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Stories on inmate advocacy were meaningful

Several articles in the April 2014 Bulletin were especially interesting to me. Keith Reeves ’88 and his students’ work at the State Correctional Institution in Chester, Pa., is meaningful to me. I have spent many hours there as a prisoner advocate in my volunteer capacity with the PA Prison Society. So I was happy to read of Keith’s students’ work there.

Even more exciting was the article “Matters of Life or Death” about four Swarthmore women working with death-row inmates. This article provided another interesting connection. It turns out that Cristi Charpentier ’86 is an attorney for my death-row pen pal! He just informed me of this in a recent letter. Having corresponded with him for 18 years and also occasionally visiting him, I must second Beth Larín ’97’s statement, “The makeup of a person comprises much more than the worst they have ever done. The person is not the crime.”

Jessica Heimbach Raymond ’56
Cheyney, Pa.

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