice president of the LIFE Association at SCI Dallas, was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in a robbery that ended in the death of a retired Philadelphia police officer.
The LIFE Association is comprised of individuals who are serving life sentences in prison, as well as volunteers, friends and family on the outside who help support the group's goals. Harris said they are working to help lifers give back to the community, and that the group hopes to show society how even those sentenced to spend their lives behind bars still want to make a positive difference in the world beyond prison.
He's been working with the group since, at least, 2006 and became president in 2014.
Brenda Harris, Harris's wife, said members of the LIFE Association hold fundraisers at the prison – mostly bake sales held during picnics at the prison with family members.
For example, in 2014 the LIFE Association donated $8,392 to a variety of charities, including St. Jude Children's Hospital's Cancer Research Department for Children, the ALS Association and groups that work to support veterans and the homeless.
According to Matthew Garcia, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the robbery of a Northeast Philadelphia bar that ended in the murder of retired Philadelphia police officer, Francis "Frank" King III, the group's members have a "positive energy" that society doesn't see.
Garcia is the vice president of the LIFE Association at SCI Dallas.
"Our purpose is to help. (We want) to help others in need and to help bring light on the men behind walls that deserve a second chance," he wrote in an email. "Our organization has many members who are remarkable human beings that radiate a positive energy in an environment where most are not regarded as nothing more than a number."
Last year, the LIFE Association made $3,556 in similar donations, including a $1,000 donation to purchase children's books to be placed in neighborhood barbershops through a program spearheaded by the office of State Rep. Rosita C. Youngblood, D-198.
"They are doing a lot, but it's not being seen. It's not being heard," Brenda Harris said.
Tamika Mason, wife of lifer Ronald Mason, who is starting a branch of the LIFE Association at the state correctional facility in Coal Township, located in Central Pennsylvania, has seen a change in her husband during his time in prison.
Her husband, nicknamed "Rock," was sentenced to serve life without parole after being convicted in 1991 of killing a 36-year-old man at 66th and Uber streets in Philly's West Oak Lane neighborhood in 1988.
Mason said she and her husband have known each other since they were young, and her husband isn't the person he was when he was sent to prison 27 years ago.
"I've seen a change in him. He's matured so much over the years," she said. "If they can get a voice, it can help show that what they are doing is so positive."
But, it's more than fundraising that the association participates in.
"They have good intentions and some really practical ideas ... They have made the best of a bad situation," said Minister Alif Ward of the Supreme Angels Center, at 5750 Park Avenue in the city's Onley neighborhood.
Ward does volunteer work with the LIFE Association. He said that the group recently donated funds to purchase supplies and food for volunteers who helped clean a vacant lot at Fifth Street and Lehigh Avenue in Kensington. The lot has been vacant and filled with trash for about 30 years, Ward said, but it came to the group's attention after an inmate's child cut herself playing there.
The group has many programs they hope to bring to fruition. Davis talked about mentoring programs and a prison introduction program for new inmates. There also is a bill the lifers have drafted that would set guidelines for handling possible parole opportunities related to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision about juvenile life sentences.
The LIFE Association's latest push is to start an Adopt-A-Lifer program that would be aimed at individuals serving life sentences, but who are now elderly and infirm.
The group wants to look at the per-year costs associated with housing an individual in a prison – a study done by the Vera Institute of Justice in New York found that, in 2010, it cost Pennsylvania taxpayers about $42,339 annually to keep a person locked up – and the LIFE Association believes that the state could save money if the most elderly lifers were granted parole for medical reasons.
That same study found that in 2010, Pennsylvania taxpayers paid more than $231 million for inmate health care costs.
"These are individuals that pose no threat to anybody," Harris said.
Other states, like California, have medical parole and compassionate release programs for those permanently medically incapacitated or elderly.
Pennsylvania does not.
With the Adopt-A-Lifer program, Harris explained, the hope is to get students – likely those enrolled in law schools – as well as law professors and interested citizens, to study the cases of senior lifers to see if there are strategies that could help these individuals.
Senior lifers, he said, may have made great strides in rehabilitation, but in Pennsylvania, no matter how ill or old, they have no chance to get out of a sentence of life without parole.
"We would like to see (the cases for) elderly lifers evaluated," he said.
Asked about the likelihood of a program like this being created, Angus Love, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, which provides legal services to incarcerated individuals throughout the state, said the program has potential because it helps "put a face" on the lives of those sentenced to spend their lives in jail.
"People are taking a more critical view of our criminal justice system these days," said Love. "This program, in my view, is an effort to raise awareness."
In fact, costs to house medically ill or elderly lifers, Love said, can be triple that of the cost to taxpayers for individuals incarcerated in a prison's general population.
"Costs (to house prisoners) are astronomical," he said. "And, when they get older, it's triple that. It just costs a ton."
Harris wants to remind society that even if an individual is convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, it doesn't mean that person can't mature, be rehabilitated and devote their time to serving society in any way they can.
Through the LIFE Association, Harris hopes the group can show there can be growth behind bars and inmates spending their lives in prison can still have a positive impact on society, if they work hard enough.
"Discipline doesn't just mean to punish," Harris said. "It also means to teach."
