Our work and involvement with the Ministry of Justice since 2009 can for now resume offering therapeutic groups for inmates at the Monrovia Central Prison and extensive planning with the Ministry for launching new programs in 2012. It has been a fruitful and exciting partnership.

2010 Impact at Monrovia Central Prison

About Our Support Groups for inmates

Our support groups help normalize the experience among the group members. They reduce the need for defensive aggression and build a support system. They also promote an ongoing non- judgmental environment that is free from trauma and very supportive so that body and brain can heal and develop. Establishing good relationships is also a goal. Studies show that relationships with a supportive social network results in physical and emotional healing, happiness, life satisfaction, prevent isolation and loneliness – major factors in depressive illnesses. In addition, relationships enhance social skills which are lacking in most inmates who have difficulty relating and integrating back into society.

Our inmate beneficiaries are male and female, most often on long-term sentences, as it is very important in the beginning stages of our program to be able measure the effectiveness of our interventions. With the nature of our groups, it is only possible to have measureables once we establish trust and long-term relationships with the partisipants.

The new agenda will add group exercises to discuss and practice good listening skills, following directions, asking questions, starting conversations, asking for help, understanding thoughts vs. feelings, expressing feelings, identifying stress alerts, understanding and establishing supportive friendships, reading body language, eye contact, peer pressure, self- identity, self-control, learning from others, dealing with negative thoughts, nurturing positive thoughts, affirming goodness, sense of humor, avoiding fights, fighting words, talking with purpose, expressing themselves, and extend our body stabilization work which promotes a sense of safety in themselves and in the world.

Looking Ahead: Prison Program Additions for 2012 subject to fund availability

Below are some of the suggestions we brought to the Ministry of Justice to improve our services at the prison. We would like to extend our services to family members of inmates and to the community in order to foster forgiveness and acceptance of rehabilitated inmates back in society. We stress the importance of working with the prison staff and making available our free professional consulting services with overseas clinicians to the ministry staff as needed in the planning and designing of a national psychosocial intervention in the prison setting.

Literacy Classes for Released Inmates:

Free of charge, we offer three classes each week at our downtown center in Monrovia.

Support Groups for Family Members of Inmates:

Beneficiaries: We estimate to work with 100 family members in the next 12 months, however our groups will be open to all, meeting our capacity to attend the demand.

Frequency:Two groups will be meeting once a week

Description: These open support groups will be a safe environment for family members to gather with privacy to share their experiences about having a loved one in prison. With the guidance and supervision of our staff, they will be able to share their frustrations, challenges, learn skills to cope with their own suffering, assist the inmate in reintegration to society (when applicable), and nourish acceptance and forgiveness.

*We will consider expanding our support group for family members to deal with specific situations such as domestic, child and sexual abuse as/if reported.

Support Groups for Prison Staff

Beneficiaries: 120 workers at the Monrovia Central Prison. Frequency: Once a month.

It has been reported by research that many prison workers could also be suffering from trauma, which we suppose would be accentuated in a post-war country for those who witnessed/experienced violent behavior, and continue to be exposed. Although in a lower degree, any form of violence and confrontation can be equally triggering, as workers become a part of the daily life of offenders. We must also be sensitive to the fact that some might feel jealous that inmates (some of who committed really horrible crimes) got all kinds of activities and supports, while the staff who were ostensibly keeping the world safe from the prisoners, from their perspective, got nothing. A third element in considering working with staff is on behalf of facilitating inmate rehabilitation.

The group will meet to share their thoughts, feelings and frustrations towards the experience of working with inmates at the central prison. The goal is to create a confidential supporting community to offer encouragement and tools for creating emotional stability and improving work performance.

Psychoeducation Workshops for Prison Staff

Along with the support group, we suggest a monthly psycho-educational workshops at the prison where workers can learn the relationship between mental disorders, psychosocial intervention and behavior such as violence, anger, aggression, and how to properly address them to enhance rehabilitation and modify the behavior of inmates. We stress the importance of working with the prison staff in order to make our work with the inmates successful. We could, for instance, take months to reduce traumatic behaviors among inmates such as reducing aggression, while in the process it would take very little for those symptoms to be triggered and the prison workers need to be included as they interact with the inmates on a daily basis.

Social Scenarios Drama Play

We would like to engage the inmates who are participating in our support groups into a safe and creative activity to work on during each month between our visits. The proposal is to have them write a play during the year, and perform it to their families by December of 2011. The topic for the play will be everyday situations they might face in the outside world and how they can demonstrate a proper behavior to deal with them. They might also include situations inside of the prison, relating to anger, violence, frustration, etc, and those shall be closely supervised by our staff in order to assure a safe environment and process where triggering traumatic behaviors would be strictly avoided.

Benefits:

- Body stabilization work: rehearsals and play performance assists the central nervous system (CNS) with stabilization of traumatic symptomatology, conditioning their body responses through the repetition of proper behavior in everyday triggering scenarios while in a safe and controlled environment.

- Social skills enhancement (needed for community integration): by learning to work with one another, taking turns, discussing ideas, choosing people to divide tasks, etc.

- Self-Esteem enhancement: as we encourage each person’s strengths to contribute in the play.

- Brain enhancement / less trouble making: by keeping inmates busy writing lines, memorizing, and exercising their creative minds.

- Re-establishing relationship with their families: we hope that after the play family members could feel proud of their achievement thus lowering stigmatization.

*Safety concern: Although we believe this program is possible and beneficial to the inmates, we are happy to work with the ministry and prison staff regarding number of inmates, structure, and any other details to assure the safety of everyone involved.