One Year Teaching In Jails

One of the most incredible things I get to do is teaching the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP) curriculum to incarcerated students in San Francisco Bay Area jails.

As I just concluded my first year working with EPP, I’m reflecting on over 200 hours spent with about 150 men and women, just feet away from their cells.

The most heartwarming feeling that I experience each time I’m with my program participants is how similar we all are. Sure, we’re different in a lot of ways - especially in levels of privilege (racial background, socio-economic status, childhood trauma, etc.) - but when we look deeper, we’re all human beings with a good heart, good intentions and full of potential. Yes, even people who have committed serious crimes have good hearts, good intentions and often an immense untapped potential to share their special gifts with the world.

And then an obvious aspect of incarceration that I knew intellectually but that hits me in the face each time I step inside a jail or a prison is that the focus on revenge and punishment does not work.

When people we care about are victimized, it’s very valid and human to feel all kinds of very painful emotions. It’s deeply enraging to suffer or see others suffer because of someone else’s actions. In reaction to this unfairness and pain, a part of us is driven to seek revenge and punishment as an attempt to reclaim our lost power and autonomy.

The problem is that revenge and punishment alone do not lead to the change that we want to see to feel safer and at peace, even if they might make us feel better in the short-term.

After all, when you make a mistake, what supports you in recognizing your error, empathizing with the person you might have hurt, and having the motivation to change? Would being dehumanized, sleep deprived, malnourished, disconnected and hated for months, years or decades help you in any way?

I didn’t think so.

From my experience of only one year inside, I can attest that EPP’s hypothesis is correct: what does work is supporting people in reconnecting to their essential self, their true nature. A human being’s true self is fundamentally good; it’s one’s reactivity that is not good. As EPP founder Susan Olesek says: “No baby is born a murderer, rapist or robber; these roles are fostered within their childhood environment” (paraphrased).

What our students have in common is a lack of attachment to nurturing caregivers, growing in poor and/or violent surroundings, and serious childhood trauma. Most of our students were regularly beaten by their parents and a high percentage of them were molested as children. A lot of them were surviving on the streets as children and were self-medicating their pain with addictive substances before they were even teens.

Anyone who is deeply connected to the depth of their inner goodness naturally uses it in healthy and productive ways. Anyone who has spent their whole childhood surviving chronic emotional and physical pain is deeply disconnected from that healthy sense of self and is more likely to get in trouble and hurt people.

Hurt people hurt people.

The EPP program is about teaching our students what we have learned ourselves: there is nothing wrong with us. We can heal our pain and we can learn to stay present to whatever triggers our reactivity. When we can tolerate being with whatever arises, we become able to shift from reactivity to response. We go from making mistakes to healing, and eventually to changing for the best and supporting others to do the same.

Working closely with people who have committed serious crimes is not for everyone. However, how about challenging our self to shift from a drive for revenge and punishment to supporting healing and focusing on rehabilitation?

Because healing, rehabilitation and evolution do happen when the right conditions are offered. Not only do I get to spend time with hurting people inside jails and prisons but I also get to spend time with healthy people who made it back to life outside, some after having served over 20 years in prison. These men and women are healed, they have changed, they are trustworthy, and they do beautiful work in the world.

People can change. But people change when they are loved, not hated.

Check out Enneagram Prison Project here if you want to know more.