Connor Thompson and Chaplain Tommy Bourgeois have just finished arranging the room’s chairs in a circle when 17 women enter and take their seats.
Thompson, a concurrent student at the Clinton School of Public Service and UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, is leading a finance-focused reading group at the Women’s Reentry Unit of the Arkansas Department of Corrections in Tucker, Ark.
Each Thursday, Thompson makes the hour-long drive to Tucker and spends two hours at the reentry center discussing basic financial literacy and decision making. Some of the different lesson titles include “Renting or Buying,” “Insurance”, and “Utilities.” Whatever the topic, the session’s focus is specific and deliberate, with no more than a handful of pages of text covered each week.
“The fact that we’re taking it no more than a few pages at a time is very intentional,” Thompson explained. “One of the first things I said when teaching this class is that I have no expertise in money or finance. If anything, I’m teaching skills of reading, thinking, and discussing.”
Thompson’s group held its first class in September, but the wheels were put into motion when he was a student at Antioch University in Los Angeles. While finishing his bachelor’s degree he worked as a teaching assistant in a school program that offered college-level courses to adults without access to higher education.
“A lot of the folks in the program had been impacted by the criminal justice system,” Thompson said. “At the same time, I was doing course work on the prison system for my degree. I knew I was going to be coming back to Little Rock, my hometown, so I was starting to think about what I wanted to do.”
During his first year at Bowen Law, Thompson was having a conversation with one of his former professors who told him about an organization in Arkansas that specialized in the type of work he was considering.
“He wanted to know the focus of my public service and I told him I was interested in the prison system and potentially teaching there,” Thompson said. “He asked me if I had heard of Compassion Works for All.”
Compassion Works for All is an organization based in Little Rock that promotes hope by living and teaching compassion, specifically to the disenfranchised and prison populations. Rooted in Buddhism, it offers classes on meditation and yoga, composes a bimonthly newsletter to inmates in all 50 states, and supplies a range of donated books from other organizations to inmates.
Morgan Leyenberger, the organization’s Executive Director, asked Thompson, then working as an office volunteer, to take a look at the list of donated books to see if there was one he wanted to develop programming around.
“Mindful Money: A Path to Simple Finances” was the book that caught his eye.
Written by Linda Bessette, “Mindful Money” takes a non-judgmental approach to personal finance, emphasizing the importance of seeing each situation with an open mind and understanding that one-size-fits-all solutions to personal finance do not exist.
“I was drawn to this book because it contained practical advice for a wide audience with insights into the psychology of money,” Thompson said. “I read it and thought it was amazing. Honestly, I needed it as much as anyone.”
Tonight’s class at the reentry unit has a special guest: Denise Chai of decARcerate. Chai’s talk goes into detail on criminal justice debt, which can include the burdens of fines, fees, and other legal costs for inmates. She goes over a list of things for the women to consider while they are still inside that could ease their reentry, including starting work on their resume and letters of explanation, getting a state-issued ID, and navigating social benefits like SNAP and transitional housing.
The women, who have now been awake for nearly 16 hours after rising at 3 a.m., ask her questions about managing and balancing their debts that accrue while incarcerated. Others comment on the many sudden costs of reentry – paying rent, buying a car, finding insurance – with very little savings and no immediate income. A few make mention of how hard it’s going to be for many of them to find work: “A lot of places say they are open to hiring felons, but the truth is most of them never do.”
At one point, Chai asks if the some of the lessons they have learned to this point in the class can help with this particular issue. Several say that the class has helped them consider the impacts of each financial decision, no matter how big or small, in ways that they never had before.
At the end of the night Thompson takes requests on what to cover in the remaining weeks. One person says investing. Another says she wants to learn more about student loan forgiveness. A third asks for suggestions on how to rebuild her credit.
Next week Thompson will welcome Bessette, the author of “Mindful Money,” to discuss her book and answer any questions the women might have.
“The core of the book’s message is that through most of our lives we are just speeding through,” Thompson said. “We are not slowing down to reflect on each decision and how it fits into the larger consequence of our financial wellbeing.”
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