insight out: restorative justice gets real
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You can't imagine what we can do to heal prisoners, families and communities with this comprehensive approach to restorative justice. It works in San Quentin, and it can work across the planet. Please support Insight Out with your year end gift, and help us spread the work.TRANSCRIPT
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Making Restorative Justice a Reality
Helping men take back their lives and
heal the violence
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I have visited San Quentin with other programs about half a
dozen times ... This time was special, especially with older men
who are learning how to turn their rages, their traumas, their
violent acts and crimes, into dignity and nobility. GRIP helps
formerly violent men become peacekeepers. It’s possible.”
— Author, speaker, poet, community organizer, activist, Louis Rodriguez
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Our programs save lives, return safe people to society, radically reduce costs, and improve community and family outcomes.
Our signature program, Guiding Rage into Power (GRIP), is run at San Quentin State Prison. It is a year-long transformative program that provides the tools that enable prisoners to “turn the stigma of being a violent offender into a badge of being a non-violent Peacekeeper.” GRIP is a compilation of best practices from seventeen
years of working with thousands of prisoners into a comprehensive offender-accountability program.
Not only have the men transformed their own behavior, they also have become agents of change, people with skills to defuse conflicts around them.
It’s time to extend this proven program into other facilities. In 2014, Insight Out aims to build the capacity to extend this program, through documentation and conducting a’ train the trainer’ program for scaling to other facilities, in response to a growing call for implementation of the GRIP Program, both nationally and internationally...
WORKING TO MAKE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE A REALITY
INSIGHT OUT:
www.insight-out.org
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All of this is about public safety... if you can do some intervention
while you have them in here, so they don’t create more victims
when they go back out, then you’ve achieved something.”
— Former San Quentin warden, Robert Ayers Jr.
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This five-minute video offers a rare opportunity to go inside San Quentin and
witness the two men actively engaged in the GRIP Program.
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2014 INITIATIVES
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Continue our Direct Involvement in San Quentin, running four classes for eighty-five men
Expand our Community Presentations with graduates who have been released
Build capacity to extend the program to other facilities at the state and county level
Run ‘Train the Trainer’ — courses and internships for people working in prisons from anywhere in the country
Formalize and publish the curriculum, workbook and video instruction series, to prepare for replication on a large scale
Permission has been granted to film the 2014 class inside of San Quentin — this production of the experience of the class of 2014, including videotaping and documentation of exercises, process and facilitation, will allow us to show the work and be an invaluable tool in spreading the work.
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I’ve been doing this a little over twenty-six years, and I see that
this program really does change men. I really do believe that.”
— Senior prison official, Bill Rodriquez Chief Deputy Warden
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ABOUT INSIGHT OUT
Insight Out is a small organization staffed by a small staff and a unique team of volunteers,interns and advisors. The organization’s work has made a large impact and has received extensive press coverage by Newshour, CBS News, SF Chronicle, etc. By expanding our funding base and building capacity, we can remain efficient, successfully address a glaring social need by very significantly growing the reach and impact of our program.
REDUCING STAGGERING PRISON COSTSIn 2013, One hundred people started the program, and we graduated 75 men. These men collectively have served 2374 years, at an annual cost to the citizens of California of $60,000 per inmate per year, which adds up to spending $143,320.000 dollars on one hundred men. We believe there is another way. Our solution simultaneously increases public safety while saving hundreds of millions of dollars.
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(Annual taxpayer cost of one inmate)
The dismal state of the correctional system is a serious threat to the state’s economic recovery. Due to economic pressures, the strategy of building more prisons and incarcerating more people has finally reached its end. In a historically unprecedented move, a panel of federal judges has forced Governor Brown to reduce the state prison population by 40,000 prisoners. This reduction was ordered as an aspect of the panel trying to run an adequate healthcare system in prisons that were 200% overcrowded.
Though we succeeded in pressing the Department to officially change its title from The Department of Corrections to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Departments budget never made it possible to actualize the rehabilitation aspect of their name, unfortunately. As a matter of fact, current economic woes have resulted in 85% cuts in the smattering of rehabilitation and education programs in California. It’s fair to say that rehabilitation effort are now largely in the hands of a few non-profits.
California’s fiscal situation has become the strongest factor in making this an opportune time to reform corrections. There is strong receptivity to Insight-Out’s’ message of rehabilitation in corrections, and it is poised to make the work ripple out. We seek to give access to a greater number of prisoners who would benefit from rehabilitation programming. The organization has begun to streamline, centralize, and increase access to its message. The strategic plan is poised to change the way we deal with violence and criminal justice in many more of our communities, at home and abroad. Prison rehabilitation is a victim’s rights issue, and a social issue.
WHY WE CAN’T AFFORD TO LOOK AWAY ...
$60,000
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WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE PROGRAM IS COMPLETED?
• Men who embody the transformation from violent
offenders to nonviolent peacekeepers work inside and outside of the prison as change agents to avoid
and diffuse the potential of violence around them.
When released, our graduates do many things:
• Youth Workers who have a persuasive voice in changing the trajectory of at-risk youth on the “school to prison pipeline.”
• Speakers who offer insights about transformative process, the prison industrial complex and offer themselves as exemplars of true rehabilitation
• Most importantly, they embody and model the role of safe men that are ready to give back, as they eventually return to their families and communities.
WHAT THEY DON’T DO? THEY DON’T GO BACK TO PRISON
GRIP graduates recidivism rates are at 0%, compared to 64% in the general prison population.
HOW IT WORKSRESTORATIVE JUSTICE WORKS FOR THE PRISON SYSTEM
• If we are not returning safer, more capable people to society, we waste money, re-victimize the public, live in fear and lose as a society.
• Insight-Out refers to the process the GRIP Prison Program teaches. This
process guides people on a healing journey deeply inside of themselves to come back out transformed and ready to serve others.
• Insight-Out also refers to the former prisoners working for the organization;
men that once were in prison and now are out. These men have become Change Agents that are trained and ready to give back to the communities they once took from. They are trained to work with challenged youth and teach their brothers and sisters who are still incarcerated.
• Lastly, Insight-Out seeks to reform the prison system from the inside out. We believe that only in directly supporting our prisoners in transforming themselves can we truly transform our prison system as well. Working firmly outside the ‘us and them’ fallacy, we represent a movement of engaged citizens that includes, professionals, law enforcement, victims, prisoners and at-risk youth.
• All of us consider ourselves stakeholders in the prison
environment; all of us wish to restore and secure our communities by playing a role in how we do prisons- and how not. We hold a vision of incarceration
that goes beyond punishment, into prisoners having the opportunity
to learn how to take responsibility and honor their victims, heal the pain they lashed out from and learn the skills that give them a second chance. This vision also seeks to up the money the state spends on education, saved from what it spends on incarceration.
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PROGRAMS AND OPERATING PLANWHAT WE CAN DO IN 2014, WITH YOUR HELP
Impact More PeopleWe can train 15 new trainers, which means we can expand to additional facilities,not just work in one. In San Quentin, we will work with 75 prisoners, train 15 facilitators and be ready to take on hundreds of prisoners in new program locations. That leads to 600 to 1000 prisoners that we can impact directly. For each prisoner impacted, we estimate that between their immediate families and their close associations in and outside the prison, they will each touch 10 other people (sons, daughters, brothers, sister parents nephews and nieces, parents and grandparents, etc.) - for 10,000 secondary lives impacted by this work. (Currently in 28 school-aged children have a parent incarcerated in the US, representing a population more at risk that anyone else to go to prison themselves…)
Go VirtualWe can film and produce the curriculum and narrative in video form and be in facilities worldwide.
Save MillionsIn graduating and releasing one year of 75 GRIP graduates, we would save 4.5 million dollars. If that money would be allocated by us, with that money we could graduate 750 people next year, saving society a minimum of 45 million dollars in incarceration costs alone.
We are the spark that sets a fire as we are in possession of 17 years of experience working with thousands of prisone4rs and having created a best practices Program called GRIP. We are a catalyst
that is poised to replicate and train hundreds of facilitators that in turn can train more facilitators.
Everyone who comes out of the program is a Change Agent, poised to give back to the community. True medicine comes from understanding what leads to a disease and curing the conditions that cause it.Benefit from reduced violence in and outside of prison (AT RISK YOUTH PROGRAM)
Contact Information:Jacques Verduin, DirectorP.O. Box 888Woodacre, CA 94973(415) 488-1348
Donation Information:501 c3Insight Out is currently fiscally sponsored by the Peace Development Fund. PeaceDevelopment Fund EIN#: 04-2738794
Online Donations:
Check Payable To: Peace Development FundCheck memo line: Insight-OutMail to: P.O. Box 888, Woodacre, CA 94973
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RECENT PRESS HIGHLIGHTS
San Francisco Chronicle, 2013:http://www.insight-out.org/images/SF%20Chronicle%20Article%20Summer%202013%20by%20Mark%20Nelson.pdf PBS News Hour and PBS Religion & Ethics Weekly News Magazine:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily_videos/prisoners-become-peacemakers-at-san-quen-
tin-2/
Chautauqua Institute: Crime and Opportunity:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxk5y2kHXxo
Fetzer Global Gathering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OrDrzuylHA http://www.lingholic.com/wp-content/up-
loads/2013/08/TEDx-logo.jpg
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InsightOut Newsletter December 2013
GRIP PROGRAM (GUIDING RAGE INTO POWER):PLEDGE ON BEING NONVIOLENT AND BEING A PEACEMAKER
Taking this pledge is about transforming my violence and healing my rage, starting with me, here and now, in this correctional facility. I make this pledge as a student and if I graduate from the GRIP Program in 12 months, I will have gained the skills to turn this pledge into a life-long commitment in the presence of my community.
I pledge to:• Stop my violence and practice peaceful ways of interacting with myself and others. I pledge to not initiate violence
in gang or race fights on the yard or elsewhere in the prison and to not verbally instigate and incite violence in such situations.
• Pray for healing for my victims and dedicate my study of this program to them.
• To learn how to respond rather than react by learning to mindfully observe my experience through regular practice, so I can make wise decisions.
• Treat my physical body with care by not overworking or overdoing. I will seek to find a balance between time to work and rest. I will strive to eat wisely, exercise, not smoke or use alcohol or other substances.
• Be true to my word and do as I say. I commit to being transparent and truthful because lying is abusive.
• Take only things that are given freely, not take things that don’t belong to me and live within my means.
• Learn how to listen to myself and others, especially to those who disagree with me.
• Understand that blaming, judging and criticizing people is disempowering and creates conflict. I strive to forgive others, let go of grudges and resentment and to apologize whenever it is helpful to do so.
• Take responsibility for how I regulate my emotions, understanding that ultimately, other people never make me feel the way I feel.
• Strive to learn how to express genuine affection, achieve intimacy and not harm others as a sexual being.
• Strive to establish equality in my relationships with other beings, particularly with women. I also strive to establish equality with people of different races, color, gender, sexual orientation, stature and religious backgrounds. This also includes children and elder people, as well as not harming animals, and all things living on this planet.
• Engage responsibility as an opportunity, not a burden; as a way to self-actualize and create change in the world.
• Seek to understand and communicate the needs underneath my anger or frustration. Commit to processing my feelings and find strength in my ability to be vulnerable.
• Become someone to who seeks to understand more than someone that seeks to be understood.
• Share with other program participants and not hide the times that I fail to stick to this pledge. Challenge violence firmly but kindly, in all its forms, whenever I encounter it - whether in my cell, on the yard, at work, or elsewhere in the community - and to stand with others who are treated unfairly, even if it means standing alone.
I give permission to my facilitators and fellow students to do what is needed to help me master the GRIP Program materials. I commit to this program as if life depends on it, because I understand that it does.
I, _________________________________________, living at ___________________________________ commit myself to become a non-violent person and a trained peacekeeper.
© Jacques Verduin – [email protected]