James Farrin

Yet Farrin almost passed on the opportunity proposed by Charles Puttkammer, a Princeton classmate and the program’s co-founder.  Puttkammer wanted to establish a prison tutor program to honor his late friend, Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene Jr., a former inmate who became a noted TV and radio personality in Washington, D.C. He offered to fund the idea if Farrin would manage it. Because he enjoyed running his Princeton-based consulting firm, Farrin at first planned to decline the offer. That notion changed a day later after his wife met the chaplain of the Alfred C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in New Jersey and learned it needed volunteers.

“I thought maybe it was a sign. I thought about my thesis,” says Farrin, a father of five who earned a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. Farrin’s thesis for his undergraduate degree in politics explored the career of Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey, a pioneer of the American juvenile justice system. Lindsey treated young offenders with an uncommon dignity that aided in their rehabilitation. “You have to show people trust and respect,” says Farrin. “We all make mistakes.”

Erich Kussman believes he wouldn’t have obtained his GED without the guidance of Petey Greene tutors. “Education really opens up your mind to things you didn’t know were there,” says the 37-year-old, who served 12 years for armed robbery. He recalls being shocked that the tutors were volunteers. “Who goes to teach people in prison without getting paid?” asks Kussman, who earned an undergraduate degree in biblical studies after his release in 2013 and is now in his second year at the Princeton Theological Seminary. “I’ll always remember that.”

Such stories are familiar to Farrin, though he often tears up while recounting them. It’s the desire to give more inmates a second chance that keeps him pushing to expand the program. In between garnering donations, Farrin still makes time for prison high school graduation ceremonies. “There is nothing like being in the prison and seeing one of the graduates’ moms start to cry because she is so proud,” Farrin says.