CAREER DAY FEATURES PRISONERS

Inmates Hope Description Of Prison Keeps Students Out

"Methamphetamine dealer" was one of the jobs students had the chance
to explore Wednesday at a career fair at Eudora High School.

If you pick that career path -- as Ryan Favinger and Chris Northup
have -- you can expect to earn about $29.40 per month laboring in
prison. You can expect to eat lots of turkey, which Northup told
students is served daily. You or your family members might have to
pay another inmate for protection.

You'll meet female impersonators who use Kool-Aid for makeup. You'll
meet crooked guards who smuggle drugs. Your living quarters will be
so small that you may have to turn sideways to walk between the furniture.

"Don't let your pillow fall off your bed because it's probably going
to fall in your toilet," Northup said.

Sound appealing?

Northup and Favinger hope not. Both men are Lansing Correctional
Facility inmates who visited the career fair with the goal of
convincing students from three local high schools not to be like them.

"You don't want to end up here, do you?" Favinger asked.

Career Criminals

Wednesday's career fair included students from Eudora, Baldwin and
Wellsville high schools. After a morning filled with presentations
about traditional careers -- cosmetology, meat processing, auto
mechanics, law -- students sat down to listen to Favinger and Northup
talk about their careers as criminals.

They were accompanied by Kelly Flynn, an activities specialist at
Lansing who travels to area high schools two or three times per month
for similar programs.

Northup, 28, who's from Coffeyville, told students he started selling
drugs at age 13. At age 16, he already had been convicted as an adult
and was doing his first stint in prison.

"I've produced drugs that destroy lives," Northup said. "I didn't
sell to kids, but that don't make it right."

He asked the room full of students if they thought it was hard to
wait for the bell to ring in between classes.

"Try waiting on that bell for three or four years," he said.

Favinger, 27, Olathe, has convictions for burglary, theft and
manufacturing methamphetamine. He has five years left on an
eight-year sentence.

He has family on the outside including a 9-year-old son and two young
daughters, and he said he struggles with what to tell them about his own life.

"I wouldn't want to live next to me on the street," Favinger said. "I
was just running amok ... I belong here."

Lurid Details

Both men told students that experimenting with marijuana was how they
got started in a life of crime. But Favinger told students it's not
drugs that cause people to end up in prison -- it's choices.

Students occasionally burst into nervous giggles as they heard the
two men talk about the details of prison life. They described the
harassment toward "cho mos" -- child molesters -- and the sexual
activity between inmates. They talked about making "gumbo" by pouring
hot water into a plastic bag along with Ramen noodles and sausage
from the commissary.

They said prison life is lonely. Friends from the outside turn their
backs. Family members feel burdened by having to come visit every
weekend. Girlfriends move on.

"Out of sight, out of mind," Northup said.

Northup said it had been three and a half years -- the length of his
most recent prison stay -- since he's had a decent piece of pork. He
said the only meat served in Lansing, besides turkey, is hamburgers
made with soy.

"That's what we get," one student in the crowd said.

Students React

Several students asked Northup about his repeat offenses, which
started in 1994 with a forgery conviction. One student asked why he
didn't learn his lesson the first time.

After Northup said he was going to get out of prison in two weeks,
Eudora senior Jen Brown asked him whether he would go back to his old
ways. He said he wouldn't.

"It's a very truthful question and very blunt," Northup said. "I got
a job waiting on me. I got a different outlook on life than I had before."

The speech brought junior Sarah Welsh, 17, to tears . She said she's
worried about one of her friends who was caught with marijuana
recently and got out of trouble by "snitching" on someone.

"She was lucky that time, but I'm afraid of what's going to happen if
she keeps doing it," said Welsh, one of many students who approached
the inmates after the speech to thank them. "I told them about my
friend. I told them she will be coming in, and I hope she listens to them."

Favinger said he hoped that none of the students who heard him speak
Wednesday would end up in prison.

"If I can change just one of them, it'll be good," he said.