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A Worldly Fall, A Spiritual Ascent:
The Jeff Grant Story
This article appears in the January 7, 2016 issue of the Greenwich Sentinel. We hope it offers faith and dignity to individuals and
families with white-collar and nonviolent incarceration issues. The
darkest days of a person's life can be a time of renewal and hope.
__________
Jeff Grant and his wife Lynn Springer
When the Rev. Jeff Grant speaks at conferences like the Correctional Ministry Summit and the Greenwich Leadership Forum, he speaks as a pastor who spiritually guides and supports people who have lost their way—namely white-collar criminals, along with and their often-neglected families.
The darkest days of a person’s life can still lead to hope and redemption,” said Grant, co-founder and minister-director of the Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouse & Children Project, the first ministry of its kind in the country. It was founded in Greenwich and remains an outreach ministry of Christ Church (among other churches), though Grant now lives in Weston.
Grant speaks from personal experience, having spent 14 months in a federal prison for a financially motivated crime stemming from bad decisions made under the influence of prescription drugs.
“There’s a transformation that goes on in every single person I’ve ever met that has gone through incarceration issues,” Grant said. “Whether they recognize it or not, at some point it becomes clear to them that they are no longer the people that they had been. That’s generally a good thing. These are life-altering experiences.”
Grant was a corporate and real estate attorney practicing in a high-flying law firm in Westchester County. His fall from grace started innocently enough: He suffered a ruptured achilles tendon while playing sports in 1992, and was put on the prescription painkiller Demerol.
“In the course of the rehabilitating that injury, I got hooked on the prescription narcotics,” Grant said. “Doctors were more than happy to continue to prescribe them to me, and I took them for about 10 years. Over the course of that time, I was abusing the painkillers and my judgment became more and more impaired.”
Grant gradually began losing control of his firm—until the day arrived when he couldn’t meet payroll, and he made up the shortfall by dipping into client escrow funds.
His prescription drug abuse continued unabated for a decade. In July of 2002, Grant attempted suicide, taking an entire bottle of Demerol at once.
He woke up at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan—where, he says, “I started my new life.”
Jeff Grant with his wife Lynn Springer (Photo by David Cluett)
“I joined a recovery group in Greenwich,” Grant said. “We had been living in Rye before moving to Greenwich for around 10 years.”
After 20 months
of sobriety, Grant received a phone call saying there was a warrant out
for his arrest having to do with a loan he’d been granted based on falsified paperwork filled out during his days of Demerol fog.
Shortly after 9/11, Grant had taken out a low-interest loan of $247,000, claiming he had suffered economic injury at Wall Street office that he did not in fact have; he later pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. (He repaid the loan, penalties and all.)
On Easter Sunday 2006, after Grant had been sober for almost four years, he reported to Allenwood Low Security Corrections Institution in Pennsylvania, and served 14 months.
“It was very frightening,” Grant recalled. “It was a harsh environment. The way I got through it was to focus on my mind, body and spirit.”
Grant took more than 200 guitar lessons while in prison, sought out religious services, and ran on the track for three to four hours a day.
“I walked 14,000 laps around the track, which is the equivalent of walking 3,500 miles.
I was able to get myself out of my own head by being on the track for
hours. It also gave me the opportunity to talk to the other inmates and
learn what their issues were.”
Along with losing 60 pounds in prison, Grant recalls there being one former lawyer (himself), two former doctors, and five former stockbrokers serving time behind bars.
In 2012 Grant earned his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, with a focus on Christian Social Ethics.
Grant’s first job out of prison came in Bridgeport, where he was hired as a practicing minister and later was appointed associate pastor and director of prison ministry at the First Baptist Church of Bridgeport. His Bridgeport experience has given him the unusual distinction of working with both the inner city poor and the backcountry rich.
Also in 2012, Grant and his wife, Lynn Springer, founded the Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouse & Children Project to lend a guiding hand to people who have been accused of, convicted of, or incarcerated for crimes ranging from DUI arrests to financially motivated felonies; as the project’s name suggests, it also aids their families, a largely invisible class of victim.
In 2014, for the
first time that anyone knows about, the project helped an innocent
spouse recover assets of hers that had been frozen by the federal
government. (Her husband had been a defendant in a white-collar crime case.)
Jeff Grant with his wife Lynn Springer
Springer, the project’s founding advocate, concentrates on working with the families. She says many of the people she works with are quite privileged, but adds that having a lot of money isn’t the same as living a life of abundance."
“We
are first-hand examples of how something very, very dark and seemingly
tragic has become something beautiful, hopeful, productive, and far better than the lives we had before,” she said.
Springer wasn’t married to Grant when he committed his crime, in 2001, but she remained with him when he was sentenced to serve time in prison. She describes the burden of prison on a family as confusing and life-changing, and recalled her own mistakes during the process.
“Initially, people have a lot of questions,” Springer said. “Typically in the upper-middle class,
where white collar criminals tend to come from, the husband has been
the bread winner. Generally, these are people who are considered to be
very well off. All of a sudden, all of their assets may have been seized by the SEC. They don’t know how they are going to buy food, how they are going to heat their home, or how they are going to put gas in their car. These are the things that happen initially.
“I think living in shame and lying are no way to go,” she continued. “I learned that because I didn’t initially tell my daughter [Jeff’s stepdaughter] the truth about Jeff’s
crime and where he was when he went to prison. She ended up very
disappointed in me for lying to her and for assuming that she couldn’t
handle the truth. Because of what I have learned from my daughter, I
have learned what to say to other people. Children need to know the
truth because children know when something is not right.”
Springer now talks with families that are going through the same punishing legal and financial ordeals, offering immediate and practical solutions such as guiding them toward local food banks and Operation Fuel banks.
Grant, in addition to heading the Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouses & Children Project, is editor of Prisonist.Org, a blog site focusing on local, national and international criminal justice and incarceration issues.
He has made appearances and speeches at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Yale Divinity School, The Nantucket Project, and in churches throughout the Northeast. He serves on the boards of Community Partners in Action, Healing Communities Network, and the Creative Projects Group, and has been written about on the websites of New York and Forbes magazines.
“Most don’t believe that they are going to come out of this
okay,” Grant said. “The fact that we dedicated our lives to faith and
restoring dignity, we’re examples of these things to them and to the
community. It brings them hope.”
Comments from Social Media:
In this article, Jeff Grant comes across as a person who tripped
himself up badly and got into serious trouble. He suffered. He turned
to his spiritual side. Then he turned his mistakes into courage, into
lessons learned, into strength and recovery, and into much wisdom which
he now shares with others. Like Jeff, many formerly incarcerated people
have gained hard-earned courage, strength, and wisdom, and like Jeff,
many have much to offer to the rest of us. Lets get to know them and to
learn from them, too.
For whatever reasons someone goes prison , it is what they do after
the experience that determines their path in life. You are correct to
state that you are never the same. I too had a life of abundance &
made a bad decision which landed me in prison for 2 years. I understand
the transformation & adjustments necessary to rebuild your life. I
have personally worked with you on projects & have found you to be a
man of ethics & honesty. Your word is your bond & you follow
through until the job is done. You represent to people reentering from
prison the possibility of another chance at a successful life. I
developed a program to teach inmates, released inmates & people with
criminal backgrounds how to go into business for themselves. It is
called the P.R.I.D.E. PROGRAM & this year we will have 4 sites. It
has been possible to achieve this due to your guidance & help in
opening doors for us. Thank you Jeff for a life well lived. You give
us all hope again.
Nancy Mattox: "keep on blessing and being blessed."
Christine (David): "Very inspiring!"
Tom Quinlan: "You're a good man doing wonderful things Jeff. "
A moving testimony!
Jeff you are a daily inspiration to me .. I can only thank you from my heart !
Nick Yanicelli: A truly inspiring message.
__________
Progressive Prison Project/
Innocent Spouse & Children Project
Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div, Minister/Director
jgrant@prisonist.org
(o) 203-769-1096
(m) 203-339-5887
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If transformation and redemption matter to you, a friend or a
family member with a white-collar or nonviolent incarceration issue,
please contact us and we will promptly send you an information package
by mail, email or via Dropbox. The darkest days of a person's life can be a time of renewal and hope.
