By BitcoDavid
The New York Times did a photo-essay on the burgeoning trend of teaching yoga to inmates, as an attempt at corralling the recidivism problem.
Even though states’ spending on corrections has quadrupled during the past two decades, to $52 billion, the rate of recidivism has remained stubbornly high, with roughly four in 10 adult American offenders returning to prison within three years of their release, according to a report from Pew Charitable Trusts.
http://www.thehindu.com
Page no longer available. Link is for citation purposes only.
This program was started 12 years ago in California, when a man named James Fox founded the Prison Yoga Project. Since then, 20 institutions throughout the U.S. have adopted similar programs.
At least 20 prisons now offer yoga through the Prison Yoga Project, a program that began in California 12 years ago when its founder, James Fox, began teaching yoga to at-risk youth. Mr. Fox holds trainings for yoga teachers and said he has sent more than 7,000 copies of his manual to inmates to practice yoga on their own.
The above images are not part of the original NYT article, as their artwork was inaccessible. However, you can go here to see the original slide show.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/01/03/us/PRISONYOGA.html
You can also find more coverage at:
http://pranaandpie.com/2011/11/the-prison-yoga-project/
BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.
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- Discrimination against women in prison keeps them going back | Sadhbh Walshe (guardian.co.uk)
- Prison Phone Calls, Financial Burden To Prisoners’ Families, Get FCC Review (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)
- The Prison Population is Dropping. Can You Guess Why? (motherjones.com)
- Fox News debates ‘yoga Nazis’ and ‘the wussification of America’ (rawstory.com) [I wouldn’t have included this link, but it just struck me as so ridiculous I couldn’t resist. – BitcoDavid]