Richard Gross describes the restorative justice workshops he helps facilitate in prison. Through examples, he shows us how the experience can be profound, transformative and cathartic.

I am a volunteer facilitator for Let’s Circle Up (LCU) in Pennsylvania. LCU conducts restorative justice education workshops inside the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Phoenix in Montgomery County, PA. LCU was created by incarcerated men at Graterford, the abandoned prison located on the same 1,600-acre property as SCI Phoenix. Our work is supported by Haverford College’s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC). We have dedicated volunteers who come in from the free world to help us do this work.

These two stories show how the experience can be profound and transformative.

We promote story sharing in RJ to help people learn from each other. The exercise is called triads because participants share in groups of three. It is more comfortable to share your personal experiences to two people than the whole circle of 15-20. The prompt was “my earliest memory of witnessing a crime.” One of the participants left the room and was standing in the hallway.

I was writing the next prompt on the board: “a time someone caused me harm.” I asked a co-facilitator to go ask him if he’s okay. Our outside volunteer, Scott, went out too. I was anxiously wondering what was being said. Did I say something wrong? Will we have to call somebody?

It turns out that the man’s father had been murdered right in front of him when he was only five years old. The prompt triggered that memory and he didn’t want to cry in front of the group. While those of us in prison have committed crimes, we have also witnessed crimes at young ages and been victims of crimes ourselves. This exercise brings these memories out so we can better understand the harm we have both caused and experienced. It can trigger trauma but we are among friends. The whole group was supportive of him and told him it was okay to cry, saying that they would too!

In another group, one of the participants was housed on a mental health unit. I knew it from seeing a list of our participants but did not share this. There is a stigma attached to mental illness both inside and outside of prison. Several sessions into the workshop we had built a community, a safe environment to share things about ourselves that we may not ordinarily tell people. The young man decided to tell the group that he was on a mental health block and took psychiatric medication. He likely thought he was alone in that. I told my story of being on a mental health unit for the first six years of my incarceration. My county jail had placed me on a high dose of thorazine.

One by one, other men admitted their own mental health history, having been on Mental Health Units in the past and taking psych meds now.

Before we moved on, almost a third of the 18-20 men there had admitted their history, thus removing the stigma. Many people begin their time on an MHU then move to general population later on. A large percentage (10-25%) of incarcerated people take psych meds. It’s very common; people call the meds skittles.

Let’s Circle Up allows me to meet those I would otherwise not meet. Q is Black, I am white; he is young, I am old; he has face tattoos, I have no tattoos. As a parole violator he wears blues; as a permanent resident I wear browns. I wouldn’t have just approached him and struck up a conversation, nor would he have with me. Yet in a four-session, two-day workshop we got to know each other well and developed a great respect for one another. The day after the workshop he got shipped to another jail. I don’t know where, but I do know that he is saying good things about LCU and spreading the word about restorative justice to people I will not likely meet.

This is how the idea spreads. This is how the groundwork is laid for our nation to embrace RJ and abandon our vengeful, retributive justice system. There is a better way.

Richard Gross #FF9878
SCI Phoenix
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, FL 33733

The post Restorative Justice Workshops Can Be Transformative first appeared on Prison Writers.