Memoir Recounts Decades of Prison Reform, Faith, Forgiveness & Second Chances
By Cheril Vernon
Messenger Copy Editor
GRAPELAND — Once known for violence, intimidation and despair, the Eastham Unit (now called the Wainwright Unit) in Houston County became the setting for a transformation that longtime prison chaplain Dr. Vance Drum believes offers lessons far beyond the walls of a correctional facility.
Drum chronicles that change in his new memoir, “Transformed: The Big Bad Texas Prison Turnaround.”
The book draws on his 32-year career with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, including nearly 28 years at Eastham (1985-2012). It tells how prison administrators, wardens, correctional officers, chaplains, volunteers and incarcerated men helped change an institution once associated with brutality into one offering opportunities for education, accountability, peer mentorship and spiritual growth.
“I wrote the book because I saw a great transformation at Eastham and a great transformation in the whole Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” Drum said during an interview with The Messenger. “And I saw up close and personal what caused it, what happened, and saw the six major components that came together.”
Those influences were not always coordinated, he explained. Nevertheless, they converged to produce change he believes other institutions can learn from. “I wanted to tell the story of how it happened and why it happened,” he said. “And it can be replicated if people do what needs to be done.”
The 1980s
Eastham’s reputation was firmly established long before Drum arrived. An Oct. 6, 1986, “Newsweek” cover story on the unit bore the title “Inside America’s Toughest Prison,” capturing the fear surrounding one of Texas’ most notorious institutions at that time.
Its history included a connection to outlaw Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame. Incarcerated at Eastham beginning in 1930, Barrow endured violence and abuse there and killed an incarcerated man who had assaulted him. Accounts of his time at the prison describe an embittered young man who vowed never to return to “the Ham.”
Conditions within the broader Texas prison system also prompted a landmark legal challenge. In 1972, incarcerated activist David Ruiz filed a handwritten complaint alleging unconstitutional conditions in the Texas Department of Corrections, as the agency was then called. His case, Ruiz v. Estelle, went to trial in 1978 and concluded testimony in September 1979.
On Dec. 12, 1980, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice issued a major decision finding widespread constitutional violations, including conditions that ran afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The court approved a consent decree addressing numerous issues in March 1981, and litigation and court-supervised reform continued thereafter.
A central issue was the “building tender” system, under which selected prisoners, called BTs, were allowed to exercise authority over others. The arrangement fostered intimidation and violence, with some building tenders acting as unofficial guards. The litigation exposed the abuse and helped bring an end to that system.
Drum opens his memoir with a striking encounter from that legacy: He was called upon to deliver a death notification to the man he describes as the undisputed Eastham kingpin of the feared building tender cabal. It is a reminder of the prison culture that preceded the reforms he would witness.
Chapter 2, “Death on the Farm,” describes a wave of suicides and homicides beginning on Mother’s Day Sunday in 1985. Drum recalls the bleak conditions and how he prayed that the deaths would stop. The account establishes just how formidable the challenge of changing Eastham would be.
Eventually, he watched a prison once associated with brutality and fear begin to transform into a place where faith, education, accountability and rehabilitation offered incarcerated men an opportunity to change the direction of their lives.
An unexpected
calling
Becoming a minister was hardly Drum’s childhood ambition. For years, from his teens into adulthood, he insisted he would never be a preacher. Even at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston, he pursued theological studies rather than a pastoral ministry degree.
After working in banking and a variety of other jobs, he moved with his family to Indiana during a recession and struggled to find employment. A small country church with six members offered him $50 a week to preach on Sundays. He accepted to help support his wife and two sons — and discovered he loved it.
“God said, can you hear me now?” Drum recalled with a laugh.
He moved to Texas in 1981, served a church in Lancaster and began volunteering at the Dallas County Jail. He eventually became a chaplain at Eastham, later serving as TDCJ regional director of chaplains for 14 East Texas prisons and then TDCJ director of chaplains statewide. He retired from TDCJ in 2017.
His local ministry has continued alongside his corrections career. Drum began pastoring Sunset Christian Church in Grapeland in May 1999 and is now in his 28th year with the congregation.
Lives and
institutions changed
Drum’s memoir is organized into three parts: “The Incarcerated,” “The Wardens” and “The Transformation.” Its afterword, “God’s Next Chapter: The Prison Seminaries Movement,” looks at ongoing prison education and peer ministry efforts.
Alongside descriptions of institutional reform, Drum tells smaller, deeply human stories. He writes about “cleaning house” in the prison chapel, disputes in the choir and an amusing chapter titled “Cowboys Prayer.” Other passages consider the patience required to deal with anger, distrust and men who initially resisted his ministry.
One especially moving chapter, “Two Voices,” concerns two men in the Eastham chapel on Saturday, Sept. 10, 1988. Its theme of forgiveness illustrates the book’s central conviction that even those who have caused great harm are capable of confronting the past and choosing a different path.
Drum acknowledges the severity of the crimes committed by many of the people he served. “They’ve made horrible choices and done the wrong thing and hurt other people,” he said. Yet he argues that refusing to offer opportunities for change can ultimately harm the wider community.
“Ninety-five percent of people in prison will one day again be our neighbors in the free world,” he said. “That’s why we should not lock them up and forget about them and throw away the key because they’re going to get out.”
Education, counseling, spiritual programs and respectful accountability, he believes, can help people leave prison better prepared to contribute to society. Those efforts also benefit staff and prison managers by reducing tension and making facilities safer.
Leadership, Volunteers & Second Chances
Perhaps the most significant lesson in “Transformed” is that people should not be permanently defined by the worst decisions of their lives.
Throughout the memoir, Drum recounts the stories of incarcerated men who experienced changes in their thinking, their relationships and their faith.
Some became mentors. Others developed leadership skills or began helping fellow prisoners find a more constructive path.
The stories also demonstrate that institutional change requires more than policies and programs.
It requires people willing to invest time, demonstrate compassion and maintain hope when circumstances appear hopeless.
For Drum, that lesson is deeply personal.
He remembers being a shy young man who never imagined becoming a minister, much less spending decades inside one of the country’s most intimidating correctional facilities.
Yet that unlikely calling became his life’s work.
Today, he continues to believe that even the darkest circumstances can become opportunities for transformation.
And through his new book, he hopes others will recognize that the same possibility exists not only behind prison walls, but wherever people are willing to pursue meaningful change.
The people who helped change a prison
Throughout the memoir, Drum emphasizes that the transformation of Eastham was never the accomplishment of one individual.
Prison administrators, wardens, correctional officers, chaplains, volunteers and incarcerated peer mentors all played important roles.
Drum credits leadership changes within TDCJ, particularly the appointment of administrators committed to improving prison conditions and rehabilitation opportunities.
He also points to the influence of Carol Vance, a former chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, who recognized the need for greater community involvement in correctional facilities.
According to Drum, the expansion of volunteer opportunities opened prison doors to individuals and organizations offering education, substance abuse assistance and religious programming.
These efforts helped create opportunities for incarcerated individuals to learn skills and develop values that had often been absent from their lives.
Drum also discusses the contributions of his predecessor, Chaplain Emmett Solomon, whose ministry helped lay the groundwork for later changes at Eastham.
The book describes the importance of persistence, consistent leadership and meaningful personal relationships.
Change, Drum makes clear, was not immediate.
It required years of effort from people willing to believe that a different prison environment was possible.
Boundaries & Changed Attitudes
Although Eastham’s reputation might suggest a career filled with personal danger, Drum said he never experienced an intentional assault during his 32 years with TDCJ.
He did, however, have one unusual encounter involving a flying food tray.
While speaking with an inmate in a detention area, Drum was struck in the leg by a heavy plastic food tray thrown from another cell.
The impact tore his pants, broke the tray and left him with a bloody abrasion.
The following day, Drum approached the inmate responsible and asked why he had thrown it.
The man apologized, explaining that he had actually been angry with a correctional officer and had intended to strike the next person who came down the walkway.
That person happened to be the chaplain.
Drum tells the story calmly, reflecting the demeanor that served him throughout his career.
He said his approach to dealing with difficult individuals was generally straightforward: listen carefully, maintain appropriate boundaries and offer whatever assistance prison policies permitted.
Sometimes an inmate who initially resented him would return years later with an entirely different attitude.
For Drum, those experiences demonstrated why consistency and patience matter in ministry.
New challenges beyond prison walls
Despite the progress he witnessed over more than three decades, Drum believes significant challenges remain within prisons and in the communities to which incarcerated people eventually return. Among his greatest concerns are illegal drugs, weakened family guidance and the difficulty some churches have had connecting with people who need help.
He said drugs have long been present in correctional facilities, but he considers today’s problem especially serious, citing synthetic drugs such as K2 and fentanyl. Addiction, in his view, can undermine a person’s ability to maintain employment, develop healthy relationships and establish stability – in current society or after leaving prison.
Drum also believes that the lessons children learn at home can have lasting consequences. Parents, he said, have a responsibility to provide “guidance, love, nurture, and discipline” — and that responsibility involves more than simply being physically present.
“Parents need to be present,” he said, “not only physically, but also emotionally,” paying attention to their children rather than becoming absorbed in television, phones or other screens.
He argues that churches, too, must do more to reach people who are struggling. While acknowledging that many congregations provide important support, Drum believes some have lost touch with those most in need of direction and belonging. He also sees education, work and positive relationships as essential to escaping destructive patterns.
Those concerns connect directly to what Drum calls moral rehabilitation, a theme he explores in the book’s afterword on the prison seminary movement. For some people entering prison, he said, the process is less about relearning right from wrong than encountering those lessons in a meaningful way for the first time.
“It’s a sad fact that when people come to prison, prison saves them in a strange way. Prison slows people down,” Drum said. “God arrests people, slows them down from their life in the world, which is unproductive and destructive. And in prison, they hear new ideas and new thoughts about how to do your life that they had never heard from anybody in their whole life before.”
In that pause, he believes, people may encounter ideas about responsibility, relationships and faith they had never seriously considered – or learned while growing up. Chaplains, teachers, incarcerated peer ministers and volunteers can help turn that opportunity into lasting change.
For Drum, the goal is not simply to improve behavior inside a prison. It is to help people develop the judgment and skills they need to build better lives when they eventually return home.
A ministry that
continues beyond
retirement
Although Drum retired from TDCJ nearly a decade ago, his work within prisons continues.
He currently serves as director of chaplaincy training for Prison Seminaries Foundation, an organization established in 2017 by Burl Cain, former warden of Louisiana’s Angola prison.
Drum began working with the foundation in 2018.
In his current role, he helps train correctional chaplains in multiple states and visits incarcerated field ministers who have completed prison seminary programs.
He said there are more than 400 such field ministers serving in approximately 57 Texas prisons.
These individuals receive advanced education and training designed to prepare them to provide peer ministry and mentoring within correctional facilities.
Drum said prison seminary programs now operate in approximately 20 to 21 states, offering educational opportunities for both men and women.
The movement represents what Drum considers an important next chapter in correctional rehabilitation.
He explained that the programs combine theological education with a broader liberal arts curriculum, including subjects such as history, mathematics and English.
Graduates are then able to use their education to minister to others within the prison population.
Drum believes these programs are especially important because many incarcerated individuals have never received consistent moral guidance or positive instruction about how to live.
He also remains concerned about the continuing challenges facing correctional institutions, particularly illegal drugs and addiction.
Despite those concerns, Drum believes education, faith and strong community involvement can continue to make a difference.
Drum also recognizes the need for greater support and guidance in homes and communities. Nevertheless, he continues to believe that moral education, mentoring and committed leadership can offer a path forward.
Praise from those who witnessed the change
The book includes endorsements from correctional administrators, educators, chaplains and prison ministry leaders.Among them are Bryan Collier, retired TDCJ executive director; Bobby Lumpkin, TDCJ executive director; Byron Johnson, a Baylor University distinguished professor and founding director of its Institute for Studies of Religion; and David Stacks, a former Eastham warden and Director of the Texas Prison Museum.
Dr. Jim Browning, a retired Air Force chaplain associated with the Marsh Institute for Chaplains, suggests the book’s audience should be much wider than corrections professionals. Its lessons about leadership, institutional resistance and lasting change, he argues, can apply wherever people are working in difficult circumstances.
For readers in Houston County and surrounding communities, however, the story also offers an unusual look at a nearby institution whose name became synonymous with harsh confinement — and at the sustained work required to change that reputation.
Meet the author
Drum plans to sell signed copies of “Transformed: The Big Bad Texas Prison Turnaround; A Memoir” for $20 at the 81st Annual Peanut Festival in Grapeland on Saturday, Oct. 17.
He also expects to attend Christmas in Crockett on Saturday, Nov. 21 and Lovefest in Lovelady next February.
A book signing with refreshments is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at The Station in Grapeland, across from Brookshire’s. The book’s official publication date is Oct. 20.
For Drum, the memoir’s message ultimately comes down to the possibility of change — in individuals, in institutions and in places where hope once seemed impossible.
