When senior Kyra Tappin contacted her cousin – lawman Maurice Potter of the Denver Sheriff Department – about setting up a Field Period® experience, she had one request: no correctional facilities.
He had other ideas.
“We start filling out the paperwork, and he's like, ‘Psych! You're going to be in the detention center the whole time,’” said Kyra, a Criminology and Criminal Justice major. “And I was like, ‘You’re lucky you’re family.’”
Deputy Potter wasn’t simply pulling a prank on his cousin. He believes that, to effectively work in the criminal justice system – which is Kyra’s goal – one needs to understand how punishment and treatment fit into the system.
After four weeks at the Colorado Detention Center in downtown Denver, Kyra had a greater understanding of the challenges and nuances of criminal treatment and rehabilitation.
Working alongside the facility’s chaplain, Rachel Swalley, Kyra circulated among the correctional population, which was housed in six to eight “pods” on each of the building’s five floors. She met one-on-one with many of the inmates, providing materials, communicating requests, and, in some cases, getting to know their stories.
“I got a big understanding of how that helps and what that process is,” said Kyra, who added that she previously focused more on the prosecutorial and judicial aspects of criminal justice. “It really opened my eyes to how things are, especially for the correctional officers. They had a lot of issues to deal with.”
Kyra has long set her sights on a career in law enforcement, ultimately as an investigator for the New York State Police. When she began exploring colleges, Keuka College immediately caught her eye.
“I was looking at criminology as a major, and not a lot of schools offer criminology,” she said. “And Keuka College offers a Criminology and Criminal Justice program.”
A fall visit to the campus – “It was beautiful,” Kyra recalled – introduced her to the Field Period program and a College instructor who would go on to become a valued mentor.
“Mike Smith was a big influence,” she said of the popular instructor of criminal justice, who often presents to visiting potential students. “I went into his class, and he told us how he climbed from the military to patrol officer to sergeant to chief of police. I thought, that would be a great professor for me to learn from, someone who started literally from the bottom to where he is now.”
Prof. Smith also introduced a graduate who now works in asset protection at the Wegmans supermarket chain – someone whom Kyra had seen in her local market.
“I realized Keuka College can get you to where you want to be"
Kyra’s career goals are inspired, in part, by a desire to counter the impressions she heard from family and friends growing up in the city of Rochester, where police and other authority figures were too often painted as adversaries, rather than allies.
“Even when I committed to school for criminal justice, I had a lot of families stop talking to me,” she recalled. “They thought I was switching sides.”
Having worked with police officers, corrections officials, and criminal justice leaders from Penn Yan to Rochester to Denver, Kyra said, she’s seen how committed they are to the difficult work of keeping the peace, protecting communities, and helping others.
And she’s looking forward to joining them
“I want to be the change that convinces my family that, OK, they’re not here to do what you think they’re here to do. They’re here to help.”
