By Genoa Barrow

Although she’s never been inside it, a local correctional worker has a unique tie to San Quentin State Prison. She was conceived there.

Naimah McDaniels entered the world as the child of an incarcerated Black man. Today, she works as a recreational therapist at Ion’s Mule Creek State Prison, helping men such as her father deal with mental health issues and other traumas related to who and where they are.

The role stems from a class action lawsuit that played out in a Sacramento courtroom in 1995. An inmate, Ralph Coleman, sued the Department of Corrections on behalf of all prisoners for the lack of adequate mental health resources.

“They went in and investigated,” McDaniels says. “They saw that there was a lack of proper treatment [and] a lack of resources for them. They were putting everybody in the same category, so if they had behaviors, or they would act out, they weren’t getting that help that they really needed.”

Often, the answer – or punishment – for mental health crises would be, and still is, to place a person in solitary confinement for extended periods. Staffing has long been an issue locally and statewide.

“Back in the day there would be maybe one psychologist among 2,000 inmates,” McDaniels says.

That wasn’t sufficient to deal with the multitude of mental health issues the inmates experience, hence the hiring of more staffers like her.

McDaniels has worked at several facilities throughout her career, including California Medical Facility in Stockton and California State Prison-Sacramento, also referred to as New Folsom, located adjacent to the infamous original.

“I’ve been working [in therapy] off and on within the Department of Corrections for over 20 years,” she says.

McDaniels attended Grambling State University, majoring in recreational therapy with an emphasis on leisure education. She interned with Sacramento County, working with developmentally disabled residents. She needed field hours and her brother, a retired corrections officer, suggested she consider prison work. She met with the person who headed the mental health department before finishing her classroom studies and impressed her.

“She literally hired me on the spot. I started working about a week or two after I graduated,” McDaniels says.

African Americans have long seen corrections, and law enforcement in general, as “good jobs.” Those who take on those roles are often criticized for being “sellouts” who are used by the white power structure to police their own. Some earn that reproval and others don’t.

Being in corrections has its ups and downs. It can be a stressful career.

“You’re always on alert, you’re always watching your back. A lot of officers just retire. A lot of them don’t live long. But once you get past a certain time, you can get some good hours and responsibilities, so I think that’s what draws a lot of people to it.”

McDaniels says 90% of her job puts her in direct contact with inmates. As a recreational therapist, McDaniels facilitates numerous sessions for inmates.

“Literally, I have six groups a day,” she says. “Sometimes we’re on the yard and I encourage them to exercise or walk, or just come out and get fresh air. We also have indoor groups and I’m trying to help give them tools, teach them coping skills, stuff like that. I help them throughout their time while they’re there.

“What I like about being a recreation therapist is that there’s a lot of freedom. Recreation therapy is very broad. Your job is to provide activities to help someone to deal with whatever they’re going through, whatever it might be: depression, anxiety, bipolar. You’re providing them with activities that help them get through.”

One has the ability to make it their own, McDaniels says.

“You have some people who are into art. There are some who are into sports and you’ve got some who are into politics. You take what you’re good at as a therapist and you provide it.”

McDaniels expresses herself through poetry and spoken word. She also has starred locally in several plays. She taps into her creativity to help the men in her care, adding in lessons using meditation and imagery.

“Some of them can sing well, so I encourage them to use their voice, to write their stories and sing their stories. They do a lot of freestyle and rapping and I’ve done mini skits and stuff like that with them.”

McDaniels begins every group with a message for the day that includes a daily affirmation and a motivational quote.

“I never start without that. I always do that, then I get their input. How do you feel about that? Does it resonate with you guys? Some of them, they’ll open up and they’re like, ‘Oh, I really like that, can I get a copy?’ or ‘I was going through that because my mom died last week and I can’t even go to my mom’s funeral.’ They open up and just talk about all the stuff that they’re experiencing while they’re there.”

Daddy Issues

McDaniels’ own experiences make her uniquely qualified, and propelled, to do the work.

Her father did two stints in prison. Most people were unaware of his incarceration at the time.

“My mother was very much like, ‘What goes on in this household stays in this household,’ so a lot of people didn’t really know that that was what our life was. My mom would go visit my dad two weekends out of the month.”

McDaniels, the baby of the family, often accompanied her mother on such visits. She remembers some correctional officers being rude to them and other visitors, often taunting them or trying to emasculate the men in front of their loved ones. Some mothers refuse to take their children to see their fathers behind bars, not wanting them to see him locked up. Others take the opposite stance, knowing that if they don’t see them in prison, they won’t ever see them, or it will be years before they do.

“My dad, even though he was in prison, he was very involved,” McDaniels says. “He called almost every night. We wrote letters. I was conceived at San Quentin, he got out and went back in when I was 4 and then he got out when I was like 19. I spent all that time in prisons. That’s all I knew.

“He was close to all of us. He was a strong presence mentally and emotionally for us. He wasn’t there physically, but he was involved as much as he could be.”

McDaniels admits to some rocky teen years that impacted her relationship with her father. While she can’t share her personal business with the men in her group sessions, those encounters still impact her work.

“It helps me to have more empathy for the guys because I also experienced it,” says McDaniels, who previously ran a group called Fathers Building the Bridges.

“When they talk about their children, about how they don’t hear from them, I always encourage them and tell them to still keep writing,” she says. “I used to get my dad’s letters. I would read them, I just didn’t write back. [Group session participants] don’t know my truth, but I tell them that it’s important for them to continue to be there as much as they can.”

Think Positive

For McDaniels, injecting positivity into what she does is vital.

“It’s important because their environment is so negative,” she says. 

“They don’t have any freedom physically to do the things that they want to do. There’s limitations. They have to wake up when [officers] say wake up. They have to go to their cells when they say go to your cell. They have to do ‘count’ and they have to worry about their safety. If they have a cellie [cellmate], is that cellie going to attack them? They’re constantly [on alert]. Some of them have children, but they can’t get to their kids, they can’t be in their children’s lives, so it’s stressful. Then sometimes they have to deal with the staff, the officers and – I’m just going to say: some of them are racist, you just don’t know. The officer could have just woke up and had a bad day and is on them for no reason and they’re dealing with that.

“They’re constantly moving at someone else’s [will]. They don’t have any freedom in that. What I always tell them is that even though you don’t have control of the environment, you have control of the way you think, you have control of how you react to certain things.”

Some of the men she sees are as young as 19. Others are older than she is.

McDaniels previously worked in a “more restrictive” psychiatric service unit at New Folsom, where men were escorted everywhere in chains and therapy groups were conducted in an area that looked like a “doggie kennel.”

“Unfortunately, it is what it is,” McDaniels says. “Most of them know why they are there. They might have assaulted the staff or one of their peers, so they have to be there.”

Safety hasn’t been an issue for McDaniels, but she’s ever mindful that the job can be dangerous on many levels. She doesn’t typically ask what an inmate is in prison for or look for that info in their charts.

“I respect myself first. I have boundaries and I respect them and I treat everybody as a human because they are. A lot of times when you look at their cases, it throws you off.”

She may have to write someone up on occasion for an infraction, but for the most part, the men have been “pretty respectful.”

Her time at Mule Creek has been more rewarding than challenging, she says.

“My reward is to see them actually opening up and doing better as far as meeting their goals.”

The men do have goals. She points to one man in Brooklyn, New York, Hector Guadalupe, who started a business as a personal trainer based on the workouts he did while in prison. Today, he trains other former inmates to also be trainers.

McDaniels is training the men in her care to see the possibility for better in their lives. It starts with knowledge of self, she says.

“When I go in there, I try to also provide a sense of history about where they came from and who they are as Black men. A lot of times, they don’t get that. A lot of clinicians are white women and they may already have some type of judgment toward them or they can’t give them ‘the real,’ what they really need.”

McDaniels serves as a contractor, but if she ever returns to full time, she’d like to create a curriculum that incorporates more Black history. She used to show the documentary film series “Hidden Colors” to inmates. The films highlight the global impact of Blacks despite efforts to marginalize them as a people.

“A lot of them have never had that,” McDaniels says.

“A lot of the guys, they’ve been in foster care, their parents have been on drugs. Their childhoods have been very traumatic,” she continues. “A lot of them don’t even know that part of self-love, but it’s something they have to learn now. I go in there and teach them their history or share something informative about their history, so they can have a piece of knowing where they’re from. That’s why it’s important to have Black staff in there with them, since the majority of them are Black. They’re missing that.”

Editor’s Note: Naimah McDaniels shared some of her history with growing up with an incarcerated father in Senior Staff Writer Genoa Barrow’s 2019 book, “Daddy Issues: Black Women Speaking Truth and Healing Wounds.”

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