NCJ Number
210111
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 67 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2005 Pages: 22-23,25
Date Published
June 2005
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article outlines the "Four Steps to Emotional Healing" that compose the HOPE (Helping Offenders Pursue Excellence) Program, which is designed to guide offenders on a path to rehabilitation.
Abstract
The first step toward emotional healing is "Admission and Grieving," which involves an exercise that forces offenders, adults and juvenile together, to look inside themselves and remember the pain that may not have received their needed grieving. Adult and juvenile offenders alternately share their life stories. The second step consists of "Confrontation and Disclosure," as juvenile offenders are required to write letters to their real fathers, mothers, stepparents, etc., to confront them about their abuse, betrayal, and abandonment. Adult inmates are assigned to write to their children to take responsibility for the abuse, betrayal, and abandonment they inflicted on them. During group sessions, an inmate parent and juvenile offender face one another as the inmate parent reads his/her letter of accountability, and the adult inmates are encouraged to envision their own child setting before them as they read. The third step, "Forgiveness and Reconciliation," begins with a group session that focuses on the decision to forgive versus the cost of forgiveness and what it means to release the offender from a heart filled with vengeance. The act is defined as a choice and not a feeling. The fourth step to emotional healing is "Restoration and Healing," which involves rebuilding relationships and forging new behaviors based on the emotional healing that has occurred. Under these four steps, antisocial behaviors have proven to decrease measurably in frequency and intensity. A behavioral model develops in participants for facing and resolving conflicts in constructive ways.