🐦 Rehabilitation all around

At first glance, a state prison isn’t where you’d expect to find orphaned squirrels or injured blue jays. But step into Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, and you’ll see inmates bottle-feeding baby birds, tube-feeding opossums, and carefully tending to tiny rabbits in shoebox nests.

For more than two decades, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has partnered with the Ohio Wildlife Center to bring animal rehab programs inside prison walls.

• Today, five facilities host wildlife nurseries where 60+ incarcerated men volunteer to care for creatures that might otherwise not survive.

The impact is measurable: Between January and August of this year, Marion’s program alone admitted 284 wild animals and successfully released 186 back into their natural habitats. That means ducklings returning to ponds, squirrels leaping into trees, and robins reclaiming the skies—all thanks to men who are otherwise confined by bars.

The program isn’t just saving wildlife, it’s changing lives on the inside. Correctional staff say inmates gain patience, responsibility, and purpose by working with these animals. 

• Some participants have become highly skilled in animal care; one longtime volunteer has spent nearly 20 years refining the delicate art of hand-feeding fragile baby rabbits. 
• Others have collaborated with wildlife experts to solve real biological puzzles, like identifying a calcium deficiency that was causing opossum deaths.

The program creates a win-win scenario. The animals get a second chance at life, and inmates—many serving long sentences—get to experience the redemptive power of giving back.