By Julie Masis
Staff Writer

From the outside, the New Hampshire State Prison looks like a 19th century fort, with steep brick walls and few windows. But the view from inside is more daunting as some of the state’s hardest criminals serve out their terms.

Sending home one for each of his grandchildren, Stephen Harbeski, 52, creates fi ve of almost every piece he creates. He is currently working on creating a hutch for his daughter-in-law by copying the design from a furniture magazine.

Yet there are a few rays of hope, a few moments of happiness. Among them is a furniture making class offered by the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association. The offering is among the fi rst like it in the state and promises to offer inmates a few hands-on skills for when they fi nish their time – if they fi nish their time. But more than hands-on skills, the class offers a taste of freedom, a taste of normalcy and a surprising lesson in life.

To get to the woodshop, an inmate has to pass through a steel door, then a windowless hallway, through three, four, six doors, and then go down a metal stairway into the inner courtyard. It smells like freshly cut grass. Overhead is bright blue sky with white clouds, and all around are prison walls and barbed wire. In the winter inmates shovel snow here; in the spring, they plant flowers.

Terry Moore has taught furniture making to prisoners for six years, since the New Hampshire Furniture Masters started its program here. He usually comes in once a month, for about two and a half hours, to instruct inmates on specifi c subjects, like making dovetailed drawers.

Framed photographs of expensive 19th century-style tables that were made here adorn the walls of the small room next to the woodshop. These exquisite pieces of furniture have sold for thousands of dollars at the Furniture Masters’ Auction.

The prisoners arrive in green shirts and pants, baseball caps and white T-shirts. Almost all have the same haircut and a mustache – they are required to shave everything else. Most of them are serving time for murder, usually of wives or girlfriends. Some have been locked up since the mid ’80s. Still, they look like anyone on the street on a regular day.

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“When you’re a prisoner,” Moore said, “in every part of your life, you’ve lost freedom – freedom to choose your clothes, freedom to choose your next meal, when you will go to bed, what you will do with your free time. You can’t choose your own toilet paper.”

Another freedom they lost is smoking. Rumor has it that a pack of cigarettes goes for $100.

According to Moore, the hobby program is the only freedom that they have.

To apply, a prisoner has to be on excellent behavior for one year, and even after that he still has to wait for another six to eight months. And if he does anything wrong, like talking back to a guard, the hobby craft program will be the fi rst thing they’ll take away, an incentive for prisoners to behave themselves.

Jason Carroll, 35, and Allen Eason, 40, participate in the Master Furniture Makers prison program. Eason has life without parole. He’s been in since 1987.

“I’m in here for fi rst-degree murder,” he said, “but I plead not guilty.”

Carroll has been incarcerated since 1989.

“What year is this?” he asked himself, calculating how long it’s been. “Too long,” he said.

Carroll is the new guy in the Furniture Masters program. He is in for second-degree murder. Neither of them is very talkative. Carroll said he didn’t want to be interviewed “(because) you have to watch what you say here.”

They both give the same answer to why they like woodworking.

“It helps you get away from the prison environment, because you’re focused on what you’re doing.”

Another inmate, Stephen Haberski, 52, has been in jail since 1979. He said his style is a bit different from the Furniture Masters. He likes to make items that are not quite as formal, stuff “that someone can put their feet up on.”

There is a beautiful wooden clock hanging just above his head.

“I have fi ve grandchildren,” he said. “So every time I make something, I make fi ve of it, and give one to each of them.”

He already made two clocks for each of his grandchildren and is currently building a dining room table and a hutch for his daughter- in-law.

“I killed my wife,” he said. “It was a druginduced deal, a mix of cocaine and jealousy. I was 27 at the time. My kids were 4 and 5. They visit every couple of months.“

Eason and Carroll are building a table together for the Furniture Master’s Silent Auction, one of the group’s annual fundraisers. All the money will be donated to purchase woodworking tools for a similar program starting in the Berlin prison next month.

Prisoners have donated money from the sale of their furniture to a kids’ camp in New Hampshire that needed canoes, to a little girl in Manchester who needed a bone marrow transplant and to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“You wouldn’t think it, but the prisoners are very active in trying to donate money to these different charities. It’s like they’re trying to redeem themselves,” Moore said.

Yet their good behavior will not shorten their sentences. The state’s truth in sentencing law states offenders have to serve the minimum of their sentence before they are eligible for parole. And for many of them, the minimum is decades away.

“Still,” Moore said, “almost all of them will get out at some point. There is one guy in there who’s served 21 of his 25 years. All of these people, except 1 percent, are going to eventually be out on the street, and would you prefer to live next to a prisoner who has been pumping weights or someone who’s been learning a skill?

“But it’s more than learning a skill,” he continued. “Woodworking teaches them patience and endurance. Most of them are in prison because when something went wrong, they didn’t have a voice inside that said, ‘Stop, don’t do that.’ A skill like woodworking teaches you about the frustrations of life, because nothing ever goes right (in woodworking).”