The Diné (Navajo) people of America describe an offender as “He or she who acts as if they have no relatives.” The GRIP Tribe functions to provide those relatives. It’s a place to bond deeply as brothers and sisters who, together, undertake a profoundly transformational journey. GRIP accepts all races and gang affiliations. In various ways, it operates somewhat like a gang, except that the destructive values have been flipped into constructive values.
Every year, when we start a new yearlong session of the GRIP Program, we engage in a number of rituals. The first ritual is a Welcoming Ceremony that begins to bring together the ethnic, religious, and gang diversity of the prisoners, most of whom are classified as life-sentenced violent offenders with the possibility of parole. During the second ritual, we form a Tribe. Our first task is the naming of the Tribe. We begin by making a radical inventory – we ask the question: “How much time have you served?” As each man calls out the years he has served in his lifetime, the numbers are written on the whiteboard in the front of the room. After all of the group members have spoken, the total number of years served is calculated.
"The moment between craving and using; the moment between expectation and reality. It is the moment before we “lose it” and commit a crime. "
For all 170 participants, who have spent over 4 millennia (a total of 4008 years in prison), we tallied two hours, 43 minutes, and 16 seconds of time spent in the Moment of Imminent Danger, when they committed their crimes. Once more, the room is stunned into silence when these two numbers sit side by side.
We finish by tallying how many participants were using drugs during or around the time of the crime, how many experienced severe trauma when they were young, and how many had a consistent, positive male role model when growing up. Most participants are found to have high ranking measurements in these areas.
At this point, the participants are asked to raise their hand if they are ready to fully commit to the program – to commit to it as if life depends on it, because after being confronted by these numbers, it obviously does. The commitment consists of taking a whole year to learn how to never lose a moment like that again.
It costs at least $81,000 per year to incarcerate a person in California. We’re saving over 26 million dollars in taxpayers’ money each year, while improving public safety and preventing re-victimization.
At the end of the year, their families and the community are invited to enter San Quentin for a Rite of Passage, a caps-and-gowns graduation ceremony that brings the house down, with the help of the San Quentin Choir. At this ceremony, the Tribe members testify about their transformation, and so do their families. The victims we have worked with share how the dialogues they had with the men affected them. The graduates sign their Peacemaker Pledge again, this time for life, with the community as witness. The men graduate from carrying the media-driven stigma of an “offender” to becoming servants. They’re ready to dedicate themselves to peace and give back to their families and communities, whose presence at the ceremony represents the welcoming back.
Eight years after the program first started, from the first batch of 913 graduates, 326 have been released by the Parole Board, and only one has returned (due to drug sales). Our success rate is 99.7%. The average recidivism rate in California is 61% of parolees returning to prison within three years, a stark contrast to GRIP’s .3% recidivism rate. It costs at least $81,000 per year to incarcerate a person in California. We’re saving over 26 million dollars in taxpayers’ money each year, while improving public safety and preventing re-victimization.
"We begin by making a radical inventory – we ask the question: How much time have you served?"
In every session, when the number of years is tallied, a silence falls upon the room. Rather than turn away from the truth, participants are encouraged to embrace the number and use it to name their Tribe (much like some gangs do when they choose an area code as their gang name). The new values enforced by the Tribe are authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy. At the end of each session, members of the Tribe stand in a circle, clasp hands, raise their arms, and proudly proclaim their identity: “780: For us, by us, about us – Huh!” In 2017, in the five GRIP Tribes at San Quentin, participants – about 170 men – have served a cumulative total of 4008 years together.
The forming of the Tribe continues as members take on their next task, calculating the unfathomable: we ask the participants, “How long were you in your Moment of Imminent Danger?” In the GRIP curriculum, the Moment of Imminent Danger is the moment between anger and violence; the moment between craving and using; the moment between expectation and reality. It is the moment before we “lose it” and commit a crime. One of our goals is to learn to “ID” this moment (ID is an abbreviation for both “identify” and “Imminent Danger”). The moment has three consistent characteristics: 1. Everything speeds up, 2. Everything intensifies, and 3. There is an experience of regret afterwards. Though a certain lifestyle may have conditioned this moment to emerge, the actual moment of giving in to an impulse and crossing the boundary itself usually happens in a flash, typically lasting five seconds to two minutes. (Five minutes is long for most, but there are exceptions.)
“No one is born armed and dangerous. So we ask, What happened?”
Someone once said: “No one is born armed and dangerous.” So we ask, “What happened?” We are not asking: “What is wrong with you?” We are asking, “What happened with you, how did you get to be here in prison with us? And, spiritually speaking, what do you need to remember who you really are?” We endeavor together to answer that question by diligently reconstructing how each man came to lose the ID moment that happened just prior to the offense they committed. We do so candidly – but without shaming anyone. We engage in a lot of truth telling, disclosing traumas, and purging our shame. Profound healing begins to take place. With the help of a thoroughly tested, well-designed, 215-page coursebook to guide us through, the journey unfolds.
A sheet of paper showing the Tribe’s inventory becomes the initial page of what we call “our Tribal Book.” This Tribal Book also contains the names of our victims, our families and communities, the guests that visit us – all the people that do time with us. The book is with us every time we meet; it has its own chair. All of the people named in it are evoked and present in circles of people sitting around us each time the Tribe meets in its yearlong GRIP journey of learning and healing. The Tribe makes its own Learning Agreements Contract, signed by each member. Each member also signs a Peacemaker Pledge, which lists the pro-social skills they vow to learn by the end of the year. These documents are signed by every Tribe member and are also placed in the Tribal Book.
