GRIP TRAINING INSTITUTE AND OUR PARTNERS
Restorative Justice
Restorative Justice Initiatives with
Victims, Youth, and Families
The GRIP program transforms violence and suffering into gateways for healing and learning.
Based on the principles and values of Restorative Justice, GRIP represents an alternative way of addressing crime and harm. During the yearlong program, students explore the harms they have committed and gateways to healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness through encounters with “surrogate victims,” people who are not directly related to the crime but have lived through similar situations. These dialogues seek to hold incarcerated people accountable and address victims’ needs by bringing together all those impacted by crime. Minimizing the chance of re-traumatization, GRIP provides space for victims and survivors to be heard, while students learn to be present to others’ suffering, develop empathy, take accountability, and explore their remorse and shame.
Project Avary
Children thrive in the loving arms of their parents. In the United States, one in 28 school-aged children have a parent incarcerated. They, and foster children, represent the highest percentage of people who are likely to end up in prison. Children with a parent behind bars are at higher risk for physical, social, and mental health problems – including anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Families are the invisible collateral damage from mass incarceration.
In 2016, GRIP began a partnership with Project Avary, an exemplary nonprofit organization that offers long-term support, resources, guidance, and training for children with incarcerated parents. Project Avary’s year-round program is tailored to meet the unique emotional needs of children with a parent in prison.
This partnership is a pioneering restorative justice and accountability program that addresses the underlying harms of generational incarceration. We bring together multiple generations of elders and youth that have been impacted by crime and incarceration to find healing and resolution, and to break the cycles of violence and trauma. We believe that true accountability emerges through building and maintaining meaningful relationships. When we can truthfully account for our actions and their collateral impacts on others, responsibility and maturity are fostered. In the US, millions of families have been decimated and broken apart by the epidemic of crime and incarceration. The wounds of one generation are passed on to the next. In order to stop this cycle, GRIP brings together multiple generations for a cutting-edge intervention and a healing process of truth telling, accountability, and growth.
Specifically, we do this by creating healing dialogues between incarcerated fathers and minors with parents who are locked up.
Before the visit from the youth, we invite GRIP Tribe members with children to bring pictures of their kids and grandkids to the class. Members without kids are invited to bring pictures of nieces, nephews, and the like. We create a makeshift gallery to exhibit the photos to the group. Everyone names and briefly describes their relationship to the child in the photo.
For a moment, the men are reminded that they are not just a last name and a number; they are fathers, grandfathers, sons, uncles, etc. A tattooed dad explains a picture taken with his son, who was born prematurely: “He needs a lot of holding because of that.”
When Project Avary youth join a GRIP session, everyone is invited to read letters they have written to their fathers or to their kids. GRIP and Avary facilitators create a safe role-play setting in which participants are encouraged to speak to each other as if directly addressing their family member. Despite the fact that the participants are not blood related, it is remarkable to see how a soul that is hungry enough for healing will readily embrace this opportunity. Poems, spoken word pieces, and other gifts are exchanged, creating a sense of worthiness for all involved.
Here is a video we made with Project Avary, prior to a dialogue between children of incarcerated parents and GRIP students who have children of their own:
https://vimeo.com/eliaskoch/review/221144854/a39ab53fa1
Mothers with a Message
“Mothers With a Message” is a San Diego-based group of mothers who have lost their children to violence. They explain:
“One of the things that we do is to go inside prisons and share our testimony of how these crimes have impacted our lives, and what we have been through because of our loss, and the effects these crimes have had on our entire family each and every day. Several years back we first started going into Avenal State Prison, invited by the GRIP Training Institute after first meeting a GRIP facilitator in Sacramento at a meeting for Prison Program Providers. And from that day on we have built an alliance with GRIP to assist in the healing process. We willingly visit GRIP classes and share our stories, pictures and pain of our loss. It isn’t easy, but the inmates with their respect, concern for what we have been through, and their remorse for their own actions of their crimes opens up dialogue and begins this healing process for all of us”.
It is very apparent that the GRIP students have already been through extensive programming to recognize how their actions affected others. They take responsibility for their actions, and show remorse for their victims and their families. They relate to us as mothers they hurt and have been thinking about for many years. We have seen so many men who regret their actions and who are filled with sorrow for what they took from another family. Pleading for forgiveness and struggling to forgive themselves as they face us. And it has been a remarkable experience to witness their recognition of their actions, and to witness their regret and transformation into mature individuals with a respect for life. We do this to honor all murdered children and their loved ones, and GRIP is a partner with us on this mission.”
Contact email: info….motherswithamessage@gmail.com
