KUNA, Idaho — The inmates in the Idaho Maximum Security Institution spend 23 hours a day locked in a cell. A visitor of any sort – even a new face – has the potential to be a highlight of any given day.
It's no surprise 'cookie day' would be marked on their calendars if they had them.
"I'd say yes. Very true," inmate Daniel Alldrin said. "We all like cookies, right?"
Alldrin considers himself a 'medium inmate.' He works a job at the prison while simultaneously serving a sentence himself. He's one of 6,000 inmates receiving sprinkled 'merry Christmas' messages in packaged cookie bags from a gaggle of volunteers guests.
"Coming in as Chaplin was probably the best thing, cause I got to talk to everybody," longtime event volunteer Dave Browning said.
Browning spent more than a decade paying weekly visits to the prison. He bonded with many inmates after the cookies served a proper introduction. That bond includes former inmate Mark Renick, who Browning offered a job after his release 13 years ago.
"In retrospect, it was huge," Renick said. "That transition from incarceration to community is a difficult one, and it's something that we need to pay attention to as a community."
Renick, now working with St. Vincent de Paul, pays that same favor forward by providing transitional services to current inmates after their release. The support includes clothes, food, a bus pass, among other services.
"[The cookies] show the community cares about us. It hasn't forgotten about us," Renick said. "They're all residents that are gonna return to community. And people like [Browning] have to hire people like me and make that transition. So, it's very powerful."
Volunteers handed out 145,000 cookies in total.
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