Inside Prison Programs
NVC and Mindfulness Curriculum Description
Programs in the Community
Program History

Our prison programs have grown in success and participation steadily since our inception.  Prisoners have increasingly connected with Freedom Project’s tools of nonviolence.  In 2007, we embarked on the most ambitious prison training program in our history.  DOC has invited Freedom Project to expand our programs into more prisons and we hope to respond by adding additional prisons and prisoners as our training resources grow.  Over the longer term, Freedom Project is committed to offering nonviolence trainings in more prisons. 

Many Washington State Department of Corrections administrators and security officers increasingly recognize Freedom Project’s programs as supportive in reducing the level of violence in prisoners.  In 2007, Freedom Project is in the initial stages of collaboration with Antioch University and the Washington State Department of Corrections and hopes to undertake two research projects which will assess the intrinsic and extrinsic effects of NVC and mindfulness trainings with prisoners.  These may well be the first studies anywhere in the world on the effects of training prisoners in NVC and mindfulness.

Freedom Project offers our prison trainings, classes and groups freely and directly to prisoners who choose to participate on a first-come, first-serve basis.  Our trainings focus on skills-acquisition around personal and social tools of nonviolence.  Freedom Project provides ongoing trainings in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and mindfulness practice (self-awareness).  After introductory workshops, Freedom Project offers follow-up courses, NVC study groups, and support groups for inmate facilitators, as well as multi-day theme-based workshops on anger, empathy / self-empathy, reconciliation, mindfulness, connecting couples, and parenting. 

Freedom Project’s programs inside prisons include:

• Two-day NVC Basic workshops.  In these frequent workshops, prisoners are introduced to concepts and models and have opportunities to experience and directly engage with aspects of this communication model in a variety of hands-on curriculum activities.
  
  
• Regular 7 to 18-week classes/practice courses on NVC and mindfulness both at introductory and intermediate levels.  Occasionally, Freedom Project offers classes to support NVC presentation skills-building for prison mentors.
  
  
• Monthly trainings for a select group of inmate mentors, who coordinate the our programs from inside prison, assist with workshops and practice groups, and form the core of a growing inside NVC community.
  
  
• Two and three-day theme-based workshops applying NVC basic skills and mindfulness practice to specific themes such as anger, reconciliation, empathy/self-empathy, mindfulness couples support and parenting.   Theme workshops are designed for prisoners who’ve already experienced one or more NVC basic workshops and wish to deepen skills in a variety of areas like family connection, healing for victims and perpetrators, productively engaging anger or develop existing skills.