Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Committee on Criminal Justice: RECONSTRUCTION

This paper outlines the PYM Committee on Criminal Justice plan for a prisoner transition program called RECONSTRUCTION. Directed at black men in their twenties paroled after simple assault, aggravated assault, and homicide sentences, the program focuses on communication through listening, health, education, and employment.

Outlining method, goals, necessary staff, and a budget, the plan for RECONSTRUCTION most prominently emphasizes its Afrocentric focus, arguing that a heritage-based focus will provide participants with a sense of community and an educational goal. Again and again, the paper highlights that listening as a form of communication will be an overwhelming focus of the program. Through this paradigm, the Committee on Criminal Justice envisions channeling these communication skills into methods of rage control, etc.

RECONSTRUCTION, as envisioned in this paper, aims to reintegrate its participants into the program itself, pointing out that the most effective staff for the program would consist of ex-offenders, mentoring recently paroled individuals in ways to conquer a legacy of crime and punishment.

I found the focus on health to be particularly interesting. Incorporating healthy diet and exercise into a daily ritual that also includes reflection, education, and job training seems to me to be a really effective method of lasting improvement.

I think that, with its emphasis on communication and listening, RECONSTRUCTION has an unstated focus on the power of bearing witness. This is how I think we should frame it. As such, maybe it would fit in with the section on childhood sexual abuse, especially given that it, as well as most of the material I found at FHL, is relatively recent. However, it is not dated!!