Sacred Places
Western Correctional Institution
A circle of solitude inside a place where no one is ever alone.
WHERE
Cumberland, MD
SETTING
Prison
Visit
Where it is
Western Correctional Institute, Cumberland, MD
What happens here
Inmates come here for solitude, which the rest of the facility does not offer. They drop private notes into the Well of Unspoken Truths. They stand on the sundial and cast a shadow that tells the time, which connects a man to a time before prison and a time after it. Men in the Master Gardener program tend the beds.
HOW IT CAME TO BE
They drew a circle first.
Drag to see the transformation.
01
The Need
The United States has the highest imprisonment rate of any nation, with more than 2.2 million people in prison, and the Department of Justice estimates over two-thirds of those released are incarcerated again within three years. Inside the walls, inmates are isolated from the world beyond and never alone within. They cannot leave for funerals, weddings, or graduations. There was nowhere on the grounds for solitude, no quiet space to contemplate, celebrate, or grieve.
02
The Vision
It was critical that the space reflect what was meaningful to the men who would use it, and that it be open and accessible inside an environment of physical and psychological walls. The first image the inmates conceptualized was a circle, and that became the garden's shape. The second was water: a tree at the center of a well with water flowing outward in all directions. Warden Jon Galley had come to WCI intending to focus on wellbeing and outdoor work and to teach a new set of physical and mental skills, hoping the men would never return once released. Nature Sacred proposed the meditation garden to extend the idea of nature giving new meaning to their lives.
03
The Transformation
Beautifying the grounds was one of Galley's first projects, and the inmates in a new Master Gardener program had full creative rein to design the beds, choose the plantings, and put them in — a significant change for men who had come from places of concrete and blacktop and had never pushed a lawnmower or held a rake. The garden that followed embodies growth and renewal in several forms at once. The circle they drew became the plan. The tree at the center of the well became the center garden. Off to the side, a masonry well 20 feet deep with a narrow slot at the top takes private notes as the Well of Unspoken Truths. A sundial large enough to stand on is embedded in the ground. On the portal, red roses climb one side for the constant struggle with violence and white up the other for the hope of peace.
