When a person is released from prison the chance they’ll be rearrested within the next three years hovers between 62% and 78% depending on a number of variables. It’s no wonder, when you consider that, instead of offering enough programs that prepare an individual to re-acclimate to life on the outside, they foster an environment of tension and hostility. That’s no fault of prison officials, who struggle with low budgets and the problem of dealing with homicidal psychopaths on a daily basis, but the issue has forced many of them to find creative solutions that actually help inmates examine their own behavior.
Enter meditation. So-called corrections centers across the country have begun adopting different kinds of meditation in an attempt to help convicts shift their focus from taking a shiv in the mess hall to just chilling out.
Amanda Abrams, whose spent years practicing and studying mindful meditation, wrote in the Washington Post that she volunteered at a Washington DC area jail intending to help inmates notice “thoughts, emotions and sensations that arise without judging them — a deceptively difficult practice. In recent years, scientists have shown that meditation switches on genes linked to immune functioning, increases gray matter in the brain, rewires neural pathways — not to mention boosts happiness, lowers stress, improves concentration and leads to increased compassion.”
