Meaningful Moments

Bellarmine College located in Louisville, Kentucky brought in the Books Behind Bars program to Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women located in Pewee Valley, Kentucky.

This is Karen, and I usually talk about parole board reform, talk about second chances and second looks, but I’d just like to share a couple meaningful moments that were in my life, and one was the Bellarmine College brought a program in here called Books Behind Bars and I helped troubled youth. And getting to see 14- and 15-year-olds finally graduate eighth grade and get excited about poetry and taking cardboard and making ships and reading Shakespeare, it was so rewarding to have them think education was fun.

We read Shakespeare. We wrote raps. We made it fun. We read about Adolf Hitler. We wrote raps. We made it fun and that brought a blessing to my life, along with judges that have sent teenagers and their parents here, before they get sentenced in juvenile court. And to hear the stories of them turning their lives around and ended up being artists in New York or running galleries in Louisville at the Speed Art Museum; those are two moments in my life that gave life in prison meaning; helping our youth and knowing that our next generation may take a different path and lay down the stuff that leads them to these avenues.  And I’m thankful for judges and professors and even the institution providing those moments for me, because they really have carried me through at different times. I thank Him.

Karen Brown M.Ed. has been incarcerated since February 1986. She is currently a correspondent for PrisonRadio.org. Her commentary "Meaningful Moments” was released on 1/26/2026.