Two Ohio prison practitioners with decades of experience working inside correctional institutions are challenging the conventional focus of incarceration, asking whether prisons could improve public safety and rehabilitation by examining the realities that shaped inmates' lives before prison rather than only the behavior that brought them there. Willie Davis and Jeff Hunsaker, who have spent years behind bars with inmates, have begun calling this examination Root-Cause Rehabilitation.
"Protecting public safety while rehabilitating inmates is a difficult dual mission for prisons," Davis and Hunsaker say. "By their nature, prisons deal with the effects of crime, not the causes of crime. What if another layer of thinking could help prisons become better at both protecting the public and inmate rehabilitation?"
The pair are careful to define their position: they are not researchers, clinicians, psychologists, or academics. Their work has led them to two hypotheses: that lasting internal change begins when inmates willingly start facing the realities that brought them to prison, and that inmates who experience lasting internal change can become positive influences within a prison's informal culture. They are inviting correctional leaders and independent researchers to examine whether these hypotheses deserve formal investigation.
"Instead of waiting until shortly before release to help prepare someone to live differently when released, what might happen if a meaningful opportunity began years earlier to face possible childhood trauma, rejection, abandonment, fear, shame, distorted beliefs, or other realities that shaped the choices that brought them to prison?" Davis says. The implications could be significant for correctional systems that typically concentrate rehabilitative efforts near the end of a sentence, potentially missing years of opportunity for intervention.
Davis and Hunsaker have also developed reading content specifically for inmates. Their novels and short stories are intended to invite inmates to examine their own lives and the realities that shaped them, an important consideration in their primary hypothesis. Prisons cannot change the realities that brought an inmate to prison, but they may have an opportunity to help inmates face those realities and begin living differently while still incarcerated. Davis and Hunsaker wonder whether that possibility deserves closer examination and are asking if anyone wants to wonder with them.
The initiative, known as The Kronos Project, is exploring Root-Cause Rehabilitation through books, workshops, and other content designed to encourage personal reflection and lasting internal change. More information is available at www.kronosproject.net. The practitioners are seeking independent researchers and correctional leaders interested in examining their hypotheses.
