Bus 52: Knitting Behind Bars

These videos form part of a St Andrews graduate’s year-long project to find good people and good stories from across the U.S.A. This week: Maryland “Listen, if I can do […]


These videos form part of a St Andrews graduate’s year-long project to find good people and good stories from across the U.S.A. This week: Maryland

“Listen, if I can do it, then anyone can do it.”

Every Thursday at five o’clock, you can find Lynn Zwerling and Sheila Rovelstad, needles in hand, providing encouragement and guidance to diligent pupils working on hats or sweaters.

As students and teachers settle into the quiet hum of the knitting circle, a cloud of relaxed calm falls across the group. Lynn and Sheila’s knitting class is like many others across the country. Except theirs takes place in prison and their students are inmates.

At the Jessup Pre-Release Unit (JPRU) in Jessup, Maryland, the relationship between the inmates and the women is like family, and the bond between inmate and knitting is just as natural.

For more information on Knitting Behind Bars visit their website. Volunteers and those interested in donating to Knitting behind bars can put requests through their website. If you’re interested in purchasing Sheila’s yarn, ‘I Fought the Law, and the Law Won,’ you can visit her Etsy site .