LEAVING PRISON BEFORE GETTING OUT “AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM HAS DETERIORATED TO THE POINT THAT IT IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE.” -SENATOR JIM WEBB, VIRGINIA (D) ORIGIN COLUMNIST: JAMES FOX
he US has 4% of the world’s population, yet 25% of the world’s imprisoned. Over 7 million adults are under correctional supervision. That’s 1 in 31 adults in prison, on parole, or probation. The majority are African American and Latino. Even as violent crime has recently declined, the prison population has dramatically increased. With an annual cost of almost $60 billion, we spend more on our prisons than we invest in education. The prison system is not only dysfunctional but also a dismal failure considering that the national recidivism rate is 60% (3 in 5 return to prison within 3 years of release).* Ten years ago I embarked on a path to bring the transformative benefits of yoga to incarcerated youth and adults, not realizing the impact my efforts would have in empowering people to break free in this broken system. I became a student of yoga in 1986, starting with Iyengar Yoga and then exploring Ashtanga Yoga. I experienced effects much deeper than the physical benefits, and I realized that it was quite compatible with my Vipassana meditation practice. By 1999, I wanted to teach and give back, sharing all the physical, emotional, and psychological benefits that I had experienced from my own practice. I had heard a lot about Erich Schiffman and enrolled in one of his teacher trainings. I was heavily impacted by something he said: “Don’t teach necessarily what others teachers are teaching. Find what it is that you have to offer and teach that.” I contemplated teaching outside of a yoga studio. Near where I lived, there was a residential treatment program for 24 boys, called Full Circle. Most of the boys came from neglected or at-risk circumstances, or had been court-ordered into the program. I volunteered to teach these boys and discovered that yoga gave them the ability to self-soothe in a way that Ritalin and other meds failed. I taught there for about 5 years until the program lost its state funding and closed. PHOTO: ROBERT STURMAN originmagazine.com | 60