Raymond Miles
Miles finds meaning deeper than "the hole"
By Ollie Gratzinger and Adam Lindner
Raymond Miles was 12 years old when his down-hill spiral began. He went to jail for two years, and his life, he said, was mayhem from that point on.
The realities of a broken system came down on him hard. In 1992, Miles said, he was a boy in a world with bad manners.
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“When I was 12, they told me, ‘Yo, Ray, you can’t read, you’re never gonna be s***,’” Miles said. “Imagine being 12 and teachers in these schools inside these institutions saying, ‘You can’t read, you can’t write, you’re never going to be nothing.’”
Miles grew up in Wilkinsburg and Homewood, and then later, after being released from the juvenile detention center, he moved to the Mon Valley.
“That’s when gangs became a thing in Pittsburgh, and I think we were feeling the effects of the crack epidemic” that began at that time, Miles said. “Where I was from, everybody’s mom smoked crack.”
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Miles was in and out of the criminal justice system from as a young teen, until he got out of correctional supervision in 2012.
“From 1992 to 2012, it’s a million in-and-out-of-jail stories,” Miles said.
A bevy of Miles’ offenses were drug-related, but his record includes infractions for resisting arrest, robbery and possession of stolen property, according to records obtained from the courthouse.
Today, Miles is a contract employee for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, working in the Allegheny County Jail Service Coordination Unit. He works with the incarcerated, and has a special interest in voting rights, and teaches a civics therapy class at the jail.
Miles said that it was mainly the relationships he’d formed at the programs he’d attended that helped him stay out of trouble.
He gave special credit to a counselor named Jean Coyne who challenged his beliefs and strong opinions, Miles said.
“She just kept countering everything and forcing me to do some thinking.”
Coyne was an intervention supervisor doing some work with drug court. Miles was part of a 12-week program called Breaking Free: The Power of Choice. The two went from being colleagues to becoming friends. Miles said that she came to his first job after he graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC).
“People like that … gave me a shot,” he said.
Jean Coyne is now the Senior Manager at Pittsburgh Mercy. She said Miles was able to overcome the odds and succeed post-incarceration, because he was willing to adapt.
“He made changes. He listened. He embraced the curriculum,” Coyne said. “He completely changed his thinking, his feelings, his core beliefs and his attitude.”
Changing patterns of thought is vital to reducing rates of recidivism, according to Dr. Ed Mulvey, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.
“There are ways to get people to have alternative scripts in their head other than, ‘Well, the guy is in my face, so I might as well deck him.’ There are different ways to stop and think through situations that help people,” Mulvey said. They key is to slow-down and become less impulsive, he explained. Miles did just that.
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“He really surrounded himself with mentors. He always went out of his way to engage with his professors and the people who were there to support him,” Coyne said. “To this day, I would venture that he has lifelong friendships with the people he worked with at Pittsburgh Mercy.”
Though Miles made it out of his down-hill spiral, his journey wasn’t easy.
In 2018, PublicSource published an article by Brittany Hailer entitled, “Panic, retreat, misery: For Ray, 16 months in solitary confinement has had lasting effects.” As it’s headline states, Miles spent more than a year in solitary confinement, starting in 2006. Though he couldn’t pinpoint his exact breaking point, Miles said that he often thinks back on how he acted while in “the hole.”
“I acted like an animal,” Miles said. “That’s something that I never want to be lost from me, that I truly acted in a manner that no human being should behave.”
According to the PublicSource article, Miles was sentenced to an initial 360 days in solitary confinement after an altercation with another inmate. About six months into his sentence, the man who had allegedly assaulted Ray was released from prison. Nonetheless, Ray’s stay in solitary continued. He acted out because he was angry, and he wanted everyone to know it.
“I thought they would cut me a break, just because the rationale and reason,” Ray said to PublicSource. “So they didn't cut me no break on my time. So I just said, 'F*** this. F*** y’all. I’m acting a fool.'”
With each act of defiance, another month was added to his stay. Soon, his 360-day sentence became 16 months. He was allowed only one hour per day outside of his cell. In the winter, he told PublicSource, he refused to go outside at all.
“My experience sucked. It just sucked. It’s like groundhog day, over and over and over again,” Miles said.
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Miles talked about another prisoner who was sent to the hole for stealing food from the kitchen. At the time, Miles and the other inmates thought it was funny, but in hindsight, Miles realized it was just sad.
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“He wanted to take some extra bread to eat,” Miles said. “And because he was hungry, he was in the hole. What kind of s*** is that? Just give that man enough food to be full.”
After his release, Miles tried to prove that he was not a negative stereotype.
“I do a lot of self-reflection…; “I wanted to let anybody I came across [know], whether I was in Lawrenceville, Braddock or Fox Chapel, that if you meet someone who’s black, with a bald head and tattoos and a criminal record, they can be a good guy.” But his concern for what other people think has diminished, he said. Now he is more concerned about helping others.
“We have to teach everyone in the criminal justice system that their train of thought is irrational. Their thoughts become feelings and their feelings become actions. But there’s a bigger systemic issue,” Miles said. “They think the way they think because they don’t have job opportunities.”
According to the National Institute of Justice, about 68% of prisoners arrested in 30 states in 2005 were incarcerated again for another crime within three years. About 77% were arrested within three years. Miles’ success defies those odds.
A number of programs are in place to help returning citizens with things like hunting for a job and finding housing. While Miles believes the ones that succeed don’t sugarcoat the harsh realities of reacclimating to life on the outside.
“When I work with people, I let them know, you’re going to struggle for at least seven years. It’s going to take you 150% effort to gain 15%. I know that because I went seven years without a job,” Miles said. “It’s not sweet out here. But a lot of these professionals are telling them they’re gonna make it--protestant work ethic, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, everything’s gonna be fine. It’s not.”
Miles was just hired as a consultant for one of the programs that he graduated from.
“Ray’s going to be a facilitator for the Breaking Free: Power of Choice program he was in many years ago, so that’s pretty exciting,” Coyne said.
Coyne explained that Miles is a great advocate for the people around him. He speaks up against injustice, she said. Even though he was told throughout his youth by teachers and other people in positions of power that he wasn’t going to be anything, that he had a learning disability and couldn’t succeed, Miles found his voice in the social services.
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“He is a true inspiration," Coyne said.