Retired Graterford nurse is back in prison – as a volunteer
There’s a trick to dealing with the force of nature that is Nurse Peggy.
To get Margaret “Peggy” Beauchesne, RN, to do anything, simply tell her that she can’t. For her, it’s the verbal equivalent of the starting pistol at the racetrack. Sound the “no,” and off Peggy speeds as both a retired nurse and a Prison Society volunteer to solve whatever problems stand in the way of kindness and justice.
“I’m very impatient. I’m very stubborn,” Peggy said. “I want everything to be right yesterday.”
Peggy has a unique background for a Prison Society volunteer. For 25 years, she served as a nurse at the now-closed SCI Graterford. Now she’s back as a volunteer prison monitor at the new prison next door to Graterford in suburban Philadelphia, SCI Phoenix .
When she first went to Graterford as a part-time fill-in nurse, one lieutenant urged her to quit before she even started her first shift. He told her that she was an itty-bitty little thing and not the type to work in a prison. Actually, she had been thinking the same thing – until he opened his mouth.
“My Irish went up,” she said, recalling what she told the lieutenant. “‘You don’t think I could work here? What’s the type? Do I have to weigh 300 pounds and have a sour-puss face like you?’”
When she began her job, she was appalled at the conditions at Graterford.
“I saw patients that were so sick, and they weren’t getting good care. It seemed like nobody cared,” she said. “There was nothing right about their care.”
Her supervisors criticized her for doing too much. (Probably the wrong tactic.) They advised her to delegate.
“I’d delegate if you’d give me people who know how to do things right. I don’t have people I trust enough to delegate,” she remembered telling her bosses. “I would do all the IVs and all the medications. I would knock myself out – crazy.”
Bit by bit, and “no” by “no,” she made a difference. She made sure people got the right care. She wasn’t afraid to intimidate her supervisors into doing the right thing. She initiated basic health classes about conditions like diabetes, foot care, HIV, and prostate cancer.
When she left the prison to go into another field of nursing, she never forgot what she saw at Graterford.
So, when she retired as a clinical care nurse in 2022, she knew she wanted to come back. Even if she could no longer be a prison nurse, she could become a prison volunteer. But how?
That’s when she remembered the Prison Society. When she worked at Graterford, she had known of the group by reading Graterfriends, a newsletter published by the Prison Society and written for and by incarcerated people.
Peggy connected with the Prison Society, got training as a monitor, and now travels to SCI Phoenix several days a week, driving about 20 minutes from her home in Chester County.
“She’s a powerhouse, and she’s in there as often as she can be. All the guys know her. They line up to see her,” said Emily Cheramie-Walz, the Prison Society’s development director.
“Peggy has visited nearly 200 people in the last year, and she regularly maintains contact with several through the ConnectNetwork (prison email service),” wrote Dzemila Bilanovic, who supervises Peggy as the Prison Society’s prison monitoring manager for Eastern Pennsylvania.
It’s actually more than several – Peggy’s in touch with at least 100 incarcerated people. She receives and answers about 50 emails a week.
“She is without a doubt the heart and soul of prison monitoring at SCI Phoenix,” Dzemila said. “We are beyond lucky to have her wisdom, care, and tenacity. She is remarkable because she sees injustice, and instead of despairing, she gets angry (in the best way possible!) and fights like hell to make things better.
“I am in constant awe and admiration of her,” she said.
Dzemila’s a fan, and so are the incarcerated men at SCI Phoenix.
“Good morning Mrs. Peggy, I prey [sic] to God, when you receavied [sic] this message, it will find you in the best of health, I prey [sic] to God your trip is safe, I won’t to thank you for the help you have given me,” wrote one man in an email.
“First and foremost I’d like to thank you for your response to gentlemen here,” wrote another man. “The work you all do is amazing!”
When Nurse Peggy returned to the prison after nearly 20 years away, she found plenty of lifers she remembered from her days as a staff nurse.
“I know a lot of the old heads, because I am an old head,” Peggy said, laughing.
These days, she mostly visits people referred to her either by the Prison Society or by the men she meets in Phoenix. If there are medical issues, she listens, writes up her notes, and urges the men to sign a document allowing the prison medical staff to discuss their private patient information with the Prison Society.
As a volunteer, she doesn’t have the same leverage she had as a staff nurse, which frustrates her. What encourages her are the small triumphs – like learning that an incarcerated man was finally transported to the hospital after she advocated on his behalf.
“That’s what makes my day – the little wins,” she said.
Peggy says she encourages people she meets to volunteer for the Prison Society.
“Most people are reluctant because they view it as [working with] horrible people who might hurt you and attack you, but when you sit and talk to them, you understand that they are somebody’s brother, somebody’s son, somebody’s father. They should have the same dignity as every human being.
“By volunteering and visiting with them, you show them that someone cares for them. Some of them don’t have family. Some of them have family who have disengaged. Some have families who are too far away.
“I wish there were more community involvement,” Peggy said, so that prisons would become more humane, focused more on rehabilitation and reentry, rather than on punishment.
“I want to see a change in the laws. We can’t change the laws until we have more voices – and they have to be from the community, pressuring the legislators and the governor,” she said. Peggy would like to spend the day at Phoenix with Gov. Josh Shapiro, “so I could introduce him to some of my guys.”
He’d meet the blind man with one leg, for example, a senior citizen who has been in prison for decades and is unlikely to pose a danger to the community given his age and medical needs, Peggy said. “I don’t know what kind of crime a blind guy with one leg can commit. I don’t.”
Peggy also encourages people to donate. “By donating you would be part of raising awareness, of getting the word out to our legislators and the community. The community needs to be more aware of the prisons,” Peggy said.
“How do you get people to care?” she asked. “If they don’t care about human beings and how they are treated, maybe they’ll care about their tax money and how much it costs to keep them in prison.
“You are trying to change hearts and minds.”
Right now, rising needs and shrinking resources mean your support is more important than ever. Will you stand with Peggy—and with us—by making a donation to make more of these small, life-changing wins possible?