(Describer) Streams of light collide to create a globe filled with water. Title: Science Nation.
(Describer) A man looks down through a magnifying glass.
(male narrator)
You never know
where you'll find
intrepid scientists
trying to unlock
some of nature's mysteries.
(female)
By including prisoners
in my science projects,
(Describer) Nalini Nadkarni:
I get groups of people
who have time and space,
and have a deep interest
in nature.
(narrator)
You heard right.
With help from the
National Science Foundation,
forest ecologist
Nalini Nadkarni and her team
study rare prairie plants
nowhere near the prairie.
They're behind the walls
and razor ribbon
at the Stafford Creek
Corrections Center
in Aberdeen, Washington.
You're getting better
at the amount of seed per cell.
(narrator)
The inmates aid
the researchers
by planting seeds,
observing plant growth,
and then recording data.
Most of us have taken,
and now it's time to give back.
(narrator)
Terry Essick
is serving 20 years
as an accomplice to murder.
(Describer) He packs soil into seedling containers.
(Essick)
I'm paying my debt to society.
(narrator)
Nadkarni studies
the dwindling prairie plants,
trying to learn
how to cultivate them
in their natural
environments.
You are fast, man.
(narrator)
The effort is appreciated here
in the narrow confines
of incarceration.
For anybody to actually
make the effort
to see this through...
is great.
(narrator)
It's a win-win proposition--
a science redemption,
if you will.
Scientists
get a reliable staff
of long-term
research assistants.
Inmates get a job that beats
stamping out license plates.
It teaches me something,
makes me work with people,
and it's a new skill
that I've learned.
(narrator)
Resultantly, the learning
goes in both directions,
which leads Nadkarni
to an ironic hypothesis
about human nature.
(Nadkarni)
Everyone can be a scientist,
everyone can relate
to nature,
everyone can contribute
to science,
even those who are kept
from nature.
(narrator)
Her journey inside prison
has led
to even more irony.
It's terribly depressing
to walk into a prison,
to know that some men
will be there
for the rest of their lives--
I walk away enlightened.
(narrator)
Other prisons are now
interested in bringing
science and scientists
behind bars as well.
(Describer) A garden grows on the grounds.
For Science Nation,
I'm Miles O' Brien.
