NCJ Number
146999
Journal
Corrections Compendium Volume: 16 Issue: 6 Dated: (June 1991) Pages: 1,6-8
Date Published
1991
Length
4 pages
Annotation
For 6 years, inmates at New York State's Elmira Correctional Facility have been working with community volunteers in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), which involves a 22-hour workshop, in an effort to curb the rising levels of violence.
Abstract
The workshop takes place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday evening from 6 to 10 p.m. Participants take part in a variety of exercise designed to break down barriers, allow for relaxation and fun, build community, examine self-violence, explore how violence escalates, and look at methods of intervention. Three- quarters of the men participating will go through both the basic and advanced workshops. The program began in 1975 in Green Haven Correctional Facility as a collaborative effort between inmates calling themselves the Think Tank and a New York Quaker group. These inmates were serving life or long sentences and approached the Quakers because they wanted to reach other inmates about alternatives to violence. AVP programs currently operate in approximately 30 percent of New York's prisons. At Elmira, seven workshops containing 15 men each take place annually, and 600 men are on the waiting list for the program. Enrollment is voluntary, but inmates believe that the program is effective in addressing the peer pressure and unwritten rules that lead to assaults by inmates on inmates. Case examples