Andrius Banevicious photo
Marcus Harvin (right), with Ray Boyd, at Manson Youth Institution.
“Less than three years ago, I was called a number just like you,” Marcus Harvin began. “From this moment on, never call yourself a number. Never accept that.”
The scene was the library of Cheshire’s Manson Youth Institution (MYI), a Connecticut Department of Correction state prison for men under the age of 21. Harvin was at the facility earlier this month for a screening of “Fresh Start: A Marcus Harvin Story,” a short-form documentary that chronicles Harvin’s journey from incarceration to Yale Prison Education Initiative graduate to founder of the nonprofit Newhallville Fresh Starts, an enterprise to bring change through nutritional sustenance.
His appearance was part of the Next Level Empowerment Program, which aims to “facilitate successful re-entry through access to resources before, during, and after transition into the community.”
At MYI, Next Level’s focus is to “deter these young men from poor decision-making and ultimately a life of crime by teaching them through lived experience,” said Ray Boyd, the nonprofit’s founder, as well as program manager at the Yale Law and Racial Justice Center; Boyd was released in November 2021 after serving 30 years in prison from the age of 17. “The idea is to show these men through Marcus what success looks like,” he said.
Harvin, it seemed, was up to the challenge. “There is no inmate number on your birth certificate,” he told the 20 young men, clad in tan jumpsuits and seated across round tables in the cavernous space, before the screening. “Where you are right now is not who you are. What you did is not what you can be.”
He told them that when he walked out of prison a free man, on May 16, 2022, he “didn’t go home because my time was up. I went home because I made the most of my time.”
He read everything he could get his hands on — Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Michelle Alexander, to name a few — and enrolled in the joint UNH and Yale Prison Education Initiative, where he studied, among other classes, medicine and the humanities. Meanwhile, he was leading a Bible study group, one open to all religions. “We used the Bible as foundation for conversation,” said Harvin, a licensed minister.
Another conversation was happening with his friend and now business partner, Babatunde Akinjobi, a plan to provide nutritional sustenance to anyone who was hungry. “That’s the first step to everything else,” Harvin said. “If someone’s stomach is growling, they can’t hear anything.” From that plan came Newhallville Fresh Starts which in 2024 served 30,000 meals to people in homeless shelters, warming centers, and women’s shelters, Harvin reported, using excess food from the dining halls of area universities.
“No one will just hand you an opportunity, or a second chance, or a fresh start,” said Harvin, after describing a men’s support group he formed at Upon This Rock Ministries, called HIMpact. “You have to create your own. And right now is the time to start.”
The reason: “You have the most time to do what you want to do and be who you want to be right now, to free yourself from expectation,” he said. “A lot of people don’t believe you’re going to be someone. I like surprising people. This is your chance to surprise them.”
“How do we do that?” one of the screening’s imprisoned attendees asked.
“Make good use of the time you have here,” he said. “Don’t read hood books. Don’t listen to war stories. Don’t tell them. War stories are what got you here. Change the music you listen to. Don’t listen to anything that’s glorifying the life that got you here. There’s nothing glorious about prison.”
Read the books now, he said. Learn how to study, to develop good habits. Turn the TV off.
“Which books?” someone else asked. Harvin named the Steve Jobs biography for its lessons on discipline, as well as Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” That’s where he learned the Latin inscription respice finem, or live with the end in mind, to remind himself that life will not last forever, and to make the most of it.
Boyd, who leads discussion groups every Friday at MYI, lauded the staff, including Warden Michael Pearce, Deputy Wardens Tammy Perreault and Lynnia Johnson, and counselor supervisor Jilena Cichon for affording access to Harvin, as well as “their involvement in the rehabilitative efforts of the young men here.”
When the presentation ended, a queue of the young men thanked Harvin with a handshake or a hug.
“When can you come back?” one asked.
Harvin watching the documentary about his life.
Outside Manson Youth Institution.