The inmates are learning and so are the tutors. Most of the Harvard volunteers say they have had very little previous exposure to disadvantaged individuals, let alone to criminals. The prison "was a culture shock," says PBH tutor Amos Meron '89. "You're only gone for two hours, but you get totally out of the Harvard mindset."

Most PBH volunteers say they are suprised by the politeness of the inmates. "These guys are so nice. You'd never think in a million years--I mean, they seem like guys from my neighborhood," says Michael B. Darby '89, who started tutoring this semester.

The prisoners' civil behavior seems all the more surprising when they begin to talk about their backgrounds. Darby recalls one tutee describing a childhood of gang violence. "For him this was a blow-off prison. He said he'd get into a fight just like that, shove a pencil in someone's eye," Darby says.

The prisoners' violent upbringings show up in unexpected ways, tutors say. "I asked this guy for a sample sentence--subject, object, verb--and [he] wrote, 'Johnny stabbed the police officer,'" Darby says.

The dichotomy between prisoners' personalities and their backgrounds merely underscores the fact that these men need not have become criminals, tutors say. "It's good for people to see that prisoners are normal people," Freed says. "Not that I've ever considered them not people, but in the back of my mind there's always been this idea that they're just criminals. They might have turned out like us if their upbringing had been different.

"There's a big problem with calling people criminals," Freed adds. "That puts them outside society. But society must have produced them."

But Walter, the PBH coordinator, warns against too much sympathy for inmates. "You've got to take it all with a grain of salt," she says. "It's easy to fall into the trap of their sad stories, because they're all sad. But you've got to remember that every one of them did something wrong."

Nevertheless, most PBH tutors who have spent time with the inmates say they feel Deer Island creates more problems than it prevents. So they keep returning, Monday night after Monday night, hoping to make prison life a little better.

"Most [prisoners] grew up in terrible environments of drugs and crime. It's our duty to help them," Walter says. "After all, these people are getting out."