All My Friends are Felons: Finding Hope for the Utah Department of Corrections

After his long and successful career as a coach and high school administrator, Mark Hugentobler was sentenced to prison by his local school board. He became academy principal within the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, Utah. Arriving at the Island of Misfit Toys he soon recognized the vast, unexplored opportunities to help inmates: providing hope and purpose through education. He also gained the viewpoint of seeing prison life through an inmate’s eye. During his eight years down he saw enrollment in the prison academy jump from 200 to nearly 1,200 students and enacted, firsthand, a model of the change that is possible in a broken system. If only someone would listen.