From Coach to Academy Principal in Utah's Correctional System | Meet Your Host, Mark Hugentobler

Today Mark is being interviewed by his friend, Paige Norton, so that you can get to know him, his background, and how he got into this space of working with felons and the criminal justice system. He started out his career as a basketball coach, but after a turn of events, he was reassigned to be working in a prison. Mark assumed the inmates were being helped and that there were good systems in place to help rehabilitate these individuals to get back on their feet and into society, but things in prison at the time weren’t like this at all. Join Mark and Paige today to find out how he was able to become a part of the correctional system and make some big changes, helping a lot of felons change and be better prepared for life. “I have always believed that people are inherently good, and if given opportunity and choice, at some point in their life when they come to themselves and realize that they’re on a bad path and there’s another way to live, they will choose the other way. I’ve seen that countless times.” 33:25

Who Mark was prior to his “prison sentence” 1:30
Going to Prison 7:00
When education started really changing 18:15
Learning people’s backstory 24:25
They learn how to be criminals 30:40
“All My Friends Are Felons” book 37:00

“The system is not helping people. The system is very twisted. I’m not saying it’s corrupt or that it’s bad, as a matter of fact most of the correctional officers I worked with are really good people. A lot of them are in my community and I’ve coached a lot of ‘em in basketball, so they’re good people, but the system is not set up to do what we think as regular citizens that it’s supposed to do at all.” 22:20