Mentoring Matters: Mentors Help Men In Prison Looking To Begin Their Lives Anew

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Mentoring does matter in a helping a person early in life from making mistakes and a new program underway in a Florida prison shows the impact a mentor can have on those looking to begin their lives anew. Behind the barbed wire fences of the Everglades Correctional Institute a group of men gather to discuss the value of mentoring.

Alan Cohen asks, "What qualities does a good mentor possess?"

One inmate in the group answers, "Patience because I didn't have a father figure growing up so there have been some pretty stupid things that I didn't even know how to do."

"I think we are all here for making bad choices," said inmate Richard Lechler.

The program inside the state prison on the western edge of Miami-Dade County is unique in that it relies on the prisoners themselves to become the mentors for their fellow inmates.

"I wish I had a mentor when I was growing up that I paid attention to. And I think it is so important that we have somebody that we can look up to and we can have that deep conversation with and we can vent with, I've learned and grown so much more than I ever learned in any school, class or anything I ever did. I learned about life, I learned about people this way," added Lechler.

"Me as a free man I can agree with you, responds Alan Cohen who oversees the Horizon Program, as it's known. "I've had the best conversation of my life right here, which is really nice."

Under the program, 128 inmates live in two large dorms, where they are encouraged to develop a sense of family - learning from each other ways to become a better person. They are also offered computer training and other skills that can help them when they are released.

"I had very close friends of mine that would even ask me, `Why would you be doing something like this? Why do you want to help people that are in those type of situations?' There are an amazing amount of good people in prison," said Cohen.

From a distance, it may seem hard to imagine that Richard Lechler and Luther Collie would fit the description of good people. Lechler is serving twenty years for burglary and Collie is seventeen years into a 25-year sentence for armed robbery. Collier was 22 when he was arrested.

"When I met Luther he was a young wild kid coming in angry, he was upset and I just tried to show him that there is so much in him," said Lechler.

"I had dreams and aspirations and prison wasn't one of them," said Collie.

"He turned that anger into motivation and that's what I see people doing in these programs. Anger can be a good thing, because it can motivate you to want to strive to be better and that's what he's done," explains Lechler who said he thinks of Collie as his son now.

"I don't think he was trying to be a mentor, that's just who he is. It's just quite natural," said Collie.

Now Collie is helping others

"When you take the initiative to actually sign up and get into this program, there is something in you that is yearning for some change. It may not be obvious at first, but we've discovered in the process of time just being in this environment it has a positive effect," Collie explained.

"We've been torn down, we know what society feels about us and we know what they think about us but we know who we are as people," Lechler said.

Of course, there are no guarantees it will work. But all of the men we spoke to were hopeful.

"We are planting seeds, whether we see those seeds grow that's really not our part," said Lechler.

Lechler is scheduled to be released in another 18 months while Collie's release date is in 2024. He is hoping even then to continue to help those in prison restart their lives.

If you are a mentor and would like to share your story with us, please email us at mentoringmatters@cbs.com.

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