Center for Mindfulness and Justice
Training For Corrections
Philosophy
We believe that the role of correctional employees is to provide safety for community residents, inmates and employees residing in and working in correctional facilities. This includes programming and services that improve public safety by helping released inmates successfully reintegrate back into their communities, and decrease the number of offenders on supervision who are revoked and incarcerated. We provide training and services to facilitate this multi-faceted approach. With some initial consultation, the following training components can be designed specifically for your department or correctional facility.
Available Training for Corrections
Health & Wellness Training
We focus on the emotional health and wellness of the correctional officers, probation and parole agents, and other correctional employees engaged in providing services in correctional facilities and the community. This includes training on how to be aware of – and prevent – the dysfunctional effects of the job on employees and their families, including secondary trauma.
Snapshot
"I had the privilege of serving with Cheri Maples when she was the head of Community Corrections for the state of Wisconsin. In my 37-year-career at Corrections, the time when Cheri was at the helm was professionally one of the most rewarding. As a Regional Chief, I really valued Cheri's leadership, knowledge and confidence she showed in her team. I witnessed the inspiration Cheri brought to Corrections, with her creative vision of the probation and parole function, and an understanding of the importance of paying attention to the health and wellness of those working within the correctional system. She continues to make a meaningful impact via her role as an organizational trainer, providing training on health and wellness, ethics, diversity - and creating public safety approaches that provide networks of support, enabling those who are reintegrating back into their communities to succeed. Having worked in the criminal justice realm for 25 years, Cheri really 'gets it.'"
Problem-Oriented Approaches To Corrections
This training encompasses: applying the principles of problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention to institutional and community corrections settings; preventing and controlling crime by changing the conditions that contribute to particular crimes rather than focusing solely on physical control of the offenders; proper use of data; focus on offender environment rather than simply offender characteristics; coordinated community responses to public safety; and optimizing the use of evidence-based and best-known practices.
Supervising Inmates Inside & Outside of the Correctional Facility
Problem-oriented approaches to challenges faced by those working inside and outside the jail or prison are explored. This includes correctional administrators, officers, chaplains, social workers, psychologists, and probation and parole agents.
Prison Education
How to involve the community and inter-faith groups in bringing education to inmates is the heart of this training – to facilitate safety inside and outside the institution. This includes tutoring in identified competency skills, inmate health and wellness, mindfulness, and healthy communication and relationship skills. This training can also be designed for community groups wishing to begin providing these services.
Prison Reintegration
We provide innovative training in how to involve the community in creating informal safety nets for inmates reintegrating back into the community. This training can also be designed for community groups wishing to begin providing these services.
Probation and Parole Agent Training
A problem-oriented and research-based approach is applied to supervision, including the creation and enforcement of effective supervision rules and decisions about if and when to revoke.
Enhancing Safety Within The Walls
Prison culture can be changed by creating alternative mechanisms designed to transform the violence that comes with gang activity, and with the inmates' underground economies inside correctional facilities. This is done through training on how to provide alternative systems of positive exchanges among inmates that improve safety within the walls and provide reintegration skills.
Ethics Training
Much of what goes on at work is not in the departmental policies and procedures manual. We offer an organizational understanding of the importance of ethics training to address the unspoken and unwritten norms to which correctional employees are socialized.
Diversity Training
Unconscious bias can enter into various individual and organizational decision-making points, which is crucial to recognize and understand. This unconscious bias can create disturbing racial disparities in programming and services inside and outside the correctional facility.
Prison Chaplaincy Services
We offer prison chaplain services and chaplain training, including training your chaplains to be effective coordinators and facilitators of services provided by volunteers within the institution.
Bringing Mindfulness and Meditation to Prisons and Jails
Meditation and mindfulness can be powerful tools for the stress-reduction of incarcerated persons. The skills learned can also enable them to transform themselves in very difficult environments – as well as create safer environments within the walls for staff and incarcerated persons alike.
Healthy Relationship and Communication Skills for Incarcerated Persons
These are the most important, practical tools to help incarcerated persons decrease violence and improve their interpersonal effectiveness – regardless of whether they remain within the walls or are reintegrating back to their communities.
Inmate Classes
Classes for inmates include Health & Wellness, Mindfulness & Meditation, and Healthy Relationships & Communication.
To schedule a training
Please contact Maureen Brady: info@mindfulnessandjustice.org